The Neighs Have It

 

Photographer Unknown, 

from the personal collection of Roberta A. Robertson

The recording of the bugle played over the loudspeaker and my eyes flew open. It was morning, I rolled over and looked at my watch. Saturday morning. The summer was almost over, finally!

But first it was breakfast. I was alone again, just me and 40 other girls who had perfected the art of pretending I wasn’t there. And just like every other morning, I watched my eggs get cold while I waited for the morning prayer. This had been confusing at first, my parents were the type of Christians that went to the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service every year, and some years, when they were feeling especially pious, the Easter Sunrise Ceremony too. Still, I got used to the before meal prayers, the Christian songs around the campfire, the bible study, and the Sundays spent in church. I got used to being at summer camp with boys too. Every other camp I had gone to was girls only, but this one, well, it wasn’t as exciting as it seemed, the boys were in a different dorm, sat at a different table for meals, and took part in different camp sports and activities.

Well, the boys and girls were separated for almost all the activities. The only one we co-mingled in was horseback riding. It was the camp’s specialty, and the reason why I had gone here after aging out of my last horseback riding summer camp. Only, the horseback riding might as well have been segregated, because all the boys were automatically placed in the advanced class, and all the girls were automatically placed in the beginning class. So even though I had been taking horseback riding lessons since I was eight, I was stuck walking in slow circles on lazy pony that couldn’t even be bothered to flick the flies off his own haunches with his wispy tail.

Even though my roommate told me to stop being such a big crybaby and chose a different activity if I was so unhappy with horseback riding, I sucked it up, at least I got to be around horses. Now, though, it was almost over. First the camp horse show, and then my parents would take me home. I was warming up my horse in the ring, waiting for the advanced class to finish and the beginning class to begin, when a man in a bolero and cowboy hat ambled over to the gate and motioned for me.

“Young lady, what are you still doing in the warmup ring? Your class is about to start.”

“Oh no, I’m in the beginning class,” I stuttered.

“To hell you are, come with me.”

The look on the riding program leader’s face when I walked into the ring was only bested by the look on his face when I won the blue ribbon because the judges he brought in for the show didn’t get the memo that girls cannot ride better than the boys, actually made the whole crappy summer worthwhile. Okay, not really.