The Pony and the Pig Wallow

There are some lessons you only learn once—preferably not in a pig wallow. 

I was seven when I learned that if a pony puts his head down, the rider keeps going. It was my first lesson in physics. 

One minute I was riding bareback, with nothing to hang onto but the pony’s mane. The next, I was in the pig wallow.

I did not see it coming. One moment I was upright and feeling quite capable. The next, I was flat on my back in something warm, muddy, and unmistakably pig-related.

Pig-yuck was dripping from the top of my head to my toes.

I wasn’t hurt, but I was—stunned. I had to take my glasses off so I could see, because they were covered in that same pig-yuck. 

I wasn’t far from the house, so I climbed over the fence and walked up to the back door. 

I yelled for Mom. I knew better than to walk into the house like that.

Mom came to the door. The look on her face was one of pure horror. She didn’t say much besides “What did you do?”—sort of loudly.

I tried to explain, but by then she had turned the garden hose on me…

She hosed me down starting at the top of my head, then stripped my clothes off, and hosed me down again. 

Then she wrapped a bath towel around me and carried me to the bathtub so I wouldn’t get the floor all dirty. 

By this age, I was old enough to take my own bath, but not that day. She gave me one. Then she drained the bathtub and gave me another. 

That was the last time I rode the neighbor’s pony without permission. Physics and pig-yuck are persuasive teachers.