Spending time with the kids

I’m afraid to call too much attention to the fact that I have a pretty awesome arena schedule this semester in case the arena fairy takes notice and makes sure it will never happen again.

I teach every morning at 8 AM; Mondays and Wednesdays I have another class at 1:00; Tuesdays and Thursdays I have practice from 4-6. That’s all. Fridays are, as always, a giant cluster, but the first four days of the week are surprisingly quiet–a class first thing in the morning to wake me up, get me thinking, kickstart my motivation for the day and generally make me cheerful (unless, of course, they’re riding like garbage…heaven help them then.)

So far I’ve found lots of time in the day to chase horses, do some riding, continue working on my social media empire (if you haven’t already, like us on Facebook at facebook.com/alfreduniversityequestriancenter–yes, this is a completely shameless plug. Go check out what I’ve been working on this semester because if I do say so myself it’s totally awesome.) Today, now that the ice rink outside the hay barn had finally thawed out, I was able to bring one Great Diversion, aka Withers, aka Tres, out of hibernation and into the main barn for a brief session on the lunge line.

Tres was x-rayed when the latest round of vets came through for injections and diagnostics, and his withers look amazing. Three of the “basic” fractures look beautiful and healing; the least of the displacements seems to have somehow replaced itself and the bone is stitching back together. The most insane-looking vertebrae will probably never put itself back together again but as long as the bone chip stays in place we’re doing okay. Tres was cleared for light and controlled exercise from the ground.

So onto the lunge line we went, a chain over his nose as I recalled his last moments of ground work in this arena (Rebecca and I trying to rip his blankets off as he reared and struck and spun over our heads) He has a disconcerting habit of dawdling along at the most useless speed of walk imaginable and then turning to face off–not much fun for a horse with a history of rearing on the ground–or slowly angling himself until the butt end was facing me. Foolishly unarmed with no lunge whip in sight I flapped the useless end of the lunge line at him and danced around him in circles until I got him ambling along in a rough circle. I asked him to trot and he reluctantly moved out, slowly accelerating until he gave me a beautiful circle of true trot, neck arched low as he stretched out his spine all on his own.

Then he promptly exploded, which I had been expecting all along–mercifully he chose to go forward rather than spin at me, and I diffused him quickly and sent him forward again. With one more eruption he settled down into a trot for a few more minutes, worked the other direction, and called it a day. Success. I will publicly thank Hoss and Tammy again for taking care of him for his months of layup; while leading his ground manners, knock wood, have improved astoundingly. Everywhere else (like the crossties) he’s still the same old Tres–but I least I know that progress is possible again.

I rode Playgirl in Western IV as my demo horse–fortunately, she’s very good at the exercise I wanted to show the students, opening and closing doors. On the well-broke western horses, one can manipulate them completely off the leg without touching their faces at all simply by knowing when to close a leg and when to open. In a combination of opening and closing legs I can send a horse forward, backward, turn in either direction or stop and spin. Playgirl is pretty catty to this game and made a good show of bebopping around the arena while I demonstrated what I could accomplish with just my leg. She’s also very good at jumping forward out of her tracks when I ask her to, showing how you can make a horse light to the leg rather than having to kick them forward all the time.

For everything else she was not so great–at the end, I loped her around a little bit while the students watched and I narrated the progress she’s made in two years as well as the plateau we seem to have reached. Compared to the cross-firing head-flinging wildebeast she was when she got off the trailer from Texas or whatever, she’s come pretty far. But I was distressed to find that she still can’t seem to follow her own body around, that she can’t get off my leg when I want her to, that she still demonstrates resistance all over her body when I ask her to go forward. More work is needed, clearly.

Progression

There are days that I really simply don’t feel like riding–like Friday, in which the amount of paperwork I felt I needed to do was outweighing the need to ride all of my western horses who were just going to be wild after a weekend waiting for a hunt seat show to wrap up anyway. The horses seem to understand when they don’t get worked, but coworkers and peers and supervisors never seem to be quite as forgiving when things are not turned in or completed.

Regardless, I wrapped up enough little things on my to-do list to merit getting into the barn again. I rode a set of five, keeping in the back of my mind that I would also be jumping a horse in a clinic later that evening.

