Pony camp for the unwilling

Jul 22, 2017 5:38 PM

I was rather at a loss this morning for this column ... it's going to be hot, then it's going to be hotter and it's going to be humid and more humid.

In other words, it's going to be Maryland in the summer. So, what's new?

I found out what's new when I went out into the wilds of Facebook this morning at 6-ish. And there it was, yet another sign of the advent of the "it's-all-about-me-people."

A woman who has been giving riding lessons to small children for a long time just announced this morning that she will not be giving beginner lessons to children next year. She will only be dealing with children who already know how to walk, trot and canter.

It's sad, really, that this has been thrust upon so many folks that it has reached the pony set, too. But it has and this lady called it like it is. She says that she will no longer be a baby sitter for those who are looking to spend money to have their kids summer-baby-sat which is what teaching beginner riders has apparently, in her case, become.

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At least with kids that can already walk, trot and canter you know that there is a real interest in their life and that they understand the milieu of the stable and its environs and enjoy the interaction with the ponies.

I have trouble understanding parents who would thrust an unwilling or uninterested child into the rather necessarily rigid framework of the riding stable where you are dealing with large animals. To a child a pony is a large animal. I no longer understand the financial differences between a "camp" camp and a beginner rider camp but there must be some or those kids wouldn't be at pony camp instead of "camp" camp.

In my day things were very different. Parents understood that the schools would close during the summer and that they would be responsible for their own kids. At that time parents looked upon this as a mixed blessing ... they had us underfoot, of course. But we had been trained well and the words, "For heaven's sake, go read a book!" had not only an air of command but also one of invitation.

It was a different day back then and in the small towns in which a lot of us lived we could be put out of doors and told to come home at 5:30 p.m.

It was safer then to do that in those days.

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When a child managed to whine themselves into a total meltdown there was always the threat of housework or — hideous thought — weeding the garden.

I just realized that as much as we hated weeding the garden I never met one kid who had the audacity to pull vegetables up and claim that they didn't know the difference. For one thing everyone would know it was a flat-out lie because last year they had to pick said veggies and help to prepare them and for another those kids knew that they would be re-planting those veggies post haste and supervised.

Supervised work was never a good thing.

Never.

There seemed to be an unlimited flow of words when a child had messed up badly enough to be "supervised" and none of those words was designed to make you feel particularly good about yourself.

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And that brings us to today when we are all told that we are "OK" as in "you're OK/I'm OK."

We were never supposed to be "OK."

OK was a nether land that floated somewhere in the middle of "lousy" and "really good," and it was not something that any parent wanted their child to aspire to be. You were supposed to dig in and get on with whatever skill set was born into you or, failing that, trained into you.

As far as "participation awards" we never had that feather bed either. You won or you lost. You felt the pang and learned it was a passing thing and if you had the gumption, you improved. I never met a kid that lacked that gumption in some measure. But then their parents had it and they demonstrated it in their lives.

Another thing about parents then was that we were the single most important thing they had to do, they knew it and they made sure we knew it.

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We may not have enjoyed being that thing sometimes but at others it was a great feeling to be part of something and know that you could make a life as soon as you got your feet on the ground and got a running start.

We had a lot to look forward to and a cheering section behind us. I wonder if kids today truly know that feeling.

sports@carrollcountytimes.com