Pony Rides

Spent the morning outside corralling twenty-eight preschoolers while they were having their photos taken on a pony. This once-a-year event requires standing in the grass slapping mosquitoes, making sure the kids don't run into the parking lot, making sure they hold onto their name card and don't cut in line, keeping them from touching and pushing everyone around them, all the while hearing them chant:

Inky Binky Bonky
Daddy had a donkey.
The donkey died.
Daddy cried.
Inky Binky Bonky.

That's the favorite recess rhyme this week, but it seemed rather dismal next to the long-suffering photographer's ponies.

I'm sure the photographer and his wife thought it would be a fun business when they started taking Wild West kiddie photos years ago. Imagine how many times in a quarter century you could put a child on the pony, put the bandanna, vest, chaps, and hat on the child, get the child to look photogenic, take off the costume, and transfer the child to another pony for a three minute ride.

A quarter century ago I became a parent. Thank heaven the job of parenting has much more variety and a lot more laughing over the long run. On any given day it can seem a lot like pony ride photography though:

Change the diaper
Put on snowsuit
Buckle in carseat
Sing "Old McDonald Had a Farm" while driving
Get out of carseat
Take off snowsuit
Change the diaper
EIEIO!

I was already having pony ride flashbacks when I opened my morning newspaper to read about the Texas State Fair is opening with a new sixty-five-foot high gondola Texas SkyWay ride. Pony rides and state fair gondola tragedies are forever linked in my mind.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder