The Best Worst First Date Story Ever, Continued.

Ok, now where was I?

Oh yes, we'd just left for the festival.

Well, the drive up was fine, we talked and joked and listened to the radio and generally just had a good time.

About the time we were pulling into the ranch D tells me he had to do some work before we could go do the fun things. The ranch owner, who considered the ranch his hobby (jeez I wish I had that much money!) had decided to bring his secretary and her mother down to go horseback riding.

These women had never been on a horse in their lives.

So D saddled up his trusty old pony Sonny, explained the basics, and gave the-- rather large-- mother a leg up into the saddle. She walked around a bit and seemed to be managing things ok, and the Boss wanted to talk to D about some things, so they headed toward the house, while I stood around near the gate watching.

Good thing, too, cause Mother dearest managed to kick ol' Sonny up into a trot, against the horse's better judgment, and bounced herself right out of the saddle. Thud.

Not only did she fall off, but she managed, somehow, to fall and roll underneath the horse, so Sonny, being the well mannered horse that he was, tried his best not to step on her, and gave a little jump.

It wasn't his fault that she picked her head up just as his back feet were going over her.

Sonny freaked, the mother was unconscious, I hollered out and brought everybody running.

Of course, me being me, I took off running too... but I was trying to intercept Sonny before he ran through the fence.

What? I didn't have a clue what to do for the woman, and I did know what to do with the horse.

Well, I didn't catch Sonny before he hit the fence, he cut his nose and chest a little, nothing major but in spots that bleed pretty good, so he had some dripping going on. Especially from the nose cut.

I grabbed his reins and braced myself for him to pull back, a typical reaction when a horse is freaked out and someone runs up to him, so I wasn't prepared for Sonny to shove his whole head in my chest. Hard. Like, the only reason I didn't fall was because I grabbed his mane hard. Poor horse just knew he was in trouble.

Now, I was wearing a pair of Rockies jeans, very nice western women's jeans, make even the flattest butts look good... but anyway, one of their signature styles is vertical stripes, and I was wearing those.. Blue and white, vertical stripes... bleeding horse....

So at this point I had spots of horse blood down one leg of my jeans, and I was trying to calm him down enough to get him back over to where the lady was, to see if there was anything I could do there, and he wouldn't lead. He kept hiding his face in my chest, and at one point, while I was turning him in a circle to try and get him moving, he stuck his head over my shoulder and nuzzled my cheek, looking for reassurance.

So, quite logically (to me,) I threw a leg over him and rode him back over. He was fine with it, once I was in the saddle.

When I got there I got a couple of funny looks from people, the lady was still out like a light, and someone had called 911. This being out in the middle of nowhere, we had to meet the ambulance at the start of the ranch road and lead them in, and D and I got volunteered for that.

But first, I had to take care of the horse. I unsaddled him and left the saddle sitting on a trailer, since I didn't know where it was supposed to go, put him in the pen and took off his bridle, and then raced him to the gate, since he was still feeling insecure and had latched on to me as his security blanket.

Sitting on the bed of D's truck while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I managed to give D a bit of a shock.

"You've got blood on you."

I looked down at my jeans and sighed.

"Yeah, I know. It's from the cut on Sonny's nose. Hopefully it will come out."

"No, I mean you've got blood on you."

"Huh?"

"Your face," D pointed to my cheek, and I reached up and touched it, coming away with blood on my fingers.

"Oh, that's Sonny's too..."

"You're the strangest girl I've ever met, you know that? Most girls would be freaking out about all of this, and here you are, smeared with horse blood, acting like it's no big deal."

"Well it's not, I wash just fine, I don't shrink or anything!"

D just shook his head.

We got the Mother to the ER, hung around long enough to make sure she was ok (I think she just had a mild concussion and a broken nose from the fall and Sonny's foot) and went to get some lunch. I wanted Pizza Hut, so that's where we went.

'Course, I got funny looks when we ordered, because by this time I had forgotten all about the blood smeared on me, until D busted out laughing after the waitress left and asked me if I was gonna clean it off or not.

Went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and I had a streak about three inches wide from my cheekbone to my collarbone. No wonder she was looking at me funny!

After lunch it was off to the local park there to kill time before the dance. We'd missed most of the during-the-day activities, because of the trip to the ER, so we were just waiting for the dance to start, and decided to feed our leftover breadsticks to the ducks that live in and around the pond there.

Poor D, the one big gray goose that was there decided that D was the greatest thing since sliced bread, that is, until we ran out of breadsticks.

Then the thing attacked him. And he squealed like a girl. No, really. I thought I was gonna hurt myself laughing so hard.

The rest of the evening went pretty well, aside from explaining the reddish-brown smears and spots on my pants, and me delaying leaving to go home until the very last possible second.

D was terrified we'd find Farmdad up waiting for us, and drove like a crazy person to get me home on time. Of course, I knew that Farmdad would already be in bed, and I was right.

Fed D a cup of coffee and off he went to drive back up there, poor guy.

D and I never went on another date, but we did become good friends. When he was dating the woman he's now married to, he told me "You have to meet her! She's just like you, only better!"

Gee, thanks D.

The blood did come out of the jeans, thanks to Farmmom, even though I did get a lecture the next morning about not saying things like "its blood, the guy at the ER said to use this brand of cleaner on it..." when Farmmom asked me what the stain was....

* Author's note; Since I pounded the first version of this out in between classes, (because AD called me a tease) it was fairly rough. Edits have been made to improve the reading experience.