Blog
Context is Everything
I don’t think much about riding attire. Sure, breeches are a bit goofy, and helmets, however practical, are never going to be a popular fashion statement… but who cares? The only time we wear this stuff is when we’re around other horse people, who are used to goofy.
Except, of course, for that one show when I was, oh, maybe sixteen, and my trainer asked me to run to the store and grab some stuff.
I went to the store.
I picked up the stuff.
I handed it to the cashier, who looked at my leather boots with the spurs still on and the crop sticking out of one of them, my breeches, my jacket with the gloves probably hanging out of the pockets, my still-buttoned ratcatcher, and, oh yes, my hair up in my helmet all hunterishly.
See, I never took my helmet off until the end of the day, because I wasn’t very good at putting my hair up in the first place. It was better to leave it in than tempt fate and not be able to get it up in time again. Who knows why my jacket and spurs were still on. The crop was in my boot because that was a handy place for it, and, honestly, tall boots are so awful to drive in anyway I never realize it was there.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst of it was the way the cashier kept glancing back and forth between my outfit and the stuff I’d handed her:
Witch hazel.
Cotton balls.
Peppermints.
Baby oil.
Vasoline.
This is a perfectly reasonable shopping list, in the right context. Unfortunately, dressed in full show gear in the middle of Big Box Store is not it.
« Early Resolutions Registries Revisited, Part I »
Comments
So, is the problem that non-horse people have too little or too much imagination?
Somehow, walking around my small town in breeches and tall boots never came across as terribly odd compared to the Amish who lived there. I guess since I practically grew up in the things, I didn’t much care anyway. I did however, have a road construction worker come up to me in my driveway once (I had just gotten home and say, “What you got on, girl?”
Reminds me of a conversation up at the barn a few weeks ago. A fellow boarder had discovered that Monostat did a very good job of handling that fungus that horses sometimes get on their skin and coat. When her horse developed a fungus on his legs, she said the cashier gave her a funny look when she went into the grocery store and only bought 4 boxes of monostat and a bag of carrots.
I can just see the looks! Too funny….....you are right about context! LOL
On Jan 4, 2008, Mrs Mom said:
HA~ Sounds about like the looks my husband and I get after a rather odiferous day trimming and have a pathology or two to deal with….
Ah well- must be the horse person’s lot in life to make folks WONDER!