Flash Friday 3-14-14 Wishes Are Horses a flash essay in Flash Friday
- March 14, 2014, 6:09 a.m.
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- Public
"Wishes are horses."
I saw this one movie on network TV years ago when there were still censors. Every other word was motherfucker and it had to be edited with a voiceover to mommyjumper. It went from a gritty street crime drama to a bunch of tough guys sounding like they were organizing a day care game. That’s sort of how I thought of most of the kid stories when I was kid; this has been sanitized for my protection.
There was one phrase and one story, though, that weren’t sanitized. The story of the little Spartan boy, you know this one? Kid is playing in the woods, finds a bear cub, he gets called back to formation, and he stands there stoically not moving as the drill master lectures about some such shit, until he falls over. The bear cub had eaten his guts out. I’m sure the point of the story had something to do with stoicism, but I always took it as “Just shut up and let the cub eat you.”
The phrase was; if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Didn’t translate well into my modern life. I’ve never met anyone begging to ride a horse. I met a few who would eat a horse. There are cars and trains and boats and planes and you can book passage on most with an offer of labor or keeping someone awake. I mean I hitch hiked a lot, I suppose it was sort of like begging for a ride, but, you know, if a driver said “Now beg” I’d flip him the bird and not take the ride.
Wishes are horses; archaic, arcane, they need to be brushed and stabled, shod and fed and they aren’t allowed on most streets. Horses, however, are still sort of like dogs; they have a symbiotic relationship with humans. Archaic perhaps, shunted off to either the rich or the nostalgic or both. Do kids wish on stars still? On dandelion seeds? Birthday cakes? Or is there a wish game on Wii or x-box or --- shit, I sound like a geezer now. Still, it’s not a completely outrageous point.
Hell, the school of thought on childhood psychology when I was a kid was that the TV would rob us of creativity; they weren’t completely wrong. A generation doesn’t get a name until it’s too late to do anything about it.
Deleted user ⋅ March 23, 2014
:-)