Delusions of an eight year old

When I was a kid, my sister and I had a pet barrel. It was made of white plastic and both ends were blue. My sister named it Blue Bell. It was in our dad's shop, and who knows what toxic substance was in it before it became our pet. Blue Bell was a horse, or at least we pretended that she was.

My sister, Jess, was obsessed with horses and really wanted one. She cleared out a corner of the shop/barn and put down wood chips for Blue Bell. Then she dragged this barrel in. She was probably ten years old and 70 pounds, so it took a lot of work. That's where I came in. I was the brute force. When I was eight years old, I was pure muscle. So we lugged this barrel in to a corner of the shop, and my sister would feed it hay, and pretend to brush it, and give it a bucket of water. Talk about delusional.

After a week caring for this barrel, my sister decided it was finally time to train it for a ride. We had ridden it lots in the stall. You sit on top of it and wiggle back and forth and imagine you are in the Kentucky Derby. But after you realized you were going no where fast, that you were still staring at a pile of wood at the other end of the barn, well, it was time to go mobile.

Jess and I had a classic Radio Flyer red wagon, with wheels. The wheels were the essential part, of course. Our gravel driveway was a hill, so we would tote the Radio Flyer to the top, get in, and then zoom down screaming. Jess always drove, steering that wagon handle in the right direction so we wouldn't crash into the blackberry bushes. We still did. Occasionally we would wipe out and be sprawled on the gravel, howling until our mother came out and bandaged our bloody wounds.

My sister had an excellent idea. We would hoist Blue Bell atop the wagon, and then take turns riding. One person would pull while the other would ride our trusty stead. Putting Blue Bell on top of the wagon was the easy part. Jess tried to tie her down with some baling twine, but it was less than secure. Getting on top of Blue Bell was the hard part. She stood about 3.5 feet tall, and we had to drive her by a stump to get on.

Riding Blue Bell was something else. We pretended we were cowgirls in a western, jockeys in the Preakness, or Calapooia Indians in the forest. I got to ride the most because I was littler and easier to pull. My sister would gripe at me every time I tried to tote her around, complaining that I was going the wrong way, or going too slow, or wiping her out on the side of a tree because I didn't turn with enough clearance.

As with all legends of greatness, there comes a time when the hero falls. Quite literally, in fact. Jess and I decided we would take Blue Bell for a race down the driveway. We pulled her up the hill, I mounted, and then Jess got ready to run. She planned to pull me down the hill as fast as she could and let gravity do the rest. The problem was that when this actually happened, the wagon started going too fast and bit her in the heels. Her own barrel horse was about to run her over, so she let go of the handle and dove into the bushes while I went sailing past. There I was, eight years old, 65 pounds, hugging a barrel that was loosely strapped to a rogue Radio Flyer wagon. We hit a pot hole, Blue Bell dislodged, and I went flying into the gravel.

One hippopotamus, I'm catching air. Two hippopotamus, my hands come out in front of me. Three hippopotamus, my chin eats gravel. I didn't breathe for about five seconds after that, and then came a big WAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Jess had to carry me into the house for emergency medical care and then my mother banned us from ever riding Blue Bell again.