EQUUS CABALLUS ABUSE

Confession is good for the soul, right?

It was one of the few things I loved about Catholicism when I was growing up. I wasn't raised Catholic, but my best friend in elementary school was, and since my dad taught in parochial schools for years, there was some spiritual influence even with my strong atheist childhood.

And going into a quiet little private closet, acknowledging all of your wrong-doing from the past week to an anonymous unseen father figure, and being cleansed of everything by reciting a couple of Hail Marys and O My Fathers... pretty sweet.

But since I'm Mormon, we don't do priests (well, we do, but ours are the 16-19 year olds who are trying to remain virgins), we don't have small dark cubicles, and we only do confession for like serious mistakes like extra-martial affairs, murdering someone or being addicted to Diet Mt. Dew.

So most of the time when you do something wrong, it's just between God, you, and your conscience.

On to the abuse of my horse.

Najale, although chronologically eight years old, is in his heart always a flashy young stud who loves kicking up his heels, dancing and prancing and showing off at every opportunity. He is a pretty boy, and man, does he know it.

Tonight, on our regular evening stroll (which alternates between rooting for grass among the yucca trees, freaking out at flocks of small butterflies, and trying to bolt across every open space possible), I felt in the mood to pretend, at least, to do some actual training instead of my normal indulgent momma attitude towards the spoiled Italian/Greek heir.

So when Najale went into one of his bucking, rearing and ain't-I-just-the-cutest-damn-thing-you've-ever-seen routines, I got MEAN - snapped his lead rope and made him back up for about half a mile while SCREAMING at him.

He was reduced to a quivering mass of jelly.

Well, not really, but he wasn't showing off at all by the time we got finished.

Unfortunately, the metal on his halter rubbed his poor face OPEN on both sides of his face.

Should I be preparing my defense to the SPCA?

Will any of you on in the Internet be willing to testify on my behalf?

Please?

YES, A GIFT CARD FOR STAPLES, PLEASE

So many things in our lives are completely out of our control.

I cannot change the weather - although I can live where the weather is almost perfect. I have no influence on the state of the economy - although I do my best to financially support my local Target. And I cannot control the chronically depressed state of several individuals in my immediate family - I just try to keep their medications current and prescriptions active.

Living some twenty years as an military spouse, I have learned to accept multiple (and sometimes complete surprise) moves - assignments in which my husband could not let me know anything about until years later (including calls in mid-day to say, "Honey, I'll be gone for a little while" and then nothing else for a week) - and even once when he brought his "wife" home around midnight when they were working late enough on a mission (to which I replied, "so you DO know who you are sleeping with the rest of the night, right!?")

We even got to live ten years in the state of Maryland - which, by my limited definition, was hell.

So maybe I became just slightly MORE than a little compulsive about the small number of things which I could control.

I became (and have remained) adamant about certain brand foods, even through the period of lower-enlisted poverty - Kraft Macaroni and Cheese - Ben and Jerry Ice Cream (when available) - Simple Green (back when you had to hunt for it) - Dove soap (long before the dippy "2/3 lotion! Be proud of your self!" campaign began).

And I believe my clinical obsession with office supplies developed along these same lines.

My third job (after becoming a mother) was with a non-profit health organization - and I was the one in charge of ordering office supplies for THE ENTIRE STATE. Well, for that particular non-profit organization. And for the 47th smallest state in the United States. Which is actually only 240 square miles larger than the county I live in right now.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't that big a deal.

But it started this fixation on ANYthing that is sold in office supply place - folders, paper clips, markers, Pendaflex, desk organizers, bulletin boards, white boards, memo pads, three-ring binders, spiral binders, stapler removers, calendars.

Except pencils.

I hate pencils - I mean I HATE them. I must have repressed some memory of being abused by a No. 2 Ticonderoga sometime in my childhood and just have not discovered the correct therapy to overcome it.

However, I am now establishing SPAWM (Society for Prevention of Abuse by Writing Mechanisms) as a non-profit mental health resource for all pencil-abused individuals who need assistance in their tragic plight.

So now I am, once again, IN CHARGE OF ORDERING OFFICE SUPPLIES.

I am so happy.

HAPPY AND CHEERFUL AND GAY

My father was a musician.

Named Bruce.

So perhaps it is evident that I would be raised without an abundance of homophobic tendencies.

Or was it simply innocence, naivety, or sheer blindness on my part - because it never ever occurred to me that certain people might be gay?

We had a neighbor to the west of our house, a Mr. Porter.

He taught high school Spanish somewhere in southeast Los Angeles. He kept his yard very tidy, was never upset when a ball batted or thrown or kicked from our backyard ended up in his. We could use his driveway to practice our skate-boarder or roller-skating techniques (mainly how fast you could speed down the sloping concrete and still make the 90 degree turn at the bottom onto the sidewalk) with nary a complaint.

And it wasn't until years later, when my own dad mentioned the regular flow of young single Hispanic males in and out of Mr. Porter's home that it even occurred to me that he might be a homosexual.

Frank was a salesman in Michigan at a music store where my dad taught.

He had beautiful flowing black hair (I have always had a thing for men with long hair), the perfect beard, and Frank could talk to anyone who passed the store entrance with just a fleeting thought of purchasing a piano or organ into walking out with a delivery contract for a full-size grand or a theatre-size Lowry.

It was only when he died of AIDS in 1981 that I realized he probably was gay (this was back when AIDS was still very much only a homosexual disease).

I had a supervisor at a job in Maryland, Toni, who had underwent a radical double mastectomy in her early thirties. She and Beth, another supervisor, bought a house together while I was at that job, and once again, it never registered that they might be a 'couple' that way.

Why do I mention all of this?

Because it doesn't matter if someone eats buttered popcorn with sugar, sitting on their own couch, watching their DVD of "Pride and Prejudice" with two panting dogs for company.

It isn't important if a person will sleep with only 400+ thread count cotton sheets on their bed, memory-foam pillows, and Shabby Chic comforters.

If you like to wear black ankle socks with your white tennis shoes, you might not be photographed in Vanity Fair (is the magazine still around? anyone know?), but why should you be censored in general public in any manner?

Should laws be proposed to keep you from wearing black ankle socks? Even in the privacy of your own home?

I become more annoyed than is healthy with people who get frantic about gay marriage slash relationships slash eligibility for health insurance coverage under their partner's employment.

Number one - since it seems like the great majority of these anxious individuals call themselves "Christians," is it just a convenient lapse of memory that the whole "not judging others" bit is forgotten? When were they called to be judges and juries of private lives?

And number two - why the hell aren't they more frightened or terrified of all the child molesters? Sexual predators? Abusive spouses?

Talk about a threat to the basic family unit - that previous paragraph list scares me, at least, a lot more than the gay couple that lives at the end of the road, peacefully, happily, and can always be counted on to bring the largest salad to the community pot-luck dinners.

Thanks. I just needed to vent.