Christmases Past, No. 1: A Horse With No Name

I’ve been digging around in the vast photo archives and thinking about Christmases past. I told Tim the other day that I’ve now reached that point in my life when I’d be inclined to sit on the front porch and ramble on about the past, except we have only two months of the year in Houston when the weather, mosquitoes, and palmetto bugs cooperate. Plus I can’t coerce the dogs to sit still and listen to me.

So maybe I should change the name of this journal to An Aries’ Rocking Chair.

I’ve never made it a secret that I adore all of my nephews and nieces, and the firstborn of these was Daniel. I was thrilled by his birth one November until I figured out at Christmas that he knocked me right out of the family baby slot and sucked up a sickeningly large number of presents. Still, he was pretty cool, and it was his age two Christmas when we had a true meeting of the minds.

He woke up that morning to find this:

And so began the family effort to offer horse names for his consideration. My sister is the horse person in our family, and I’m sure she gave him lots of appropriate suggestions. None of them stuck.

Finally I said, “Hey, what about Fido?”

His eyes lit up.

And he and Fido began their adventures together.

10 thoughts on “Christmases Past, No. 1: A Horse With No Name”

  1. Oh man, I remember horses like that. Isn’t it funny how toys evolve over the years? These days you wouldn’t dream of sitting a child on anything made of aluminum pipes and metal springs, but back then Santa was all “Sure kid, hop on!”

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