The Pony's Influence Reaches Hillmomba-Wide

The Pony has been back home since graduation three months ago. Farmer H and I have semi-adjusted to his presence. The Mansion must be perpetually on edge, awaiting the next mutilation. The Pony, you see, rarely leaves. He also holes up in his room about 21 hours a day.

Yes, it is difficult to lure The Pony out of his room. It's like trying to entice a porcupine out of its lair to be eaten, if you're a contestant on Alone on the History Channel. Like Joe Dirt using a spatula trying to pry free the dangly-organs of his girlfriend Brandy's dog Charlie that froze to the porch when he sat down. Like trying to pick a walnut out of its cracked shell after picking up the green-husked version that has fallen from the tree beside your driveway, running over it for a week with your SUV, prying off the loosened green part while staining your hands black, drying the woody walnut in the sun for a week, then squeezing it with a metal nutcracker, and trying to stab it with a pointy-ended tool to drag it out for fudge-making.

The Pony really is a homebody. Or a Mansionbody.

Anyhoo... on Friday, The Pony agreed to ride with me to pick up some Little Caesar's Pizza for our lupper. I'd like to think it was the promise of my company that got him out, but I'm pretty sure it was the pizza. And breadsticks. And red sauce. And garlic butter. And Pepsi. That was the the major appeal.

It's quite convenient for the modern-age Pony to order online and go in to liberate our pizza from the lock-box thingy with a code. He has offered to pick it up on his own (surely not to avoid spending time with ME!), and has done so a couple times.

Here's the thing. The Pony likes to eat his food while it's hot. Meaning IN THE CAR. The first time, he spoke of eating it as he drove home. YIKES! The Pony is not that great a drive when all systems are activated! I sure didn't want him driving distractedly while strapping on the old feedbag. The next solo trip, The Pony sat in the parking lot for feeding. Better for him, but not so much for our pizza.

Anyhoo... I offered to drive, and The Pony ate while we drove to pick up my 44 oz Diet Coke on the way home. It's a bit of an inconvenience to have The Pony along riding shotgun, rather than BEHIND MY SEAT as he did all through high school. I've forbade that now. So I have to move my bottle of T-Hoe water to the holders by the back seats, and set my purse behind the passenger seat. I can still reach them, but it's awkward, because they're out of place. Harder to get the checkbook to write down the amount of the pizza. Harder to find my notecard that I used to write down the good songs I hear and want to listen to later on Spotify.

Anyhoo... on Saturday, I started to town for my magical elixir and scratchers. The Pony was happy to stay home and make his noodle-chicken lunch, while dreaming of the re-heated pizza and breadstick supper still to come.

I was a bit discombobulated after stopping by the cutting block to micromanage The Pony's chicken-slicing. The littlest change in my 4-year-old routine throw me off. For instance, I meant to get an acetaminophen out of the cabinet above the stove, on my way out. The previous day had been the one-in-four days that I skip my nightly ibuprofen. So my knees were kind of complainy, and I take an acetaminophen on those days to tide me over until that night's ibuprofen.

Once in T-Hoe, going up the driveway, I remembered. Oh, well. I just happened to have an acetaminophen in my shirt pocket. I rummaged around as I pulled out on the gravel road, and popped it in my mouth. As it laid on my tongue, I reached for my bottle of water.

WHAT IN THE NOT-HEAVEN WAS THIS?

Not a bottle of water, that's for sure! I had picked up The Pony's bottle of PEPSI that was sitting in the hole normally occupied by my water bottle. Wasn't THIS a fine kettle of fish! I didn't have time to reach back for my water, because I was starting down Farmer H and Buddy's Badly Blacktopped Hill. It takes two hands to handle a T-Hoe on that bumpy section. The slamming side-to-side from the bumps is bad enough, but if I meet a vehicle coming up, I must drop two tires off the side so we can pass. Don't even get me started on what would happen should I meet the ROCKERS coming at me with their flat-bed semi trailer!

So there I was, with an acetaminophen dissolving on my tongue, nothing to wash it down until I got down the blacktop, across the mini low water bridge, up the curvy hill, and over the Great Chasm. Then there was a small window of opportunity before I proceeded to the flat waterfall section of road.

Whew! I finally washed down that OTC painkiller. No thanks to The Pony's slovenly ways. I threw away the Pepsi bottle and its dregs at Country Mart.

I suppose the greatest horror of this experience was that it was a bottle of PEPSI! An unfortunate event second only to the time The Pony, riding behind my seat, withdrew his high school foot from his Adidas slides and reached his finger-like toes forward and PINCHED MY FOREARM FLESH while I was driving with my arm on the console.