Curses are a funny thing.
Most of us don’t think they exist.
But every once in awhile there are a string of events that make you really question whether it could be real.
My very first automobile was a small black pick up truck. It was involved in over a dozen accidents.
Now before you start saying, “look in the mirror”, let me describe some of these.
There was a 200 year old tree in front of my house. It was huge and sturdy and not going anywhere. One afternoon a summer thunderstorm came through and while I was standing on the porch watching the storm, lightning hit the tree.
The tree fell on my truck.
That was the first accident.
The second, someone turned a horse trailer around in my driveway when I wasn’t home, and they raked the side of my truck bumper to bumper with the back end of their trailer.
The third I was parked outside a shopping center and when I came back someone had hit my truck while I was in the store.
The fourth, there was a tornado that passed near my house. It dumped golf ball sized hail in the yard which dented the truck and broke all the windows. (I still have some of those hail pieces in my freezer!)
Hopefully you get the point. This truck was in a lot of accidents. And not once was anyone driving it at the time. Eventually the insurance company refused to pay for any more repairs. When I discussed this with them, the agent said, “Look. I can’t explain this but every once in awhile we have a vehicle like this that just keeps getting into accidents. In my experience if you get rid of it, it stops happening. SELL THAT TRUCK.”
I did. And my next truck was never in any kind of accident.
So maybe something can be cursed?
My horse had been in training. Again. We seemed to muddle along for a few months until things would completely fall apart and then someone would convince me to send him to a trainer for awhile. He was just SO fancy, and SO nice, and everyone seemed to love this horse, everyone except for me that is.
He was winning at Prelim with the trainer. All day long. His show record was almost perfect and we were coming to the time that we had decided I would start riding him again.
I took a couple of lessons on him and headed off to a schooling show. We decided to start at 2’9″ just in case.
That turned out to be a fortuitous decision because we cantered around to the first jump and he stopped and layed down all over it, taking down all the poles and the standards.
The only thing worse than stopping at a jump in stadium is destroying it so badly that a team of engineers have to be summoned to reconstruct it.
While you wait…..
In front of everyone…..
To try and jump it again……
I had a very wise coach once who said, “No matter what. If he lays all over the thing make sure when it’s over that you have gone BETWEEN the flags so that you don’t have to jump it again.”
Wiser words have never been said.
As my Prelim rockstar was slamming on the brakes with me at Beginner Novice I remembered another time something like this had happened.
And that’s when I realized he was wearing the same damn bridle.
When Bad Eventer decided to start eventing again, after many, MANY years away from the sport I had a lot riding on my “first recognized event” back.
I had something to prove. I had spent a lot of money to buy a top notch horse. I had driven 8 hours to get to the event. The last time I had evented a decade earlier hadn’t gone well. I had a coach tell me I’d never be any good and I was out to prove her wrong.
Here’s how that went……..
The warm up was a tiny configuration less than 20 meters wide. There were 2 warm up fences, both against the rail so you couldn’t circle around them. One was an oxer. My steed took serious issue with the oxer and during our first attempt to go over it, not only did she stop and smash the entire jump to the ground, she broke it.
It was so mangled that it couldn’t be rebuilt.
While someone went to find more jump cups and another standard my time to go came up.
I had to do my stadium round having never made it over the warm up fence.
My coach said, “Gallop. Gallop as hard as you can at the first jump. You have to want it!”
I wanted it all right.
So I followed directions, and rather predictably, my steed did the most impressive slide stop up to, into and through the first jump. And this time I skied right off her ears to the other side of the jump while yelling, ” I waaaaaant it!”
I’m not superstitious.
At all.
But when I got home from the show, after realizing 2 horses had laid all over jumps years apart in the same bridle it went straight into the trash.
I do know a couple of people who say they have Lucky Whips. Whips that they’ve never had a stop while carrying.
I used to think mine was like that……
but its “clear record” was demolished a long time ago.
The funniest “stop” ever.
Recently I was at a show and someone who couldn’t find their whip, but desperately needed one asked to borrow mine. She’d had several stops in her first round and as I handed her my whip I said, “You know it’s never had a stop.”
Her trainer had a small heart attack when I said that and sent her into the ring with my “magical whip”. Her young horse jumped around that time and got it done. It was fantastic and after a couple clean rounds with my “lucky whip” everyone started calling it “The Spirit Stick.”
We won’t tell her it’s clean record wasn’t really true.And I didn’t actually toss the ‘cursed’ bridle. Though I did dismantle it and put different pieces on different headstalls, just in case.
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Superstition is a funny thing, the mind is the strangest tool at our disposal. So long as i don't attach a value to a thing it's fine as soon as I start to think something good about my abilities or that I've finally cracked something the wheels inevitably fall off our brains everything falls apart. My brain is a daemon!
lol @ "spirit stick" haha! i'm not much for superstitions, per se… but i definitely like to stick to my routines