Whither the Long Stick? [The Miracle: Part IV]

Okay, I am going to figure this out: I had a long stick, and mid-way through 2010, I didn’t need to use it anymore. I don’t remember why. Then, I started riding Connell, and it helped to be able to tickle him on the bum, especially as it seemed as though he was still learning how to do a twenty-metre circle. I had been keeping it in the livery stable of a friend, but that friend had moved on, and I had hidden it in the environs of the boots/hats area of the yard’s public building. Yeah, good luck, right?

Right! So, that’s mid-2010 to Christmas of that year. And then I started hiding it… in another place… and it seemed to have disappeared again, but it hadn’t, and everything was fine again, until last Saturday. Last Saturday being roughly two years [two years!] to the day of the initial concealment.

I went to get my stuff out of my locker — and they were all rearranged! Dammit! [I hid the thing behind the lockers. I can tell you, reader, because you won’t spill, right?] I did that thing where I kept looking in the same places and, nope, it didn’t turn up. Asked around, nothing. Shouted across the arena at the instructor who was holding two long sticks: no, neither of them was mine, even though one really looked like mine…

Ah, well. Managed Connell very well without it, just using my child-sized miniature stick. Walking back up to the barn, I thought to myself, well, I have another long stick at home… It is red, which I don’t like at all, why did I buy a red long stick? — and then I reckoned, feck it, I could do without it —

Then someone said, Sue! There’s a long stick on the ground in the indoor. As we moseyed by, I looked in, and even from the distance of… well, more than twenty metres, I could see that it was mine!

AMAZING. This stick really will not die. I’m not even sure I care about using it — it’s the resilience of the thing that I don’t want to see compromised.

I decided, though, that maybe I better bring it home? Which: ugh. I haven’t had to monkey about with carrying a long stick around, in public, for years now. It really is awkward. Although, it can provide endless fun with the bus drivers.

DRIVER (smirks and nods at stick): Whatcha gonna do with that, then?
ME: What would you like me to do with it?

SCENE.

LOL.