You know, some days the words write themselves.  Something either funny or earth-shattering transpires and just begs to be conveyed.  Other days, not so much. 

I had a busy day preparing to go to a fun show way up north last night.  For the equine uninitiated, that’s a horse show with just speed events like barrels, poles, flag race, keyhole, relays, etc.  I’m telling you, they make up some awesome games. More on that later.

But back to writing itself, the story I want to tell, I don’t really want to tell. It’s disturbing and saddening and maddening.  It involves a little boy there at the fun show and an accident.  So, let me just tell you, that Mrs. Control Freak-o Suave over here just about lost her sh#t when that little boy came off his untrained horse and slammed head and neck long into the short wall of the bull pen area at the front of the arena.

As if the accident weren’t enough, his mother pulled his limp body up off the dirt right away.  Did I say that his head SLAMMED into the wall—Yes, Thank God, he was wearing a helmet because it made a deafening sound that echoed through the hollows of that giant aluminum arena and sent everybody into an agitated state—even the horses started acting weird.

So she yanks him up and he starts to move. But it took a minute or two.  She took him outside and started talking to him and asking him to wiggle his toes, etc.  She sat with him on her lap for a while really close.  But this was the disturbing part:  Her boyfriend.  He gave me the creeps.  He was inappropriately close to her at all times.

He had scars all over his face as if from numerous drunken brawls. He refused to look me in the eye.  He and the mother of this boy were GRINDING on each other in the arena of a 4H club not 10 minutes after they ascertained that the little boy was going to be okay.  And when I say okay, I mean, she didn’t have a portable MRI to look at his neck, which was at about a 45 degree when his head slammed into the wall.  It wasn’t his head I was worried about. It was his sweet little tiny 10-year old neck.  And his heart.

A short time later, the little boy walks up to the mom/boyfriend conglomeration (they were literally stuck together, he was behind her holding her around her waist, she was in front holding onto his front pockets).  So gross.  This was a 4H event. Kids everywhere. They are not married. He is not the father of that child.  So anyway, the little boy was trying to tickle the guy, trying to lean up against his mother, trying desperately to get their attention.  And NOTHING. I mean NOTHING.  I was the only adult that was looking after him, watching him, talking to him, trying to engage him in conversation.  I was thinking that sometimes head and neck injuries don’t present themselves until well after a scary even like that.   But those two addictive, selfish…and then I stopped myself.

I sit in Alanon meetings and hear stories like this little boy’s every time I go. ‘My mother was taken with any dumbass drunk’. ‘My father kept marrying abusive alcoholics.’  I mean there are variations but the theme is the same.  People who are not in recovery from their addictive upbringings perpetuate the insanity.  What will that little boy think of love, of men, of his mother, of horses, of bystanders?  Of appropriate care when he is injured? What will he do next to get his mother’s attention?  Perish the thought.

Well, MY Alanon tells me that he has a God of his own, the mother does, too. The creepy-ass, nasty, gnarled-up boyfriend who--- I don’t even want to go there--- just had the words parasitic, opportunistic, sociopath tattooed on his soul which were in turn reflected in his over all just jackassness—has a God, too. But please! Grinding at a kids’ 4H event.  No wonder the kid slammed his head into the wall!  He was trying to put a stop to a completely intolerable set of circumstances.

I have an easier time letting go of stuff like this when it’s fully formed adults involved.  I have less of an easy time letting go when this kind of openly expressed disease process involves the innocent.

Then I thought, this is way outside my purview. Like it or not.  But how can I take this into my own life? How can I honor that little man? By the way, he got back up on that horse and trotted the pattern on a lead line.  Well, I can start with myself and my own kids, I guess. I can start by being more appropriate and attentive around kids in general. I can start with me.  And then I can pray for him and all of that shit I saw last night that made my blood boil. Because if it makes MY blood boil, I must have a pot of my own on the stove.