Posted by Racer on July 20, 2001, at 23:28:04
OK, really bad day. Highlight: falling down in the parking lot at work and skinning my knee. Lots of pain in swollen knee, huge lacerations to my pride.
THEN, I get to a lesson which should include at least two instructors, because the kids are such beginners, and find I'm the only one there with a schitzy horse -- the one with the rider who's so tiny her legs don't reach the bottom of the saddle flap!
I do the only thing I can think of to do: send a kid to find another instructor, or, if no one will come, get an ADULT helper to come help. Needless to say, none of the other instructors are willing to come. I get the adult helper, who is not an expert with horses. Big deal, she's an adult, and won't let the kid get hurt.
Well, another instructor then comes by, yells at me for letting the helper lunge the kid on the horse, and tells me to put the horse on the rail with everyone else! I say, "No way."
Now I'm mixed between fury, that someone would come by and yell without asking the circumstances; and terror that I'll lose my job for doing something wrong.
Bottom line is that I'm spinning. Not because I think I did the wrong thing. I know I did the wrong thing, but I also know that it was the only safe and acceptable wrong thing to do in those circumstances. The problem is that I just don't know what the best wrong thing to have done would be. And, of course, I don't know how to assert myself in that situation safely. Nor how to let the other instructor's comments slide by calmly, secure in the knowledge that I did the safest thing available to me at that time.
So, someone tell me the definitive answer. Tell me how to be perfect so that I never have to go through this again. Shouldn't be hard, right? After all, it's only all my life rising up inside me telling me that I MUST, by definition, be wrong, and the really homely thirteen year old girl inside me cowering in front of the truly beautiful, thin, rich and confident girl telling me I'm wrong.
Oh, and mind you, I'm in my late thirties, and this chick was about twenty. Not that personal insecurities have anything at all to do with this. (But don't worry if you're younger than I and hope that age brings increased confidence around cute young women. It doesn't, there's always that inner 13 year old!)
poster:Racer
thread:7696
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010717/msgs/7696.html