Monday, March 13, 2006
Ornery IV....Snoopy and the tale of two ass whippings
Ornery part IV
When we last left off the adorable tykes of the Nightmare clan they were up to their eyeballs in trouble as usual.
After the babysitter beating we were good for what my parents thought was an eternity almost 3 weeks. It was a little had to sit down and twice as hard to remember why what we did was so fun. But soon enough that pain went away and our memories faded and we were back to rotten in no time.
As I mentioned before we lived in the middle of no where, and it wasn’t unheard of for us to be outdoors for 6-12 hours at a time with little to no parental supervision. It’s not that Mom was inattentive, we generally made enough racket that no matter what we were into she could still keep a well trained “Mom Ear” on the situation. It is surprising how smart we were and then again how dumb too, It took us a long time to figure out that if we wanted to not get caught we had to MAKE noise, not be quiet. As soon as we were quiet that was when the parents came looking for us because we were obviously doing evil. But eventually we did learn and it made our escape that much easier.
Since we were the products of Cowboys and Cowgirls we had horses and were raised with the fun of rodeo. Wore the boots, rode the horses and as I got bigger, tried to ride other things…NOT THAT! I waited until I was 18 to ride that! But steers and sheep and other mechanical objects like motorcycles and such. But since we had our own pony’s they were our best friends and our best baby sitters. Our first pony was a little Shetland pony named Snoopy. He was all of 3-4 feet high at the shoulder and was gentle enough that a 3and 4 year old could saddle him and ride him around the back yard which we did before we moved to the country.
One afternoon after we got our trusted steed saddled and were trotting around the back yard some of the older neighborhood boys came to the fence and wanted to know if they could go for a ride, at first we said no but then they talked us into it…Naturally the biggest of the boys was the leader because hey when your 9 and you can whip everyone in your age group you automatically qualify as the leader.
Well this boy had watched us for a good ½ an hour and we put on quite a show, galloping and trotting and crawling over and under the horse and generally doing things that most horses would never allow you to do, needless to say he was sure he could make this pony do all of the same things if he was just given the chance. So we let him. His ass wasn’t on the saddle more than a second when Snoopy laid his ears back and bulled up and wouldn’t do anything. Naturally this pissed the big kid off and he was mad as hell. But Older Brother being the consummate showman gets back on the horse and runs him around the yard showing everyone that the pony wasn’t broken. So this little jackass jumps back on and this time armed with a switch….for those of you who don’t know what a switch is, it is a small thin stick used to keep little boys and occasionally little horses in line.
Well jackass reared back and slapped Snoopy’s ass with the switch and his ears laid back and he bucked…and he bucked HARD! This kid flew through the air and landed with a resounding thud some 10 feet away from the horse. Who by the way was just calmly standing there doing nothing. Well Jackass started whimpering and grabbed his switch again and headed toward Snoopy and that is when Older Brother and myself stepped in and warned him that if he did that again Snoopy would kick him really hard!
The yard slowly cleared out and we were once again with our favorite baby sitter and imagining riding in the National Finals Rodeo.
When we finally moved out to the country we weren’t exactly isolated, there was a small gas station about 100 yards down the highway from our house, and when I say small I mean SM-ALL, two pumps, one diesel, one regular..very small. The land next to the filling station was owned by a guy named Bob. Bob scared the hell out of little kids, he was loud and gruff and 90% of the time angry about something, but he also had his own roping arena. Complete with a hitching post. This hitching post was about 4and ½ feet tall and 8-10 feet long.
Here is where the Orneriness comes into play once again..enter the younger brother. He is 3 years younger than I am and he was just barely old enough to hang on to Snoopy’s saddle horn. By this time both of us had outgrown little Snoop and we had much bigger horses. Mine was of course a big black gelding and my older brother had a even bigger buckskin mare. (actually that explains a lot now that I think about it, him being gay and all) But anyway where ever we went on our horses Snoopy was always close behind, little legs struggling to keep up with the big horses and running for all he was worth.
One day while planning a ride in Bob’s arena Mom told us to take Younger brother with us because he was under foot again. So we go saddle up and make sure Snoopy is ready to go and we put the 3 year old on the saddle and head across the highway to the arena. We started warming up our horses and trotting them in a growing circle. Snoopy was trying to keep up and younger brother was giggling with the thrill of trotting on a horse.
We did figure 8’s and ovals and big circles and small circles and then we found our funny bone. We were going to take a break and get a drink out of the hose and give the horses a drink as well so we galloped to the south end of the arena where the hitching post was and we each took a side and ran around the ends to tie up our horses. Snoopy was just following us and having a three year old on his back was much like nothing and since he was getting NO guidance from his invisible rider he did what he thought was right. He went right up the middle.
He had little brother pinned in his saddle under the hitching post. He stayed like that for a good three minutes or so while me and older brother laughed our asses off. It was then that the orneriness took over and we vaulted into our saddles and spent the next 20 minutes running from one end to the other and watching Snoopy pin or little brother under the hitching post. Needless to say the galloping was his favorite part, the pinning was his least favorite.
We also had an unknown audience and when she figured out what it was that we were doing and got everything off of the stove, or off of the phone AND found an appropriate switch for the two of us she paid us a visit!
Mom was MAD! We had a weeping willow tree in the back yard, and when we moved out of that house after 4 years I think it was close to dead due to the amount of ass whippings we took.
