Special Olympics, Dick Cheney, and an Old Chinese Proverb

I had a riding lesson last night. It went pretty well, despite the fact that I still feel like my body is not doing what my brain tells it to do. Consequently, I managed to knock a 2’9’’ rail down while jumping a horse who is 18.3 hands (6’4’’) high at the shoulder. This horse could literally walk over the jump, and I found a way to make him knock it down while jumping it from a canter.

Oh, there was a whole lot of Special Olympics action going on in that ring. [Sidenote: do they have horseback riding in the Special Olympics? If so, where do I sign up?]

Anywaytoknocktheraildown, between rounds of jumping chaos, my instructor and I were shooting the shit. He’s always good for a joke or a story, I’ve been known to deliver a zinger or two as well. I may be a 27 year old woman and he may be a 50-some-odd year old man, but we both have the sense of humor of a 10 year old, so it works. So during one of my breaks, I was telling him about some dinner that Obama attended that was covered by NPR, and I repeated a line our president delivered that had me laughing out loud on my way to work (which never happens, as my commute typically entails death, destruction, and many “flippings of the bird”).

The Line:….Dick Cheney couldn’t be here tonight because he’s finishing his new book, How To Shoot Friends In The Face And Interrogate People

Hilarious, right?

My trainer didn’t agree. He admitted that it was a little funny, but then said, “Remember, I’m a Dick Cheney fan.”

*cricket

Of course, I immediately assumed I had heard him wrong, because Dick Cheney fans are a rare, almost nonexistent breed. Sure, I’ve heard of them, but never met one in person. It was like that time last summer when I met a man who said he was “still for the war in Iraq.” I had immediately tried to sedate and tag him for research purposes, but I was out of ruffies and when I tried to punch a tag through his ear, he got belligerent and ran away.

Stupid redneck.

So, anyway, yeah, when my trainer said he was a Dick Cheney fan, I just about hit the floor (which would have been a long fall off a 6’4’’ horse). I mean…c’mon! This guy was (is?) the CEO of Halliburton. He was a staunch supporter of “Dub-yah” Bush’s policies. He shot his friend in the face, for crying out loud!

And, I’m pretty sure he’s either a cyborg or a half-man, half-lizard alien from the planet Xeon-5. How else can you explain the fact that the man DOES NOT BLINK:


Go ahead and try to watch the entire clip without blinking. IMPOSSIBLE (if you're human)

Never have I been more creeped out by a person/robot/lizard king of the underworld, let alone one who would have been running the country if Bush had been assassinated (and lord knows we all thought about it).

In retrospect, I don’t think I even responded to my trainer. I think I just stared at him in disbelief until things got uncomfortable and he told me to take the jump again.
AWK-ward.

After giving this some serious thought, I’ve decided that I won’t let this new-found information interfere with my relationship with my trainer. After all, Cheney fan or not, he’s a hell of a rider who owns some of the best jumpers this side of the Mississippi.

But I’ll definitely be sure to avoid the Bush-slamming, right-wing jokes from now on when I’m with him – god forbid I find out he’s “still for the war in Iraq,” and then I’ll have no choice but to flying tackle him, knock him out and send him to a lab to be tested extensively.

All in the name of science, of course, but it might make things uncomfortable between us.

As the old chinese proverb goes:
Best to let sleeping Cheneys lie (or you might just end up shot in the face)