That Time at Girl Scout Camp When a Horse Tried to Kill Me

I spent a few of my childhood summers at a Girl Scout camp called Camp El-O-Win. They had a variety of activities, including a brief foray into horseback riding. This should have been one of the more interesting parts of the camping experience, considering it was up against 'bracelet making' and 'not getting poison oak'. The only other thing to really look forward to was the one shower you got towards the end of the week.

blissfully unaware of the dangers looming ahead

It was my first time riding a horse (unless you count carnival pony rides or this adorable photograph), so the counselors picked one out for me that would be good for beginners. I ended up with 'Molly', a big brown clunky thing that I assumed would be docile. Gentle. Nice. You know, "good for beginners".

So, that was wrong. This horse was an asshole. I had no idea how to control a horse, but that probably wouldn't have mattered. It completely ignored me, started galloping at random intervals and, about 20 minutes into the trail, stopped altogether and sat down on the ground.

I immediately leapt off the horse. It proceeded to flip over onto its back and roll around in the dirt, kicking its legs in the air while I watched, horrified. One of the counselors ran over and grabbed me, praising me for "knowing" what is, I guess, the correct procedure for not getting crushed to death by a horse.

I still don't know what prompted me to jump off so quickly. It's not like they gave us a class on what to do when your horse decides, "Naw, sick of this walking shit. Imma roll around for awhile." I guess it was instinct; possibly the gut knowledge that this horse was a dick and would totally try to kill me if it got the chance.

never again

I haven't gotten on a horse since.

5 Excellent Game Boy Games from My Youth

Pretty much everyone knows I've been a Pokémon addict master since I was 13, but did you know that I was passionate about a number of other games before Pokémon? Like most kids in the late 80s/early 90s, I really, really wanted to play Nintendo. Most of my friends had either an NES or SNES (or both), and my siblings and I wanted one, too. For a variety of reasons (cost/distracting from schoolwork/we only had one television), my parents refused to get one for us.

I'm pretty sure I whined about this almost daily, and the eventual compromise was to get my sister and I each a Game Boy and one game for Christmas. I was so happy. Finally, I could play video games of my own. Not only that, but it was a one-player system, meaning I would never have to wait for one of my jerk friends to finally relinquish the controller so I could have a freaking round at Mario.* Just about every childhood memory I have revolves around playing that Game Boy: Saturday afternoons, visits to relatives, summers spent helping my dad at his shop, or my mom at the school library were all accompanied by that big, grey brick. I'm pretty sure I even snuck it into church a few times.

*The majority of my experiences with video games up until that point had been at friend's houses, where I was usually resigned to maybe 5 minutes of play time for every three hours of watching them play. When I did get to play, of course I would die quickly because I had no experience with the game, meaning my turn would be over and I'd have to wait another three hours.

For our first games, my sister picked Jurassic Park, which is just...just terrible. (Check out this playthrough video. It is 6 minutes of literally nothing happening. I've been distrustful of film tie-up games ever since.) I wanted to go for something cuter, of course, so I picked...

My Sticker Album

I received this sticker album for my birthday when I was maybe 5 or 6. It is easily one of the best gifts I've ever received, despite being an obvious dollar store knock-off. (The fake Woody Woodpecker and Holly Hobbie images are a dead giveaway.)

If you aren't familiar with sticker albums, they are books that have sheets of glossy paper, sometimes printed with some kind of theme, that you can stick stickers to. The idea is that the glossiness of the paper will make the stickers removable (and thus reusable), but that doesn't usually pan out. They may also have pockets for holding unstuck stickers.

My family was never very rich, and the budget for buying me stickers was basically nonexistent. Despite this, I quickly became very obsessed with collecting as many stickers as possible. If I recall correctly, this book also came with a smattering of random stickers (or it's entirely possible the person who gave it to me also gave me a few stickers to start off my collection. I can't really remember; I was 6), but the bulk of my stash came in the form of $1 sticker sheets filled with hilarious puns from the Scholastic Book Fair, the dentist (some kid's dentists had treasure boxes, ours had rolls of big, round stickers), and, as you will see very soon, food packages.

Read on for scans of the entire Sticker Album! Click on any of the pages to enlarge them in a new window.