Get off your hobbyhorse and hear this sad tale

Sometimes a painful memory jumps out of nowhere to smack you upside the head. You're suddenly 2 again, wondering why your sister bullied you.

That's what happened to me while reading about a new sports craze in Finland.

People there, particularly young girls, are participating in what they call hobbyhorsing – a "sport" where competitors race through a course of hurdles and barriers while "riding" a stick horse. They also parade around on their stick horses, trying to look regal.

Yes. They're mimicking the Olympics sports like dressage and show jumping.

While straddling a pretend horse, the kind of toy that most of us leave behind when we enter kindergarten.

Video disseminated by The Associated Press of a championship event (!) showed exclusively young girls. No boys. No adults. It looked like (and may have been) video from an all-girls middle school event.

They weren't riding horses. They rode stick horses!

It was ridiculous. Girls running around (some "galloping," in an apparent effort to appear more real) in a gymnasium while hurdling and dodging through a maze. Kind of impressive, in a way, but . . .  then my memory came. Again, as it has over the decades.

I once had a stick horse, a story I previously told in this space. My sister is 2½ years older than me, which seems unimportant now, but was very important when I was 2 and shared a bedroom with her. She was twice as old as me!

The stick horse was one of my favorite toys, a beloved red-and-white steed that "carried" me around the house while I shot with my fingers at various people. My sister knew I loved Old Red (a name I'm giving it now, to make it seem more beloved). She probably resented it. At least that allows the rest of the story to make sense.

Because in a moment that is indelibly impressed on me (and which I repeat at nearly every family gathering), my sister took my stick horse, made it into a bridge between our parallel twin beds and bounced on it.

And bounced.

And bounced.

Until Old Red broke.

I was heartbroken. My sister broke my favorite toy, with no good reason. She apologized, saying it was an accident (my 2-year-old self rejected her explanation, having seen her bouncing on it). My parents taped up Old Red and I resumed my daily patrol around our home, albeit on a horse that would never be the same.

I loved Old Red.

I loved him so much that had my sister not broken him and had I been born decades later as a girl in Finland (granted, those are three major changes), I might have been one of the hobbyhorse racers.

Also, had she not broken Old Red, my sister might not have tried to appease me years later (after repeatedly hearing this story) by buying me a replacement.

I was an adult. I eventually got rid of it, a decision I now regret because it's obvious what I should have done for revenge.

No, not to compete in a Finnish hobbyhorse event.

I should have cut off the stick horse's head and had one of my nieces or nephews place it on their mother's bed while she slept.

Message sent.

Without the nonsense of a fake Finish sport.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.