I began my day with Spider, an old Appaloosa mare on trial. She had arrived at Alfred late the previous evening thanks to a long day of shipping with my friend Chilly from the ranch, driving first from Alfred to State College, then to Quakertown, then back to Alfred again. Spider was unsure in the arena and will definitely take a lot more riding. In a less-than-optimistic mood, I turned her over to the farrier for front shoes.

My next mount was R-Star, a reining mare with a reluctant and sassy streak which was not evident in this ride. Having some light maintenance done recently on her stifles, she rode out fairly nicely–she’s a talented, well-broke mare but has never really been one of my favorites; she’s not comfortable to ride nor does she seem to have much of a personality of any kind. I spent a few moments playing with her steering and brakes off just my leg and weight, weaving in and out of jump standards and other assorted hunt seat detritus in the arena. I put her up after a brief ride and dragged on to the next horse.

My next steed was Batman, a very talented reining gelding who is surprisingly light on his feet for being slightly bigger than the “average” reiner. At this point, the course for the hunt seat show had been set in the arena and he cast all sorts of hairy eyeballs at the various fences, pickets, poles and flowerboxes and I amused myself for a few minutes by playing “shoot the gap” and riding him between pieces of fences. He mellowed out a lot as we went, a small portion of the amount of mellowing-out he’s done since arriving at Alfred last spring. He’s still got a bit of a twist in his poll to the left which makes me suspect minor chiropractic issues.

The students had cleared out of the barn by now so I took advantage of the quiet arena to lunge Barbie, one of Harry’s horses, an extraordinarily petite palomino reining mare. She bolted about like a wild thing on the lunge line for a solid fifteen minutes, which is quite a long time for that kind of sustained activity. Essentially my following ride was a cool-down for her and I simply jogged and loped a bit until she had stopped blowing so hard.

Running out of time before the start of the clinic, I popped my last horse on the lunge line, old sweet Roan, old enough to be ageless yet still remarkably spry. He moved better than I had ever seen him on the line and blew off just enough steam that I felt comfortable simply slipping on his bridle and sliding on bareback for a brief hack. I was surprised as he jogged slowly around the arena that he was sounder and easier to sit to unsaddled than saddled (suggestive not only of closer connection but a poor-fitting saddle, perhaps) and even loped around easily on both leads–he’s notorious for having a terrible right lead. These are the perks of being in your mid- to upper-twenties and still reining once a week. Feeling much happier and accomplished with my day, I returned Roan to his stall and prepared myself for the jumping clinic.

The clinic was lots of fun with Pat Bostwick from Ohio, one of Nancy’s connections and friends. I rode Wow, who has been featured in this blog from time to time as a hunt-seat-trying-to-be-western horse who apparently also has a passion and knack for jumping. I had an excellent evening jumping Wow around the low course, including one tricky section with a rollback off the wall into a bending line. Hard to describe, hard to ride, but fun when we nailed it.

Six horses in as many hours. Such is life.

The further adventures of Sweet Erma

Readers of HorseNation can see a brief and tidy version of the Sweet Emma story so far in today’s column (credit to the amazing editor Wylie for coming up with a pretty excellent title.)

Nancy absolutely hates when I call her Erma, which naturally encourages me to say it more often. I am going to attribute this charming nickname to Josh the maintenance man from the Bitterroot, who called our wrangler from England not Emma, as was her given name, but Erma. It stuck. So has this version of Erma.

She’s a sweet girl, a little bit different from working around horses; she’s much more aloof and suspicious but also more steady at the same time. Honestly, as of yet, she really doesn’t seem to have developed much of a personality. I’m sure time will tell; I have faith that she’s not a soulless creature at heart. The old adage “stubborn as a mule” did come into play today when Erm and I had a dispute about going into the wash stall. She decided she did not want to, and we did not. I’m coming to realize that when mules don’t want to do something, they simply don’t do it. There was no prancing about, jigging from foot to foot, backing down the aisle or rearing up–she simply locked her legs and stood there. I decided to pick battles I thought I could win and changed tactics.

I did not change tack, however–last time, one of our standard western saddles with a grippy cutter pad and a no-slip chamois cloth had gotten me through well enough, so I threw that on again and headed out to the ring. Her ears are too long to allow me to slip the bridle over her head; I need to unbuckle it every time and buckle it back on. #longearproblems.