When we last left off the adorable tykes of the Nightmare clan they were up to their eyeballs in trouble as usual.
After the babysitter beating we were good for what my parents thought was an eternity almost 3 weeks. It was a little had to sit down and twice as hard to remember why what we did was so fun. But soon enough that pain went away and our memories faded and we were back to rotten in no time.
As I mentioned before we lived in the middle of no where, and it wasn’t unheard of for us to be outdoors for 6-12 hours at a time with little to no parental supervision. It’s not that Mom was inattentive, we generally made enough racket that no matter what we were into she could still keep a well trained “Mom Ear” on the situation. It is surprising how smart we were and then again how dumb too, It took us a long time to figure out that if we wanted to not get caught we had to MAKE noise, not be quiet. As soon as we were quiet that was when the parents came looking for us because we were obviously doing evil. But eventually we did learn and it made our escape that much easier.
Since we were the products of Cowboys and Cowgirls we had horses and were raised with the fun of rodeo. Wore the boots, rode the horses and as I got bigger, tried to ride other things…NOT THAT! I waited until I was 18 to ride that! But steers and sheep and other mechanical objects like motorcycles and such. But since we had our own pony’s they were our best friends and our best baby sitters. Our first pony was a little Shetland pony named Snoopy. He was all of 3-4 feet high at the shoulder and was gentle enough that a 3and 4 year old could saddle him and ride him around the back yard which we did before we moved to the country.
One afternoon after we got our trusted steed saddled and were trotting around the back yard some of the older neighborhood boys came to the fence and wanted to know if they could go for a ride, at first we said no but then they talked us into it…Naturally the biggest of the boys was the leader because hey when your 9 and you can whip everyone in your age group you automatically qualify as the leader.
Well this boy had watched us for a good ½ an hour and we put on quite a show, galloping and trotting and crawling over and under the horse and generally doing things that most horses would never allow you to do, needless to say he was sure he could make this pony do all of the same things if he was just given the chance. So we let him. His ass wasn’t on the saddle more than a second when Snoopy laid his ears back and bulled up and wouldn’t do anything. Naturally this pissed the big kid off and he was mad as hell. But Older Brother being the consummate showman gets back on the horse and runs him around the yard showing everyone that the pony wasn’t broken. So this little jackass jumps back on and this time armed with a switch….for those of you who don’t know what a switch is, it is a small thin stick used to keep little boys and occasionally little horses in line.
Well jackass reared back and slapped Snoopy’s ass with the switch and his ears laid back and he bucked…and he bucked HARD! This kid flew through the air and landed with a resounding thud some 10 feet away from the horse. Who by the way was just calmly standing there doing nothing. Well Jackass started whimpering and grabbed his switch again and headed toward Snoopy and that is when Older Brother and myself stepped in and warned him that if he did that again Snoopy would kick him really hard!
The yard slowly cleared out and we were once again with our favorite baby sitter and imagining riding in the National Finals Rodeo.
When we finally moved out to the country we weren’t exactly isolated, there was a small gas station about 100 yards down the highway from our house, and when I say small I mean SM-ALL, two pumps, one diesel, one regular..very small. The land next to the filling station was owned by a guy named Bob. Bob scared the hell out of little kids, he was loud and gruff and 90% of the time angry about something, but he also had his own roping arena. Complete with a hitching post. This hitching post was about 4and ½ feet tall and 8-10 feet long.
Here is where the Orneriness comes into play once again..enter the younger brother. He is 3 years younger than I am and he was just barely old enough to hang on to Snoopy’s saddle horn. By this time both of us had outgrown little Snoop and we had much bigger horses. Mine was of course a big black gelding and my older brother had a even bigger buckskin mare. (actually that explains a lot now that I think about it, him being gay and all) But anyway where ever we went on our horses Snoopy was always close behind, little legs struggling to keep up with the big horses and running for all he was worth.
One day while planning a ride in Bob’s arena Mom told us to take Younger brother with us because he was under foot again. So we go saddle up and make sure Snoopy is ready to go and we put the 3 year old on the saddle and head across the highway to the arena. We started warming up our horses and trotting them in a growing circle. Snoopy was trying to keep up and younger brother was giggling with the thrill of trotting on a horse.
We did figure 8’s and ovals and big circles and small circles and then we found our funny bone. We were going to take a break and get a drink out of the hose and give the horses a drink as well so we galloped to the south end of the arena where the hitching post was and we each took a side and ran around the ends to tie up our horses. Snoopy was just following us and having a three year old on his back was much like nothing and since he was getting NO guidance from his invisible rider he did what he thought was right. He went right up the middle.
He had little brother pinned in his saddle under the hitching post. He stayed like that for a good three minutes or so while me and older brother laughed our asses off. It was then that the orneriness took over and we vaulted into our saddles and spent the next 20 minutes running from one end to the other and watching Snoopy pin or little brother under the hitching post. Needless to say the galloping was his favorite part, the pinning was his least favorite.
We also had an unknown audience and when she figured out what it was that we were doing and got everything off of the stove, or off of the phone AND found an appropriate switch for the two of us she paid us a visit!
Mom was MAD! We had a weeping willow tree in the back yard, and when we moved out of that house after 4 years I think it was close to dead due to the amount of ass whippings we took.
