Best American Beginnings of Ten Stories about Ponies

Yesterday, while I patiently waited for my friends to meet me up at the mall, I managed to read 70 pages of the book The Best American Non-required Reading 2007 which I bought earlier that day, together with Jonathan Franzen’sThe Corrections, for a hundred pesos each at a local used books shop. TheBest American Nonrequired Reading is a yearly anthology of fiction and nonfiction selected annually by a committee of high school students from California and Michigan. The book also includes a selection of poetry, comics, and blogs, published during 2006.

The 2007 edition featured an interesting little segment titled “Best American Beginnings of Ten Stories about Ponies” by Wendy Molyneux, which originally appeared in Monkey Bicycle. I had a good laugh reading the article, so I thought why not share it with you? As Sadie Saxton always says, You’re welcome.

1. I saw this pony there, just standing there, just standing in the rain. And that’s when I knew I was going to leave my wife.

2. At the time this all happened I was on the run from this mean-ass pony named Chad. I owed Chad thirty thousand dollars, and I was thirty thousand dollars short.

3. I still remember that one hot summer. The way the heat made the cars seem to shimmer as they drove by us on the way to godknowswhere, the way the girls I had known all my life were suddenly women—taller and wiser than us boys—bust most of all I remember that night when we all gathered around the black-and-white TV set to watch as the first pony walked on the moon.

4. On Fridays, the ponies got paid. And after they got paid, they got drunk. And when they got drunk, you bet your ass somebody was going to get hurt or broken.

5. A lot of stuff’s been said in the papers lately about what went down at the Federated Bank that afternoon. Some people say we did it for money. Some say we did it for glory. But none of them know the real story of how it started. It started with a little girl who wanted a pony.

6. When that pony walked into my gym and said she wanted to learn how to box, I said no. And I said no for the next thirty days when she walked in asking the same thing. And then, for some reason, on the thirty-second day, I said yes.

7. The street was teeming with people jostling and shouting and waiting for the motorcade to come down the street. And what with all the noise and the excitement and the general chaos, no on thought anything of it when a pony burst past the barricades just as the president’s car came into view.

8. No one saw the pony rebellion coming. No one but Brent Steel.

9. Jeremy Chadwick had eaten one hundred corn dogs in one sitting. He had eaten seventeen blueberry pies at the country fair, taking home the blue ribbon. He had eaten an eight pound hamburger, a jar of jalapeños, and a tub of ice cream on a dare in college. One time, to impress a girl, he had even eaten sixteen pennies. But there was this one thing, just one thing, that Jeremy had never eaten.

10. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. And there was this f**king pony, too.