The man behind the counter looked disgruntled even before I stepped up to the counter with my packages.
At 10 AM on a Thursday, there was almost no one in the post office and it was too early for his day to have already gone bad. Apparently he didn’t like the looks of me, though, because he didn’t bother to say hello as I approached with my six packages.
“These are all books,” I announced. I handed over the first package. “Could you please check to see how much this is by media mail?”
He weighed it. “A dollar forty-two,” he said. “Is this a book?”
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In fifth grade, I wanted to be a horse.
I had a book with photographs of horses that I kept on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in our family room, and frequently I pulled the book out to study. I spent my free time rapturously drawing pictures of the horses from the book, culminating in a glorious day when I discovered the trick to drawing a more realistic horse was to put the leg muscles in.
As I had never been on a horse, I harbored no fantasies of becoming a jockey or circus performer. Clearly, becoming a horse was a more attainable goal. As I grew up and realized the truth, I put most of my horse dreams aside. But deep inside, I still remembered the thrill of looking at the horse pictures and my firm conviction that horses and I were meant to be together.
It wasn�t until the summer that cousin Jessica came to visit that I finally got on a horse. During her visit the previous year, I�d taken her to the Museum of Science (where she fell asleep during the IMAX movie) and then to the Planetarium show (where she fell asleep again, amidst screaming schoolchildren). This year I wanted an activity that she couldn�t possibly sleep through, and I picked horseback riding.
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