Surprisingly enough, I managed to make it through the next year of my elementary school education without any other major catastrophes (I won’t mention the plethora of faked injuries…since this is a book…not an encyclopedia). Of course, this remarkable streak of good luck was not to last (this would be a fairly short book if it had). The next event of interest was not an actual injury per se, but an incredibly close call instead (still I’m almost positive it’s funny, because whenever I tell people this story, they laugh in that ‘should we be laughing?’ kind of way).
A small amount of background is required for this particular story: You see, my father had instilled in me, at a very young age, a strong work ethic. He did this by bringing me to work with him, as his helper, to earn my allowance. Not exactly the hardest thing in the world since my postal working father had a second job as a sexton at an Anglican church and all I had to do was vacuum and dust to earn my pay. Because of this, however, I had a strong need to earn my own money to buy my own things…so, at the tender age of 12, I got my very first job: Shoveling Shit. Sounds special, don’t it? Through a childhood friend whose father owned a harness race horse, I had found a broken-legged fellow who was looking for a groom to help care for his horses (how he got said broken leg is also a major factor in this story, by the way).
I took to my job with childish enthusiasm, regardless of the fact that everyday after school I would ride my bike to a foul smelling stable and spend 2 hours…shoveling shit. This was all well and good, and could possibly have continued unabated if not for my serious lack of training in dealing with horses. You see, my erstwhile employer didn’t bother to provide me with some of the necessary information when dealing with animals about twice my height and god only knows how many times my weight (I was a small kid)…such as: how to put a horse in it’s stall properly. You wouldn’t think this would be a real big issue, right? Wrong. I began my little career, bringing the horse out, tying it up, shoveling the shit, untying the horse, leading it back into the stall, letting it go and walking out again. Sounds simple enough, don’t it? Of course, this is where my lack of knowledge comes in…it seems that horses don’t like being in their stalls, and if you walk one in head first and let go before you’ve turned it around and are facing the door…well, the animal has this unfortunate tendency to spin around shove you back in the stall and then…run away. Of course, this would be a boring story if a little shove were all I got, eh? Not so lucky was I…said horse (one E.T.) went right down on her front legs and lifted up her back ready, and set to buck and crush in my underdeveloped noggin. Screaming out the useless phrase (since she couldn’t understand English) “E.T.!!!! NOOOOOO!!!” I dove headfirst into a pile of urine soaked straw while her powerful hind legs launched a kick right where I had just been. She then took off through the stalls until someone (much taller and more imposing to a harness horse (very big horses those)) caught her and brought her back, swearing and cursing me for an idiot for letting a horse run wild through the stables.
Again, if this were the entire story, I would have learned my lesson and continued on…but no, that would be too easy. You see, my employer (who it must be said, still hadn’t paid me by the end of my second week of work, using the excuse: When I get paid, you get paid (meaning that I only got paid if his horse won a race…most definitely NOT the way these things are supposed to go legally…but child labor laws didn’t mean much to my boss)) owned not one, but two horses; the other horse bearing the mighty name of ‘Macho Hustler’. He was a big fella, that one…he made E.T. seem small and quiet in comparison. An interesting note about Macho, it seems that he was the cause of my boss’ broken leg. You see – there’s this little sand training ring to exercise the horses on the second floor of the stable…with no gate. The theory being that you release the horse into the ring, he runs around in circles until he’s tired (while the trainer acts as a human gate, waving his arms to make the horse turn each time he heads for the opening) at which point you collect the horse and bring him back to the stall. Good theory, unless the horse is really big…and mean. Macho was one such horse. My boss (big guy, mind you) had been run down at the gate and had his leg snapped in two, by big ol’ Macho. Thinking that what didn’t work for a 200lb man must surely work for a 90lb child, he ordered me to take the horse to the training ring. I probably don’t need to explain what happened next…I’m sure you can all picture in your minds a small boy frantically waving his arms and jumping up and down while an 18 hand high horse gallops towards him, rapidly gaining speed…I’m sure you would also share that boys opinion as the words “Fuck this!” went through his head (he was a foul mouthed little bastard) and he dove into the sand, letting yet another horse loose to charge through the stables.
This was almost the last straw. I say almost, because like most twelve year old boys, I was pretty damn resilient and wasn’t willing to let a little thing like almost being killed twice stop me from earning a paycheck. The operative phrase there, of course, is ‘earning a paycheck’. Yup, that’s right – after three and a half weeks of shit-shoveling and horse-dodging I had still not seen a single red cent. Then came the race…I was all excited thinking that I was finally going to get some green…except that our horse came in second to last…and my boss trotted out the same bullshit excuse about him not getting paid. This was about halfway through the last straw – the true camel-back-breaker though, was when I heard him say to one of his buddies the next day that the race had gone just as planned, and Macho was getting a poor rating while they saved him up for a big race in two months…and how he made a killing betting against the odds. You got it – I had hired myself out to a cheat…and not only a cheat, but a cheap cheat. Had I not been so naïve at the time, I probably could have made a killing myself, blackmailing said employer with the information I had overheard…sadly, I knew nothing of the darker side of life and, angered immensely, I took my revenge in the only way I knew how…I just stopped showing up. That’s right, I taught that bastard: No notice. I only wish I could have seen the look on his face when he realized he was going to have to find someone else to shovel his shit…and when he realized he’d gotten three free weeks of work out of me… … … aw, crap!