Riot Horse

I love horses. Even though I know city horses are pissed and bored, and in the case of police horses, working, I still want to walk up and pet them and you know, run my fingers through their manes. When I was in second and third grade, I stayed after school for a program called CARE. My brother and I would hang out there for a couple hours until one of our parents picked us up. CARE was managed by this lovely hippie lady who read cool books to us and let us hang out and do whatever. At one point, my friends and I played "Jack the Ripper", which involved one person being Jack and the others wandering around the playground unwittingly until they were killed. They were then led by Jack to the jungle gym dome thing and forced inside, where they had to stay because they were dead and in a strange fog-filled purgatory. We loved this game. The odd thing about this game is that I distinctly remember overhearing a man (there was a man observing us on the playground. This is probably a red flag and he may have a Jack the Ripper type, but we are still alive today) say, "Jesus, nice game." He found our game disturbing. I find the fact that there was an adult man on the playground disturbing.

But anyway, the thing that proves I have always loved horses was that during my time in CARE I perfected an accurate imitation of the gallop on my hands and knees. This was not just running on my hands and knees. This was galloping. This skill was developed through watching a lot of horse movies, acting like a horse on a regular basis, and generally being obsessed with horses from a young age. It was uncanny. It was faster than any other method of running on hands and knees, and we regularly put mats out across the gym floor and had horse races. I always won. Always. Because, the gallop.

But anyway, this afternoon Kyle ran into my office to tell me there were horses outside. And there were. Apparently there's an Occupy thing going on down the way (which explains the giant puppet capitalist pig head thing we saw earlier) and the riot police and their riot horses are out. Look at the riot horse gear. So cute. I had to fight the urge to run out there and pet the horses in their riot gear.

That's all.