Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately...ok yeah, fortunately), this was NOT the reason I liked horses. I just don't know what was. Whatever it is, I feel someone should look into it. I mean, a whole demographic generation after generation just goes nuts over a random animal; there has to be something there. It's like teenage girls and sparkly vampires these days.
Anyway, most people get it when you say "I liked ponies as a girl". That does not disturb them, because just about every girl was like that, at least the ones I knew. But Tetradecimal and I took it to another level. Looking back, I feel someone should have intervened, because it was really a somewhat unhealthy obsession. I feel no other event in our lives demonstrated this as well as when we went to *dundundun* Art Camp.
Besides being rabid pony fangirls, we were also aspiring artists (and sadly still are, but at least we are more aware of our delusions now, yay), so in a sweet but misguided gesture of support, our parents sent us to Art Camp. Knowing my parents, I'm pretty sure they were expecting me to emerge after a couple weeks of summer vacation as a young Van Gogh with a new array of technical skills and maybe even some basic knowledge of art history so I could start developing my own bold and avant-garde style. At the very least, I'd learn to draw something besides those damn horses and learn to color inside the lines (you might pick up from previous entries that while I did graduate from horses, I still hate coloring, ESPECIALLY inside the lines).
My point is, this was a serious and essentially guaranteed setup for disaster and disappointment, not to mention worried parent-camp counselor conferences about if we were budding antisocial serial killers or hopefully just "special". I don't remember probably 95% of what the counselors tried to get us to do, but I do remember thinking it was fucking retarded and refusing flat-out with Tetradecimal at my side because what were they going to do, white people don't hit their kids. I just wanted to draw my magical horses, not make pottery or use watercolor or even talk to other kids because they were sickening little sycophants with no artistic vision. Yes, I was a smug little troll. But I take comfort in the fact that none of the kids actually hated me, from what I remember, because they were too busy being scared of our strange artistic endeavors and ramblings, and avoiding us like the plague.
The counselors quickly learned we were going to be an issue. To their credit, they were really patient and good-natured, more so than I would have been, and never quit trying to get us to go along with their planned activities for the day. Sometimes they even succeeded halfway.
One of those rare successes was when it was decided we were going to put on a play for our parents using paper-mache puppets. The uniting theme of the play was that all the acts would be of poems by Shel Silverstein, either from "Falling Up" or "A Light in the Attic". Most kids were quite satisfied. Not us.
I remember how excited the counselors were when we agreed pleasantly for once to be in the play.
And then we asked, "Is there a poem about unicorns?"
Things got ugly fast. For myself, I could barely comprehend how this Shel Silverstein could consider himself a poet if he didn't write poems about unicorns. I think I remember Tetradecimal and me trying to compromise in our own demented lala-land way. The counselors could pick whatever poem they wanted for us, and we'd make paper-mache unicorn puppets.When that didn't seem to be working, Tetradecimal and I agreed quite calmly that well, clearly, we just couldn't be in the play then, because if one could not make a paper-mache unicorn, then one should not make a paper-mache anything at all. There was this silence, while the whole Art Camp watched, as the counselors probably struggled with the surreal-ness of it all while frantically trying to find a way to con us into the play. After all, the play, unlike some of our other activities, was actually being performed to our parents, and our parents would probably be very confused when neither Tetradecimal or I appeared.
Eventually, one counselor decided to look for unicorn poems by Shel Silverstein. I shudder to think what would have happened if he hadn't found one. But he did, and it was aptly named "The Unicorn". Unfortunately, it was in a whole other book by Shel Silverstein, "Where the Sidewalk Ends". This almost created an uprising, when the rest of the Art Camp kids, sensing special treatment, also wanted to choose poems out of that book. In retrospect, I'm not sure why the counselors refused. The poems from all of the books weren't particularly connected that I was aware of. I think they just felt they'd hit their "bending over for serious self-respect ass rape-age by kids of people with too much money just so I can pay for my college tuition" quota for the day. Anyway, it was decided that only Tetradecimal and I would get to use the other book (because we asked first, not because the rest of the day would be unspeakably horrible if this wasn't resolved, nope).
Later, of course, we learned that the poem was actually about how unicorns were sucked and refused to get on Noah's Ark when it flooded, so they drowned and now there are no unicorns or joy in the world, but hey, it had UNICORNS in it. So, we made our ugly paper-mache unicorn puppets and gleefully brandished them to the world.
Our parents never sent us to art camp, or any camp, together again.
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