Today, however, the saddle did not want to play. After getting over the sensation of “good lord her back is so humped she’s gonna buck me off and I’m gonna die–oh no wait, that’s just the way she’s shaped” I played around with my power steering; she actually does know how to neckrein and will move off of leg gently. Unfortunately her shape (or lack thereof) makes me ride in a perpetual chair seat; combine this with the fact that she’s a petite 14 hands and I look like a moron every time we’re riding with my feet nearly before her chest.

Add to this the fact that my saddle nearly jettisoned completely and it was not the most graceful ride I’ve ever had. Despite a tight cinch (really! I swear! Anyone who has seen me fence a cow with daylight in my cinch is not believing me at this time) and two kinds of grip pads the saddle still decided to make for Emma’s ears and leave. I adjusted it once, and the second time decided to call it a day. The more I ride, the more I assume I will get used to the idea of feeling constantly like I’m falling forward. Once we get a better-fitting saddle, it’ll be time to see what kind of lope I might have (I’m guessing not a very good one.)

We then forged full-steam ahead with the half-baked plan to turn Erma out with the red pasture boys, a ne’er-do-well band including Rebecca’s warmblood Duckie, a very mean and obese warmblood Gustav, the debatable mentally-challenged Paint horse Scotch and Nemo the Haflinger boarder. As I imagined would happen, Emma and I trudged out in the mud and pouring rain to the pasture and all four thundered wetly to the gate to force themselves right into my face, curious as to what sweet little Emma was doing there…or maybe just what she was. I’m not sure.

I spent the next ten minutes in the rain standing there at the gate watching the interactions. Emma long-trotted gloriously through the sucking mud to the bottom of the pasture, trailing geldings behind her like drunken frat brothers. They got all tangled together at the base of the hill, Emma’s hind legs kicking out in all directions sending the boys scattering. Emma then pricked those long ears forward and trotted back up the hill again, eyes and ears to the front, focused on some imaginary goal, Gustav and Duckie stride-for-stride right behind her and Scotch and Nemo right behind them like some sort of deranged five-in-hand from hell that I personally would never want to be driving. I had to laugh.

And then I had to wade back out there and rescue Emma, wishing I had worn my muck boots, splashing about in puddles of sucking mud while Beth tried to shout directions from the gate. Eventually Beth snagged her through the fenceline and we made a quick escape–barely–with the shark-horses closing in from all sides.

Herd introduction: fail.

Our next attempt will be to set up a parallel pasture next to Buttermilk, and eventually introduce the two into the same paddock. I like this idea–I feel like I am collecting a number of very strange animals down the lane below the shop, from my driving team to my single hitch horse to a mule, who hopefully will join her potential neighbors as another driving horse…well, mule. She’s the perfect candidate to join my gallery of misfit toys.

Conversations with Norm and Dan

Admittedly I could be making myself work a little  harder this week–the horses still need some light work, my tackroom is STILL a mess and there are some projects waiting for attention–Sweet Emma and Little Jake, I’m looking at you–but I had finally gotten all of my finals graded and needed deserved a break.

I found myself standing around the farriers’ stalls.

Norm and Dan are an oddly-matched work couple, yet I can’t imagine a pair of people who set each other off better. Norm is short, stout, graced with a beard that makes him look like a very realistically-tempered Santa who does not bear presents to small children. Dan is tall, lanky, very redheaded. They are both blessed with wit and opinions, and I often will be working down the aisle from them to hear them discussing anything from Russian literature (in which Dan legitimately holds a degree) to global affairs to recent films and music releases. They love terrible jokes and NPR. They are not the average farriers, but like traveling philosophers with a hot forge.

My original purpose for talking to Norm and Dan early in the day was to inquire of Dan what extra equipment we would need for co-teaching Draft Driving II in the spring. He rattled off the name of several farm tools including a plow and cultivator, which sounds very exciting, before Norm jumped in to ask if I was planning on giving him and Dan audio CDs of my National Novel Writing Month novel.

K: Is this because I asked you if your truck had a CD player?
N: Yes! I was looking forward to a book on disc!
K: No, actually, I was going to burn you some mix CDs for the Normobile.
N: Oh, I see.
K: You might not like them. I mean, what kind of music are you actually in to?
N: Well…(laughs) Dan’s in a mood right now because we’ve been listening to Kate Rusby and he doesn’t like her.
D: I don’t not like her, I just can’t understand what she’s saying!
K: Kate Rusby! She’s…like…SO easy to understand.
D: She’s always whining about something.
N: He didn’t like the song about the farmer taking his cow to market, and then he meets the girl, and then…
K: Oh, that’s the best one.
D: She’s a whiner.

