Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Eternal youth or arrested development?

I admit I'm a little obsessed with tracking activity on my blog. It's cool to see links to my blog from a horse chat site in the Netherlands, or, say, a bulletin board about mules and donkeys. But while I'm grateful for any interest, it was a surprise this morning to find a slew of hits from Horseland.com. Why? Take a gander at the Web site:


I have a following among the "My Pretty Pony" set? How? Who? Unfortunately I can't see the links to know what article is of interest. Oh, wait. I bet I can guess...

What's your favorite horse color?
Earlier this year I did a blog entry on the brindle warmblood, Natal. My research for the article included several lengthy phone conversations with Natal's owner in Kentucky, who is also a horsewoman and breeder of some repute. At the time, Natal was competing in Florida with a young rider, Renick Townsend. I wasn't about to contact a kid over the Internet, but I did correspond with the girl's mom (Jill) in Florida. Jill was very open and pleasant in our long email exchange, and in her concluding email, she remarked...

"I'm so glad to have met you. You're a very interesting young person!"
[emphasis mine]


Embarrassment
No, I'm not a precocious youngster. Should I tell her I'm probably a dozen years older than her? No sirreee. I'd rather leave Jill with a favorable impression of me as an overachieving teen than weirded out to hear I'm a 46 year old stuck in the horsey-ga-ga stage.

Here's an analogy. Woody Allen wrote a story called Remembering Needleman about an absent-minded professor who delivers a lecture to his scholarly peers. After the lecture he discovers that he neglected to remove the coathanger from his suit coat before putting it on. "Good," he says. "Let those who have taken issue with my theories think at least that I have broad shoulders."

Needleman didn't reveal he was wearing a coathanger, so I'm not volunteering my advanced age. Okay, maybe it's not the best analogy. But I love that line in Needleman and it's a good excuse to share a laugh.

God help me if someone leaves a comment that I "write well for a teen"...


11 comments:

  1. Heh..I'm not sure if I should admit I play horseland or not. As well as one of my older guy friends who takes pride in having one of the highest pointed lines of SEA's on the game.

    *ducks back under geek rock now*

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  2. This is hilarious!

    I love studying how people found The Barb Wire. Some of my favorites are:

    "Why do flamingos turn pink?,"
    "Barbey Girls Butt," and
    "Pink flamingo ribbon tote bag."

    Hahaha! I also get all kinds of things like:

    "barb wire design saddle,"
    "barb wire sculpture," and
    "barbed wire bit."

    That last one scares me!

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  3. Rattitude, fess up now -- is it fun? Do I dare confess I was tempted to join?

    I'd tell you what stopped me but it's the subject of my next blog entry :-)

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  4. I just found you today via EC. So happy to find a blog about horses I've given you some awards. See them on my blog.

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  5. You are only as old as you act. Keep up with the youthful thinking. :)

    ê¿ê

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  6. I admit to having a Howrse.com account. Virtual horses are the only ones I can afford at the moment!

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  7. I have to say, I too once played that game HorseLand. It has changed a lot since I did, and now is dominated by the pink fluffy pony loving youngins.

    It did have an appeal to it and the community was vast and at the same time "small." It was quite interesting and was fun for more reasons than just playing with sim horses.

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  8. I'll have to admit that I too played Horseland once upon a time (like 10 years ago). It was good back in the day. I too "bred" so very nice SEAs and SSAs... had some incredible lines. Then I forgot about the game (real life, ya know) and all my "horses" died. Still have that account and it's still "active" - it's a lovely four digit number too!

    Oh, and I'm now addicted to Howrse, thanks to CoTH. It's a great game and only takes me about 15 minutes to "play" each day.

    I guess I'm a geek :-)

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  9. ETA: I can't spell today... it's Friday!

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  10. Uhh.... I'm sorry to say that might have been me! I put Behind the Bit's link under my list of fav blogs. ^^
    I've quit now (it's very degrading to play it nowadays) and I still frequent Howrse... but yeah, that was probably me. xD
    Player 4595035.

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  11. Kaye, believe me, I'll take it where I can get it. Thanks for thinking of me! I collect the horse books of my childhood (hey, another blog idea) and read them all the time. We all have our amusements :-)

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