DREW SHANNON FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL
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"Unattainable."
Because I was lucky enough to have parents who had the strength to say no to their offspring, this was a word my heart felt well before my brain learned its true definition.
When I was young, the Unattainable was orange, had a flowing plastic mane and was adorned with a real leather saddle. It took shiny coins to make it move.
The Unattainable lived at the local grocery store, behind the checkout stands, its poised racing position calling me to climb into the saddle and gallop into the sunset.
Orange Horse was built for one, but my twin brother and I would both manage to balance ourselves atop the beast while our mom busied herself loading groceries into plastic bins to take home. We took turns sitting in the saddle or balancing precariously on the rump.
I remember holding the reins in my little hands, giving them a repeated whip, their straps making hollow thumping noises on the moulded horse body.
My imagination was already off, taking me across the prairie landscape of my youth, riding free and unburdened, the horse's mane flowing in the wind as we made ground-breaking speed. Until my brother would poke me in the back to switch places.
Without the payment of a dime, the orange horse stayed painfully motionless, its ambition to bob up and down unfulfilled.
It was sad to see it so deathly still, contradicting the gleam in its reflective black eye that seemed to say: "Come on, cowpoke, let's ride."
As Mom snapped her purse shut and made her way out of the store, we would try our utmost at what four-year-olds do best: pleading for treats.
"Mom, please can we have a ride? Please, please, please!"
"Not today. We have to get home because … [insert adult response here]."
The horse's reins were replaced with my mother's guiding hand as we left the store. And that word I knew through feelings and not by name would creep its way down into my heart with a sinking familiarity: Unattainable.
Some days, a second word would heap itself atop the other when we saw another child mount the horse and slide a shiny dime into the magic slot: Envy.
The combination of the two stung long after we reached our car and rolled out of the parking lot.
It felt like we never got to ride Orange Horse. Dimes, in those days, seemed like unobtainable tickets to great freedoms. They opened gateways to adventure.
But on rare occasions, when the ice cream wasn't threatening to melt in the grocery bins, or dinner could wait, or one of us didn't have to race to some sort of practice/lesson, and it wasn't a day we had to "wait until your father gets home," Mom would give up one of those magical dimes and we would ride.
One dime, two kids.
Oh, what a ride it was, the two of us balanced atop the grocery store horse, the one on the rump trying desperately not to slide off the slippery plastic while the other held the prestigious position of saddle rider.
Feeling the powerful movement as our horse came alive, we discovered a new word: Euphoria.
Some kids would ride that horse every time they came to the store. Lucky them, I thought. But I bet none of them felt the way we felt when we were given that gift. We truly felt the demise of the insurmountable. The unreachable was reached.
Recently, my brother called me over to his computer one day and announced that he had found Orange Horse on Kijiji.
"Look," he said, "I'm buying it."
His eyes grew wide as he prepared to make the purchase. At 42, he had enough magical dimes to bring Orange Horse home and call it his own.
Soon, he would be able to ride him whenever he wanted, and so could I – from sunrise to sunset if we wanted. And we wouldn't have to balance the two of us – we could each have our own ride. Not that our grown-up selves could ever fit together on Orange Horse any more. I wonder if he'd remember us if we did.
I feel a bit silly getting excited about something adults aren't supposed to get excited about. It's just a mechanical horse, and doesn't compare with all the roller coasters we've been on, the fast cars we've driven, the dirt bikes we've jumped or the real horses we've ridden. And yet, the thought of Orange Horse coming home to my brother seems more thrilling than all the things we've done since riding him at the grocery store.
Somewhere inside us, two little four-year-olds are begging our grown-up selves to ride that horse as much as we want. Which leads to not one, but two words escaping my brain and entering my heart – words spoken not only to Orange Horse, but to all the wonderful childhood memories waiting to be reborn: Giddy Up.
Tracey Green lives in Port Perry, Ont.