Kate Rusby–talk about weird echoes from the past. I listened to her as a high school junior–what other high school student listens to traditional British folk artists? I was a strange youth. I don’t think it’s changed much, actually; I’m still strange.

I stopped by later in the evening, just before heading home, to give Andy his allergy shot and say goodnight to the farriers. The aisle was hazy with smoke from Norm fitting hot shoes to horses, dim in the evening light on this first Tuesday without practices, just the evening feeders and the farriers at work.

N: So you’re the evening barn manager now?
K: What? No. I’m just still here, is all.
N: Then who manages?
K: No one, really…I mean, Becca is the closest if there’s an emergency, and she has phone service.
N: I see.
K: I have no service down in the valley where I live.
N: Do you have a landline?
K: No…I thought about it though the other night when I was thinking about what would happen if I fell down the stairs.
N: Your dog would eat you.
K: I think the cats would eat me first.
N: Alfred would send out a search party!
K: Maybe. My ratio of cats to house is a little off. The house is the size of, oh, your stall here.
N: Yeah? You and Dan should be getting together about that. (Raises eyebrows suggestively.)
K: How big is your little house, Dan?
D: Sixteen by eight.
(Silence.)
K: Yeah, that’s a little house.

They are great. Absurd, sometimes, but great. I told Dan that our staff party was BYOB when he asked if he should bring anything, to which he replied “I was thinking more like a pie.”

As I left the barn, I could hear the hot forge shut and flare, and the door open and close, Norm calling something to Dan, no doubt intellectually fascinating. I had the sour-smokey smell of hot shoeing on my clothes which lingered the entire way home.

Here’s to farriers–the best of which not only shoe horses well, but are an absolute riot to talk to.

Donations

TGIFW: thank goodness it’s finals week.

For us at the equestrian center, it means that the semester of back-to-back horse show weekends is finally at a close; we no longer are teaching classes (instead, I am working through an endless pile of grading…remind me again why I assign journals for all of my courses) or coaching practices or running around working on show programs and clipping muzzles and riding every western horse hunt seat to test its abilities.

It does mean, however, that a few seasonal projects take center stage: reorganizing the tack rooms, for one, since the western side looks like a bomb went off and threw a saddle onto every useable surface. I’ll also be getting in a few more lessons over fences and keeping some of the horses in light work. We’re also tasked with taking the holiday card photos.

In past years this has been a bit of a chore: polishing a halter, attaching a bow or a scarf or reindeer antlers to it, spit-shining the horses and then leading them out to the arena to stand in front of a display of decorated pine trees, attempt to get their ears forward, take a photo and then print and cut them all out to send to the donors of our herd of school horses.

This year we’re adding a new element in having the students come to pose with their favorite horses. Rather than having horses magically standing posed, we are including the students in every photograph–after all, the horses are there for them. Without them, we could not exist–we don’t have the budget to purchase horses, but this method offers horses who can no longer sustain a competitive career a second chance to teach students and still compete as cherished IHSA and IEA mounts.

Wyatt, R Star, Frank, Benson, Batman and Kiddo paraded out today in sharp silver headstalls, their manes neatly brushed by their handlers, their ears flicking forward easily for their moment in the spotlight. We spent a lot of time praising the horses themselves, but rarely think of the people who choose to give them to us.

So when the little photo cards arrive at homes in a few weeks (including my parents’…Evie inbound!), I hope the kind donors understand what that tiny picture stands for: an entire community of young riders who appreciate their gift more than words could describe.

Saddle time

Today was one of those days in which, after getting some work done, I actually just got to ride around.

I’ve spent two years hacking around the hunt seat horses on occasion, warming them up for horse shows, funning around when there’s not much else to do, and this summer serving as a test rider for the judging clinic at the residential camp. Now, I’m finally learning enough to be riding the horses over fences.

