If Wishes Were Horses, I'd Get to Ride

I grew up lower middle class, and this meant we despised the people immediately above us as well as those below us, namely people with horses.   Horses were, I was told, nervous animals and people who loved them were crazy. In fact, all animal lovers were nuts, and people with exotic pets were not only crazy but probably neglectful of their children as well. I can attest to some extent on the last one--I have yet to meet someone with a pet monkey who was a good parent or even a decent pet owner, and I recently dated someone with a snake. (Not a code word here, he really had a snake. And I wouldn't have gone out with him but I had recently met a kind of interesting co-worker who had a tattoo and snakes but was versed in Anglo Saxon poetry, so I thought, what the hell, give the guy with a snake a shot.) For those of you who care, it was a python and he raised it from a tiny snake from an exotic pet market he found here in Beijing. He made the mistake of bringing it to my house and threatening to feed the guinea pigs to it. I am not that fond of my guinea pigs but I am their owner and treat them very well and was not going to see them being terrified and teased and turned into dinner, even if it would relieve me of spending over a hundred bucks a month on guinea pig feed. So out he went. Both guinea pigs are now about half the size of a football and getting bigger by the second, so perhaps it was my loss after all--but I couldn't bear the thought of Squeaky and Snowy feeling panic or distress or pain. BTW, the dogs were out getting groomed so they missed the excitement, although they freaked out when they got home and smelled his patchouli that lingered in the air like the image of a  bloated corpse burned into your retinas. (It's still there.)

As to horses, well--in truth, I loved horses and when I had enough money together would try to organize a trip with other friends to rent a horse for an hour. I didn't have enough money for a lesson, mind you, so most of my time on horseback was spent trying to giddy-up, but I felt the most tremendous guilt for liking horses, a liking that began well before I read National Velvet or Misty of Chincoteague.  I still like them, I still wish I could ride properly, and I still hope that some day I will learn how. I boosted myself into middle class with the dint of my college education, and I lifted myself out of middle class morality by dint of having absolutely no money, no social security, and no social status in the form of a husband or even at this point family. I get to like what I like, and if that means taking in rescue dogs and a rescue guinea pig (and getting that one a guinea pig of its own so it wouldn't be alone) then so be it.  I'm not neglecting my child--hell, she's in a good university and doing well--and my dogs don't have more clothes than I do, although I do kind of envy one of her this little pink coat that has the sweetest pink bones embroidered on the collar. Here's the benefit of being the crazy single lady on the block: I can do whatever the hell I want, and like whatever I want, and there's no one here to look down their nose for my doing it. Yay me.