OCALA, FL—”Did you see that?” exclaimed Adult-Amateur rider Judy Scott on the way out of the ring after completing her second, 36-and-over hunter trip of the afternoon. “There was something in those bushes!” 

Scott had nearly aced her round aboard longtime mount, Gotham City. Unfortunately, a missed lead change—not her first of the post-winter circuit—dropped Scott from a prospective high-70s/low-80s score into the mid-60s. 

“I’m so sorry I missed that change! As I was heading toward the corner after the diagonal single, I looked straight ahead toward the end of the ring, just like you always tell me to,” Scott told her trainer, Sarah Ketcham. “But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the bushes near the rail to my left were rustling! 

“I became completely preoccupied with what was happening. I couldn’t tell if it was a squirrel, or some kind of bird. Heck, this is Ocala—for all I know, it could have been a wild pig! 

“And then I got to wondering whether it might actually be one of the ring guys, who was about to leap the fence and start adjusting a jump in the middle of my course. That’s happened before to me, you know,” Scott said.

“By that time, I’d realized, Oh! We are heading toward the corner on the diagonal! I need to make a lead change!”

“And so, that’s when missed your change?” Ketcham asked, wearily. 

“Not at all,” Scott continued. “I didn’t get that far. After passing the rustling bush, I suddenly realized that the atmospheric pressure all around us had dropped. 

“The pressure dropped?” Ketcham asked.

“Like a stone!” Scott replied.

“I thought it might be some kind of microburst, or even the start of one of those little dust devils that form out of the blue, and are always showing up on the news? Did you see that one that made all those Little Leaguers cry and run for their lives into the dugout? 

“In any case, the air became very cold, and I instantly got goose bumps, and I felt my teeth begin to chatter. I know Gotham sensed it, too, because he slowed up, and he seemed to be lifting up and looking around. And at that very moment, when I knew I should have been shifting my weight a little bit to cue the change—”

“You missed your lead change then?” Ketcham, face in her palm, interjected. 

“No, not then,” Scott retorted. “Everyone knows that dust devils have only killed two people in all of human history, and of course, I wasn’t expecting to be the third. However, that particular pause was enough for me to take a breath and check in with myself, and wouldn’t you know it? At that very second, my sciatica decided to flare up!” 

According to Scott, the intense, radiating pain down her lower back and buttocks has been an on-again-off-again problem since her third son was born. “I’ve sat-in on several international pain seminars, and even attended long-weekend retreats centering around healing energy sessions in order to cope with it,” Scott recalled. “Sciatica really is a beast!” 

When asked if Scott was always so comprehensive in her post-round debriefings, her trainer just shook her head. “You think that was bad?” Ketcham said. “You should have heard what happened to her the time she put a three in the two-stride.” 

More satire from Nina Fedrizzi:

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