There is a lot more thinking involved with these horses. I’ve observed a lot more active role played by the English riding teachers here as their students are riding and I can’t decide if it’s because their horses need more management than my own, if there is a tendency to “micromanage” in the best sense of the word, or if it’s just a style difference in teaching. I feel like all three of these things may be true–regardless, with the number of things I was told in just five minutes of riding a few days ago I felt as though I was never going to get this right.

Now, however, after today’s rides, I think things are falling into place. I rode a lovely mare called Clare over fences, who taught me to ride the horse rather than the fence, to keep pushing straight all the way to the jump, to give her support from my hands. Next I rode Murphy over the same course, a zippy Appendix who reminded me how important it was to ride not just the horse to the fence but the horse away from the fence, to keep things back under control, to sit in the corners.

In my flatwork, I hacked a variety of horses from a Quarter horse to a warmblood to a draft cross. I overheard one excellent word of advice from Nancy to one of our crossover riders: “You wouldn’t sit back like a western rider if you were on the way to a jump, would you?” With this concept in mind, I headed into my last ride of the day imagining that I was cantering up to a fence, and Nancy complimented my riding.

All that’s left now is luck of the draw.

Black Friday

While a large part of this country headed to the stores and malls today, Kaitlyn and I spent the day cleaning, grooming, braiding, harnessing, decorating the wagon, packing the trucks, checking everything over several times to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, hitching trailers and wagons to trucks, being run over by trailer dividers, loading fully-harnessed horses into the trailer and then driving a few towns over at a maximum speed of 30 mph to protect the horse wagon as it whipped in the wind behind one of the trucks.

Yes, it’s Black Friday, which meant that Kaitlyn and I voluntarily sat in the wagon driving through streets that were more like wind tunnels, soaking up the cold rain and tolerating a fairly rude Santa Claus through a two-block long parade that ended once again in bad decisions being made by everyone but us and therefore resulting our getting hollered at by the coordinators. Yes, of course I would much rather mow down the children of your fair city, you’re right, I should drive this wagon right into that crowd of screaming people.

The citizens of the town themselves were, for the most part, a perfectly tolerable and courteous group of people who thanked us for our time. We particularly appreciated the grandmotherly woman who ran crowd-control for us briefly and offered to buy us hot drinks as we sat up on the wagon and shivered.

But in the end, the day after Thanksgiving was soured by the unappreciative event coordinators who, in their desire to manufacture the perfect Christmas forgot about the needs of living creatures, from the horses who drew the wagon to the drivers who guided them. If you ever find yourself in such a position, please show some compassion. Respect the talents and knowledge of those you hire. Never ever lose sight of the meaning of this season in your quest to create the “perfect moment.”

And thus ends my Black Friday soapbox.

Visiting Tres

With the chaos of the past few days and the coming chaos of another horse show weekend, sadly Tres is the first thing to be neglected. Tonight I had the option of spending some time sedating him, waiting for the drug to kick in and walk him in the cold darkness at Tammy’s, or driving into town to purchase cat food thanks to a gross misestimation of when I would run out. This is either a sign of devotion to all of my animals or a big red flag that I have way too many. I’m gonna go with the former.

Still, I made sure to stop in to at least say hello, dropping off another few home-made SmartPak sleeves of calming supplement (all we’d be doing is throwing them out, so why not portion out my own supplements, tape off the tops and drop them off? Credit Beth with that really good recycling idea) Leaving my car running and my headlights pointing into the barn to give me a little bit of light walking into the dark cathedral of hay and breathing horses, I fumbled around until I found the light switch.

My first impressions, even though I last saw him only on Sunday, was that Tres is getting FAT. For a creature that we had a hard time keeping weight on, this is a good thing, but the extra weight and lack of exercise is also helping to drive him stir-crazy. If anything, he’s getting a little stranger in character; the first thing he did when I got him to turn around to come say hello was thrust his chin in my face, sideways. While this in itself was disconcerting and weird, at least he wasn’t biting me, and I gave him the under-jaw scratch he was so clearly asking for, blocking his nibbling teeth with my other hand (credit Hoss with this discovery of Tres’ new favorite itching spot.) He then let me rub his forehead for a few moments before shaking his head, pawing the ground and spinning over to bury his face in his hay. He’s not completely reformed, but he’s making progress.

