Horse Kid
For the better part of summer break, I was a horse kid. Hands for hooves, tipped forward on my toes, neck craned, forearms trampling itchy grass. On the first day of second grade, I galloped into school on all fours, hands slapping across carpet and concrete alike. Whinnying the pledge of allegiance: one neigh under God. Classmates giggled as I trotted to the pencil sharpener or clenched a hall pass in my teeth and raced through the doorway like a dropped starting gate.
At recess, another girl approached with a freshly torn fistful of grass, which I nuzzled from her open palm. Others joined in, one gently brushing my hair, one petting my face, another hoping for a ride. This special attention didn’t last since everyone preferred to be a horse. By midweek, our feral band gained another six or seven members: a clumsy, grass-stained, butts-in-the-sky stampede to mortified parents in the pickup line. Friday came and teachers couldn’t bear it anymore. The school medic called mom out of work to pick me up, yet assured her this four-legged phase would pass.
Saturday morning after breakfast, mom left the kitchen table and returned with a gaudy yellow finger trap I’d selected from a toy chest at the dentist and promptly forgotten. Taking my hands behind my back, she slipped my fingers into each end of the braided cylinder like childish handcuffs. I tried to pull free, but tugging only tightened its grip. She kissed my scalp and sent me away.
Stubbornly, I dropped to my knees, put my chest to the ground, then pushed myself forward with my hind legs, stumbling out of the kitchen. Climbing the stairs to my room felt miserable. I rubbed my chin raw against the steps, groaning and snorting in protest. Cresting the staircase, I collapsed facedown, screaming into musty carpet fibers. When the bristly tingling in my arms subsided, I remembered how to solve the trap, scrunching my fingers together and slipping free.
On two legs, I stomped into the garage and tore open the garbage bin lid. On tiptoes, I crammed the toy as deep as I could into its plastic, pungent darkness. On two legs, I stormed up to my room, slamming the door so hard that my herd of plush ponies tumbled from their shelf. I’d bitten my tongue, so I prodded my mouth and checked: no blood, just my puny human hands, which I stuffed into my pockets out of sight. Still, a metallic tang soured my mouth like an over-champed bit, head yanked this way and hand that, bridle tightening and turning with every tug.
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About the Author
Tim Becker (he, they) is an AuDHD musician, visual artist, and award-winning writing teacher and scholar from Raleigh, NC. For a brief period in the nineties, they were also a dinosaur kid. They hold an MA in English from NC State University. Their work has been featured in Textshop Experiments, And/Both Magazine, Entropy, and Composition Forum. They teach writing at Virginia Tech and live in Blacksburg, VA with their favorite geologist Naomi and their three cats.