h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think I'd look rather peculiar in the boots and breeches, and don't understand the helmet thing. The idea is to NOT get tossed off the horse.

I probably haven't mentioned that as much of my lineage as we can trace all hailed from Prussia, in the early 1800's. The Dormund, Essen and Dusseldorf area as best we can tell. Tradition has it that my surname predecessors may have left a step or three ahead of the law. You see, they quite liked horses and were renowned for breeding stock. But sometimes had a few more beasts than they had papers for. Once in Canada, the primary earnings (aside from common farming) was in the trade of breeding a particularly large and strong breed of some sort, 100% black. Ideal for stage line teams.

One upshot is that most males in the line can put their ankles together, and still have a small dog leap between their knees. Bowed-legs are NOT an advantage when parading in a military, I can tell you.

More for overhanging branches

I can imagine that could be a problem

Awww c'mon now, what's a ride without a bit of ducking and occassional near-misses?

Unfortunately, my Lucy was far too good at scraping people off on trees

I have been on a couple that tried that. Skin grows back, and horses do learn who is in charge.

Yes, but meanwhile, I didn't much enjoy being concussed and don't wish to repeat the experience.

Maybe it was something I lost, in the years between being a teen-lad and a near-50 something'or'other ... But times, it felt kinda good to be brought back to earth, hard!

I had quite a spectactular dismount the first time I tried to canter.

Obviously there is no You-tube witnessing of said event, or you'd not dare mention it.

This was well before youtube

Let's just say that the horse stopped suddenly, and I learned a lot about inertia

Momentum isn't always our friend, huh? Many a child learned that in my home village, when hand-brakes appeared on bicycles. Each end of the village had hills at about 35 degree inclines. Come down one, and hit the front wheel brake first ...

only do that once...

My grand-Dad came out with quite a lot of 'maxims', none that later proved very original. But always bang on the moment. For that one, he'd say "you never learn from someone else's mistakes, only from your own". When it came to bikes and those hills, at least a dozen kids proved him right.

Maybe that taught them the mistake of not learning from others' mistakes.

The folks that I remember doing a face-slide down the street were all between 12 and 14, and male. My own memories of that age are that, aside from rote-memory learning in school, NOTHING was learned. Everything action was instinct and spur-of-the-moment stuff.

We males of the species really don't have much going for us until atleast the mid-20's, I think, when brain cells and synapses begin firing in some useful fashion.

They eventually do?

I read in a book somewhere that some of us eventually do. So it MUST be true, right?

A work mate and I were just talking that point yesterday. As military lads of the late '70s and early 80's, there were 3 things we did: drink voluminously, seek and hope for girl-company, and work when we had to. Quite a lot of folks, now in their 60's and 70's that I know have not really grown past that. For me, pretty much the minute that a saw the lab results for a diamond-wearing girl, indicating a person-in-the-making, I set that stuff and time behind me and became an adult. No qualms, no regrets, it was just time to grow up.

My mother says she'll grow up when her big brother does, and he's now over 60...

My mother is becoming annoyed, with 4 of 6 offspring now over 50. Numbers do odd things to people. Heck, when my baby stopped being less than half my age, I simply heckled her about it. No big deal.

*notes that current correspondent is well under half his age, probably*

Where did that extraneous 'k' come from? A Germanic(k) thing?