Goodbye Ponies

And now, here is my very sentimental purging post. Does anyone else ever get this way? There is the satisfaction of purging, but.... do I have to get rid of THAT?? I mean, I don't use it, don't ever even look at it, but....ITS A VERY IMPORTANT PART OF MY CHILDHOOD!!!

WHHAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

(tissues please)

Its ok, really, I'll be okay. It is kind of sentimental...but I'm really not that sentimental of a person. Really, I'm not. Really.

And what I have to show you here is, well...probably slightly weird. Okay, its probably really weird. But it is part of my childhood, nonetheless. Actually, its like, all of my childhood.

While I was working on all my fantabulous cleaning/organizing/purging a couple weeks ago, I saved a certain box for last. I knew it was there, but I avoided it, because I knew in my heart that I needed to throw the whole box out. It was taking up space. It was useless. It stunk (literally). So finally, I dug it out, opened it up, and began to say goodbye.

But not without taking pictures first, of course. See, so now I can still look at it and remember it all! Aren't I smart?

Here it all is:

(grab your tissues)

Snif, snif. Lets all cry together, shall we?

Oh wait, you don't know what all that is? Its my collection of every single piece of printed material I ever came across that had a horse on it!!

And when I say every single piece, I mean every single piece.

I don't remember when it started. I do know that at one point of my life (very, very long ago) my dad was worried about me because I had no interests. I didn't do anything. I probably wasn't showing much potential for life. I'm serious, he actually expressed these concerns to my mom. I didn't like dolls or playing house or anything that normal little girls like.

Then it hit, and at some point I'm sure my dad wished he could take his words back. "It" being my extreme love for horses. Clearly, I was obsessed.

See these? They are magazine pictures that I cut out and then covered with packaging tape to "laminate" them so I could hang them up. But of course, I couldn't be like most girls who paper their bedroom walls with these pictures. No, I had to hang mine up on our upright freezer in the garage. (Yes, I was raised a hick, why do you ask?)

I blame that part on my mother, because she insisted my sister and I have a pink bedroom, and who wants to contaminate lovely packaging-taped horse pictures by putting them in a pink room?

Heres a paint by number and some magazine advertisements. I saved everything, I tell ya.

And yes, like any 13-year-old weird teenager does, I had a club. We actually were pretty cool for about 3 months. We got together and did fun things. Like put horse appliques on shirts so we could be matching. We all had secret "horse" names, and membership cards. We sat around and wrote letters to local riding stables asking them to please consider letting us come take lessons. (We never actually mailed them.) My mom even wrote us this song:

I'm a happy horseshoe member

Even though I have no horse

I'm a happy horseshoe rider

In my dreams

On my shirt I wear our motto

Horse stuff I have a lot, Oh

I'm a happy horseshoe member

Yes-siree!

See? We were cute.

Here we have some magazine pages of things like clothing, accessories, address labels, room decor, etc. All with horses on it. My favorite was always this shirt that had all kinds of horse gear on it, and it said, "A very tack-y shirt." Ha ha! (Get it? Tack is what they call the saddle and bridle and all that stuff. You do get it, right?)

And I can't help that Budweiser used stunningly gorgeous horses in their advertisements!

Then there is my wish book:
Full of, oh no, not pictures of horses! Pictures of horse stuff.
For real, can you see me wearing that dress? Yikes!

And last but not least, here is the pile of horse supply magazines. The picture really doesn't do it justice, it was a huge stack. I think my favorite one was "Back In The Saddle." I was like a kid in a candy store looking through pages and pages of different kinds of stirrups, let me tell you.

What I did not get a picture of is the pile of things I kept. I did keep my book from the time my grandparents took me to see the Lippizaner Stallions. (If you look in the picture below, you can see part of that book on the right.)

I had to keep that, they were actually legit. I still remember that incredible show! I also kept my 12 "Horse Illustrated" magazines, because those are actually real magazines with neat articles about horses and horsemanship, and they actually cost money, unlike all those free tack magazines I told you about before.

Well, now you know what a weird, hick teenager I was. And while this stuff was fun to look through and remember how obsessed I was, it was taking up space and it was pretty useless and for pete's sake, it still smelled like our cat-infested barn in Maine. Gross. So really, I'm quite proud with myself for taking the plunge and letting go.

(Where'd I put those tissues...)

Can someone please reassure me that you had a weird obsession growing up as well? Please tell me I'm not the only one!