I'd Really Like To Get Down Now Please

In all of my musings about Camp McDowell,I can’t believe that I forgot to mention the most perilous part of the entireweekend – the high dive. (It’s interesting to me that I wrote about both myterrible swimming lessons and CampMcDowell last week, but completelyforgot to mention it. Subconsciously, it must have been floating around upthere somewhere, but I guess I never put it together.)

We covered that I’m not the greatest swimmer. (I do love the water though, I’m just more of a lazyriver/"let’s float this one out with a cocktail" kind of gal.) Well, I also happen to have alittle trouble with heights. I think it began when I broke both of my armsfalling out of a tree house, but with the anxiety in this brain of mine, it’sentirely possible the phobia would have come about regardless.  

(Technically speaking, I think I have what is known asobsessive bad thoughts rather than a phobia. I can be in high spaces – I didn’tmiss out on the top of the Hancock building when I spent the summer in Chicago,but all I think about when I’m too far off the ground is falling. It’s prettymuch the only notion/image that runs through my head once I’m more than 10 feetoff the ground. Once I saw Clueless, even the third floor of the mall couldmake me a little sick to my stomach. Am I the only person in Americatraumatized by Clueless for reasons other than the fact that Alecia Silverstone’slove interest ends up being her former step-brother? Probably.)

But, you know, I’ve done a lot of work to understand myselfbetter in the past few months. I turned 30. I have a prescription for Xanax.Surely, I thought, I can handle the high dive now.

Only a few minutes after the SO and I arrived at the pool, Iheaded straight for the high dive. (That’s right, I didn’t even warm up withthe lower diving board. I wanted to be bold, so I decided to climb right onup.) I’d watched my 11-year old and 7-year old cousins go off again and again-- surely this would be fine.

The ladder itself was not a problem. I went up those rungs likeit was my job. It was the diving board at the top of those stairs that posed aproblem.

Were you aware that those things are wobbly? I know this is forpeople who actually want to jump off the diving board and gain even more heightbefore diving gracefully into the water, but once I was atop the diving boardand actually had to look down, wobbly is not something I was interested in.

I took a few steps forward, and then I took a few steps back.

“You can do it LaLa,” my adorable 11-year old cousin yelledfrom the bottom of the stairs. (I think she was anxious to take another turn.)She is a gem and my heart, so don’t question how much I love her despite whatis about to occur in the rest of this re-telling.

I took another few steps forward and froze again.

“You’ll do great honey,” the SO yelled from the shallow end.“Just like Greg Louganis.”

If I had been closer, I would have taken the Super Soaker tohim for that one.

“I’m not so sure about this,” I said, my knees beginning to goa little weak, and I stepped backwards on the board again.

“Jump LaLa!” More cousins had joined in. The young people’s excitement was tangible. Itjust wasn’t quite contagious.

“I think I might need to come down instead,” I said. “Your bigcousin isn’t as brave as she thought she was.”

“Uh-uh,” my cousin said. “There’s no coming down.” I lookeddown to see that a line had formed at the base of the ladder with more than oneof my tween-aged cousins gathered at the bottom of the steps to prevent mefrom  getting down. Plus, they’re Mills,and you should never try to out-stubborn a Mills. Even though I am one, I knewI’d at least need back-up. They were three or four deep down there. You mightbe thinking, “oh, but they’re just children.” If you are, I’ll just let youtake them on yourselves. It can be quite a pack.

I tried to go towards the end of the board again. “Now, kids …”I began, thinking I might pull the sympathy card instead. I was even preparedto offer silly bands or Miley Cyrus mementos for a reprieve.

“If you don’t go off that board, I’m going to climb up there andbounce on the end until you jump,” my cousin said.