Foundation

At the risk of repeating myself and my as-of-yet-unwritten column for Tuesday’s HorseNation, I won’t delve too much into the ins and outs of what I learned to help my horses and students at Equine Affaire. I will say, however, that in the same way that Craig Johnson rekindled my desire to work with Playgirl and get her more broke, the Australian posse of Guy McLean and Double Dan Horsemanship have rekindled my desire to improve Tres and his tractability.

The first lessons with Tres started today. I brought my brand-new lunge whip into the barn with me, administered his sedation and hung out with him for a few minutes while I waited for the drug to kick in, picking his feet and then scratching him under his mane, reinforcing every time he turned to potentially nip that he was no longer allowed to do so. I moved from there to his face, correcting him each time he tried to grab a sleeve or my hand, and when his eye was softened and he was allowing me to rub him everywhere from his forehead to his eyes to the sides of his muzzle I decided he was probably sedated enough to start walking.

He wanted to puff himself up again when we left the end of the barn, so our forays into the great outdoor world were limited but grew a bit wider with every lap. Tres grew much better at walking out of my personal space and within his own space; though he was a little hot and wanted to think about bucking or jigging when we were outside in the mild spring-like air he remained fairly tractable, letting me correct him easily whenever he tried to grab for the lead line. I worked with the basic whip cues I had picked up from the clinic sessions–the simplest ones for stop and go.

The Double Dan team apparently comes highly recommended from the TTeam, which is a little bit surprising to me–not that they are the opposite of what the TTeam teaches, just highly different. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of nerve training or anything quite that intense, but there is a heavy emphasis on the horse respecting the handler which appealed greatly to me with my wild steed. The assistant trainer I spoke with at the booth didn’t have too many specifics for me but did give me a good pep talk that it was possible for me to “fix” my horse and have him bounce back to be a perfectly amiable horse with consistent work.

I believe that I have a tendency to rush my own horses into doing what I would like to be doing with them rather than where they need to be. In this way, Tres’ injury is a blessing–I am forced to do my work in twenty-minute segments limited to the handwalk in an unenclosed area. I won’t have any ability to jump the gun and start working him in a roundpen or small arena until he returns to Alfred, hopefully by April. Until then, all I can do is this kind of handwork at the walk, teaching him respect, how to respond to the whip and my positioning, building a solid foundation. And then? Who knows. If I have a better horse after this injury than when I started, anything could happen.

Tough love

Filled with determination to stick to my plan to be a good, responsible horse owner going above and beyond the call of duty to my broken steed and drive out to Tammy’s every single night to handwalk Tres, I blithely haltered him (after literally playing tug-of-war to get the halter out of his mouth, twice) and slipped a chain over his nose to go walk in dark, narrow loops around the barnyard in the square of light from the wide-open door as the Harveys (Tammy, Hoss, their son Tyler and his two-year-old son Tristan–they like “Ts” in that family) did their evening chores.

What a lovely evening, I thought to myself. It was cold and damp, but not so cold and damp that I was completely numb, nor was I sloughing through several feet of snow, which was always a distinct possibility in November in western New York. For about two circles, Tres was very polite, walking out by my side, and then he realized that we were just handwalking with no destination in mind, no next-place to worry about, and he exploded.

Fortunately with the chain over his nose and gloves on my hands I was able to keep his head mostly at my side through his various eruptions, his forelegs slicing at the air as he humped up his back and bucked all around me, head twisting to try to bite my arm as well. I’m sure none of this is good for his fractured back but he’s doing all of this in his stall on a regular basis as well.

It wasn’t until he somehow managed to corkscrew himself around to bite at my arm and simultaneously, literally, kick my butt, that I realized that this was not working. I’m not sure still how he did it. Either way, of all the places to be kicked, at least he selected the place with natural padding. I dragged him back into the barn, unwilling to put up with any more of these shenanigans, especially with Tristan in the area.

Unfortunately, Tres will either need to be sedated for the next several weeks of walking, or ponied off a very tough horse (aka not Mahogany, his new stall neighbor, a 13-hand Arabian pony.) Tammy shrugged her shoulders and we made plans to make more plans tomorrow.

As I drove home down the dark and lonely dirt road, I couldn’t help but feel defeated. So much for all that devotion. I suppose this evening simply goes to show that no matter how much time and energy and emotion you put into something, it’s sometimes just going to come back to kick your ass.

So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
Cause oh they gave me such a fright
And I will hold as long as you like
Just promise me we’ll be alright