Lake Placid Horse Show Memories

I drove by the Lake Placid Horse Show Grounds yesterday and burst out laughing. I love it when there is a pleasant memory so firmly attached to something that one has to laugh out loud at the sight or thought of it. The Lake Placid Horse Show Grounds, or the pretend horses at the entrance specifically, do it for me. It was about 20 years ago when it happened. We hadn't lived in Lake Placid for more than a few years when our son desecrated one of those very horses. First let me explain: the Lake Placid Horse Show is a very big deal in Lake Placid. The competitors compete at the Olympic level and the horses are from prestigious lines. The hallowed Horse Show Grounds are always immaculately maintained and landscaped. The entire venue looks spiffy and meticulously groomed every single day of the event. Not a flower petal is out of place or a fence post marred by a scratch. So it happened all those years ago, the local soccer league had practice on the adjoining sports fields and we Reed parents were a few minutes late picking up our young soccer player. As we approached the entrance to the Horse Show Grounds on NY Route 73, the main road into Lake Placid, we noticed something familiar sitting on the back of one of the pretend horses. Of course it was our 7-year-old son, pretending to ride the pretend horse, yahooing and wildly waving one arm in the air over his head as if he were riding a buckaroo. I don't know which part of the scene was funnier to his father and I; the appalled faces of the other parents as they pulled out of the parking lot, or the horse show competitors' gasps, or the stable hands' snickers, but we nearly died laughing. So, now, the best part of the Lake Placid Horse Show for me is when they put out the pretend horses.