And with that terrifying image in my head, I ran off the end ofthe board into the water. Was it a dive? Of course not. Was it graceful? Not atall. Was it even an attempt at a jump you might recognize like the cannonballor can opener? No. All I wanted right then was to get off the board, and I knewthe only way to do it was to move before I could think much more and shut myeyes tight. (If you’re curious, yes, this is how I get through a lot in life –getting on an airplane, climbing into the dentist’s chair and having my fingerpricked included.) 

So, in the end, you could kind of say that I overcame one of myfears to do something  unexpected. Or, Icould admit the truth – that it turns out my fear of tween-agers is far greaterthan my fear of heights.

Lord help me if I ever find myself in the vicinity of a Justin Bieber concert. 

A Horse is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course

I think most little girls go through a phase when they're obsessed with horses. I'm not sure what it is about horses that's so fascinating when you have two X chromosomes and are under the age of 10, but there you have it.

At five, my favorite show to watch after school was Black Beauty. (At least, I think that's what it was called. There was a horse. It was black. It may or may not have been the main character, but it came on after Today's Special, and that's what I called it.) I had many My Little Ponies in addition to a score of off-brand plastic horses that I also liked to gallop across the living room floor. I even did my own horse impersonation that involved neighing. (I can only imagine now how annoying that must have been.)

A few years later, my horse obsession still strong but no longer My-Little-Pony-focused, I was a dedicated viewer or Mr. Ed on Nick at Nite. I watched that crazy talking horse every single night, and every single night, I hoped for Wilbur's sake that someone else would just hear that horse talk. Oh, that wily Mr. Ed -- he was a stinker.

I dreamed of owning my own horse and brushing its mane. I wanted to be so good with horses that I'd be like one of those shaggy-haired dudes who played by no one's rules but his own but could tame a wild mustang like you would not believe. (I either wanted to be like that person -- but a girl, how crazy! -- or marry him. At eight, I was still torn.)

For years, I thought that I couldn't love anything more than horses. That was until, of course, I actually rode one.

It was summer camp, and horseback riding was one of the class offerings. I was beside myself. What color would my horse be? Could I feed him carrots or oats? How long would it reasonably take until we started jumping gates together? Three days? Four?

"You're up," the counselor called on the first day after a couple of girls had gotten on horses in front of me. "So, just swing that leg on over."

That was the first problem. Being less than five feet tall and all torso, it's not exactly easy to throw your leg over a horse's saddle -- even when a ladder is involved.

"That's OK," the counselor said after another counselor had to come over and help her pull me on top of the horse. "I'm sure you'll get it next time." While I appreciated her optimism, I also knew that two weeks was not enough time for me to grown another six inches. 

Once we had all mounted our horses, we started off down a trail. Everyone else seemed to have no trouble staying in line, but my horse had little interest in staying on the trail. So, not only was I hit with the occasional twig, I was also being reprimanded by my counselor for deviating from the path. (I did not like to be reprimanded at that age. I was the kid who thought that the lifeguard hated her for the entire rest of the summer if he or she had to tell me not to run around the pool. I much preferred to be the good one.)

And when I did try to tug slightly on the reins to keep my horse with the others, it threw its head back -- a gesture I found mildly terrifying. (Horses were far larger and more powerful in person than I had imagined in all my years of cartoon-viewing and neighing.)

My horse did the same extreme head-tossing when I tried to pet its mane. It seemed to me that my horse disliked human contact, and I can only imagine that the forced contact of having to carry small people on its back six hours a day, five days a week, was an indignity it did not want to bear in its golden years. 

I also didn't count on horses being so sweaty. Rather than being on an adventure in the woods with a beautiful and majestic creature, I felt like I was trapped on a large, smelly, overgrown thing that wanted nothing to do with me.

It was one of the longest hours of my life.

After that, I don't think I ever rode a horse again. I gave up any thoughts I might have had about the life equestrian and moved on.

I moved on to bigger dreams, dreams of theater -- musical theater to be exact. Surely, my Broadway fantasies would turn out better than the whole horse thing, even if I was tone deaf ...