For me, it is the first opportunity to get some good concession stand food. Oh yeah, I get to watch the horses and Brianna compete as well. I love watching her do her thing. She has become quite the horse woman. She trains horses, works with multiple riders, and even competes on her own horses when she isn’t competing on one of the training horses. The weather will be cool in the morning and then as the day shifts to the afternoon we will be basking in a beautiful winter day. We will catch up with other horse parents and we will smile when good things happen, and we will come up with good reasons when the competitions don’t go our way.
The Youth Fair was one of the first events that Brianna ever did on this journey of the horseback life. Going back the past six years makes me reflect on the multiple sports journeys I embarked on through childhood and my college years. Those reflections take me through many of her same struggles but more than that what transpired during those times. Places I raced, the trips that went along with those races, places I trained, tournaments I competed in, and the things that went along with each of those events. These moments defined me and were some of the best times I recall while growing up. The times were different, and it is really hard to explain.
As I sit here and write this piece tonight I am enjoying a wonderful evening with the two loves of my life. I love technology and I am glad that we didn’t have it when I was growing up. Being able to watch things, keep up with things, and see things we may not want to see at the push of a button is awesome but if these things had been around when I was a kid I wouldn’t have had the multiple opportunities I had to do the things I got to do. Tonight, I had the urge to watch an old movie that was running across my mind. A feel-good story about a racer. To some it would be a classic, to others a mockery of the sport, and to the rest it would just be cheesy. To me it is a feel-good classic about a man chasing his dreams. I don’t have it on DVD, VHS, or saved digitally but I just went to the smart TV and asked for YouTube. I typed in Six Pack and boom, there it was. Full version in HD. The movie was from 1982 but it was here. I got to share this moment that meant so much to me with my daughter and my wife.
Shifting back to the Youth Fair tomorrow I think about this movie I just watched. Back then it was so hard to share things. He made phone calls on a pay phone, and when he went to a different town he could be invisible once again. No one knew from town to town what he had done before. Tomorrow, every event will be filmed from a phone from multiple angles by multiple people. It will be uploaded across platforms, watched live on facetime, Facebook live, or Instagram stories. If Brianna wants to share a moment it will be there now. There won’t be a search through grainy film or discs. She will simply go to her phone and find the footage from someone that is there. The funny thing is, most of the people there won’t actually watch the event and take it in as it happens. They will be watching through the screen on their phone and miss the experience of just watching the event to be there. Sometimes it is just nice to watch the event as it is happening and keep the memories in our brains and not on our phones.
Enjoy your weekend and I hope that you see things through your own eyes and not what the camera allows you to see. Make memories by seeing the event not capturing it.
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