I BOUGHT MY UNBORN CHILD A HORSE

I don’t know what I was thinking but the proud Palomino horse looked lonely sitting next to the vinyl record collection in the Cambridge antique market. I bent down and patted the old girl and she touched my heart. I haggled with the owner and he said he’d take $100 for the old mare. We shook hands and the deal was sealed.

I’ve sinced named the horse, Old Paint. She was made in the early 60s and was built at a time when plastic wasn’t the go-to material. This children’s play horse is made of metal. It’s about 16 inches tall and is made for a 3 year-old. So why I bought it for my 0 year-old I’m not quite sure. Except that I despise brightly colored plastic child toys and this seemed more ‘real’. I like things that are aesthetically pleasing and I’m hoping my child will be the same. So when I find well-designed toys, I plan to get them for ‘Junior.’

The unique feature that makes this horse so cool is that you can actually ride it. There’s no place to plug the horse in to the wall outlet. There’s no door to feed it 10 d-cell batteries that will wear out in two weeks. You hop on, bounce up and down, and the weight of the child bouncing up and down causes the mechanism inside the horse to make it move forward with every bounce. It’s so cool. It promotes exercise as well as imagination. I still have a pair of cowboy boots from when I was three years old living in Conroe, Texas so I figure a hat and a six shooter should give Junior endless fun. Well, for at least 10 minutes or however long kids play with something before they get tired of it.

On the downside, my wife and I wonder if the horse is painted with lead paint so I’ll have to take it into the basement and repaint her. I’ll take pictures of the original so I can basically restore it to its original condition. I can see it was made in England, not China, but still, better to be safe. Old Paint will get a new coat of paint but she’ll still be Old Paint to me as she takes “Junior” across the plains of Massachusetts in search of open land, cattle, and free range chickens.

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