For reasons unbeknownst to me, my mother had a stained glass tchotchke when I was growing up that was etched with a boldfaced lie about little girls being made of sugar and spice and everything nice. The stained glass has since moved to a less prominent location over time, perhaps in correlation to my sister and I disproving its claims as we grew.

Over time I also discovered other lies about little girls: wanting to be a ballerina, liking the colour pink, and the vague notion that every little girl wants a pony.

I was not that kid. Nope. Not one bit. Yes, horses are majestic creatures, but no, I don’t want to be anywhere near them, especially since we can thank the Second Industrial Revolution for the age of automobiles.

I may reconsider my stance on horses given current gas prices (thanks, Putin!), but I’d sooner become a convert to cycling as my primary means of transportation before I’d choose a horse over an automobile.

Reasons to favour cars over horses:

• slightly less poop involved
• more comfortable in rain/snow/heat/cold/wind/sunlight/darkness
• a car won’t kick you if you try to put groceries in its trunk
• usually less of a barnyard smell
• under most circumstances, it’s generally less traumatic when a car stops working

But beyond that, horses are just godless killing machines. My views on horses were cemented during my awkward tweenage years of awkward horseback riding lessons, with many Saturdays spent trying my damnedest to understand the mechanics of correctly staying atop a slowly trotting horse. It’s harder than it sounds (or at least, it was to me): you have to actively shove yourself up and off the saddle in time with the horse, otherwise you get to feel what it’s like if your ass were to become the ball part of a horse-based paddle ball.

Even when I figured out the whole trotting mystery, horses still fucking sucked. And it’s understandable: what kind of animal wants to have a chunk of solid metal in its mouth, wear a girdle, and carry a flailing human around on its back, all at the same time? Especially when the human has access to a riding crop and heeled boots.

I tried to be mindful of the discomfort aspect in my dealings with the horses. I never carried a crop for the same reason I refuse to use a choke chain on a dog. But like dogs, horses can smell fear and they will use it to their advantage.

There’s apparently a saying in riding that it takes seven falls to make a good rider, and I know I’ll never be one because I have the grip of someone holding on for dear life. Which I was. It seemed that even non-equestrian wildlife in Botswana evolved to be deadly or otherwise capable of maiming feckless teenagers, and the acacia trees were no exception. These trees looked like the background decor out of a movie set featuring Hell, covered in 2-inch thorns resembling toothpicks dipped in white paint. And the horses loved to drag people through them, slowly savoring every denim-piercing moment of pain it brought to yelping riders.

Being stabbed by an acacia tree on a weekly basis was tolerable, mostly, but the horses eventually figured this out and resorted to more extreme measures. One tried to roll over and scratch itself in the dirt while I was on its back, leaving me to jump off barely in time to avoid having my leg crushed underneath the capsizing beast. A different horse taught me what it felt like to have a horse stand on my foot. (It hurt.) Yet another horse tried to gently expel me from its saddle by bucking. When it failed to do so, it ran at full speed back to the stables, which in retrospect was rather considerate, given that there was literally nothing else to stop it from galloping away to murder me somewhere in the Kalahari.

My least favourite occasions were the numerous lessons in momentum. Horses are neurotic creatures, and there was plenty for them to fear in the African bush: baboons, giraffes, trees, cars, mining explosions, piles of rocks, the errant blue plastic bag or two, the whistle of a distant train, and occasionally water. Encountering any of these horrors would either send a panicked horse fleeing in the opposite direction, or if they were already in motion, cause them to abruptly halt while my body tried to continue its forward trajectory. For added confusion, the same murderous dressage horse that tried to buck me also liked to spice things up by trotting sideways, diagonally, or backwards while channeling its inner drunkard at random. I don’t think that horse liked me very much.

You might be wondering if anything good ever happened to me where horses were concerned, given that I was not even remotely good at any equestrian activities. Beyond the aching calves and butt, the bowlegged walk, the perpetual horse smells, and related hip surgery decades later, it wasn’t all terrible. I might not have had the fancy riding ring experience of a lush green Virginia farm, but I got to ride in the dry wilderness of Botswana while learning about wildlife, insects, and the town from my riding instructor. The rocking horse sensation of being atop a cantering horse thrilled me, kicking up a lovely breeze during those mornings just before the day would become too scorching. And of course, I did have my favourite horses, and can still remember all of their names nearly three decades later.

But all that sentiment, experience, and beauty still isn’t enough to get me literally back in the saddle. Unless, of course, we’re talking miniature ponies wearing pink tutus. Then I’m all over that, with the giddiness of a little girl getting a pony for her birthday.

Goldfrapp: Ride a White Horse