Ok, this 1 might be a little weird.
I think I’ve opened up other “Life On Smars” articles with the same sentence but I really think it applies this time. Well, you be the judge.
The other day I was listening to the audio book version of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and someone in the cast mentioned something about a saddle with a removeable horn on it. I took this to be referenced to riding side saddle for the woman in their party. Since the character didn’t come right out and mention riding side saddle, I had to make the inference with my own brain and my brain making inferences, alone and unsupervised, is usually frowned upon by others. Here is the reason why this is frowned upon.
I began thinking, “What if riding side saddle was the only way anyone ever rode a horse? What if that was the way the very first person who tamed a horse and began riding on it rode it and that became the norm? What if no one in history ever once thought about straddling a horse when riding it?”
I began imagining some of the earliest uses of riding horses. I thought about medieval knights riding into battle, side saddled. Jousting would have looked completely different. I imagine the contestants would have had to ride left to right and vice versa and kind of poke their lances at each other as they passed. I think this would have been a lot more challenging. I mean, rather than charging directly at each other, facing forward and pointing your lance directly at your opponent as he charged directly at you, you’d have to try and time a poke at your foe as he passed by from your right to your left.
War would have looked a little different too, I think. Think of some of the battle scenes from the movie “Braveheart”, for example. There’s one scene in particular in which Mel Gibson has all of his guys lined up horizontally and they’re waiting on THE British guys to charge directly at them. The Scottish rebels are crouched down, holding big spears in preparation to poke the horsies as they charged down upon them. If the British guys on horseback were riding side saddle, the Scottish rebels would have to time their pokes at the horses as they passed by, left to right, instead of all together as the horses leaped into their midst.
Think of the old video arcade game “Space Invaders”. Do you remember that game? If you don’t or if you were a different kind of kid than I was in the ‘80’s, or if you’re 1 of the whippersnappers out there thinking to yourself “what’s an arcade game?”, I’ll briefly explain “Space Invaders” and why it relates to riding horsies side saddle. In “Space Invaders” the video screen displayed your guy on the very bottom of the screen and 3 or 4 rows of alien spacecraft at the very top of the screen, marching left to right, 1 pace at a time, and then right to left, 1 pace at a time. Each time the little alien spacecraft completed this cycle they dropped down another row. Your job was to shoot them down, moving your guy left to right, right to left and shooting up at the descending invaders. Now, imagine that instead of alien spacecraft involved in this battle you had men riding side saddle on horses. That would look kind of weird, right?
Imagine riding directly at your enemy while riding side saddle. Now, add to that trying to shoot a bow and arrow or a gun while riding side saddle. It would be incredibly awkward and cumbersome. You would have to twist around to face directly in front, looking in the same direction as the horse and try to fit an arrow onto your bow or steady your gun at the same time. Plus, you’d probably get a pretty serious crick in your neck!
I think rodeos would be hilarious if the only way to ride was side saddle. The bronco busting event would be much less exciting. The bronco wouldn’t even need to buck to try and remove the side saddled cowboy. The horse would just need to take a few steps and then lay down on it’s side and the cowboy would just be left standing there! Winning times for bronco busting would be more in the 2 or 3 second range rather than 8 or 9 seconds. Yawn!
I mentioned all of this to my wife Michelle. I started off with just the premise of “what if riding side saddle was the only way horses had ever been ridden?”
“That would be kind of weird,” she said. “That’s probably why it never became that popular.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But what if that was the way the very first person to ride a horse did it and everyone else copied that style? What if it never occurred to anyone that it might be easier to control and navigate a horse by straddling it rather than riding side saddle?”
I then launched into explaining all the situations listed above. They all just started coming to me as I discussed it with Michelle. After I finished Michelle just looked at me for a moment. Then she shook her head and said “Your brain is a very strange and weird place!”
“Tell me about it,” I cried. “How do you think I feel? I gotta live there!”
“You’re very special dear,” she said. “I love you!”
I just said “Giddyup!”