Why wear a helmet?

My helmet story begins back in the days before there were helmets. We rode in little black hardhats that came with an elastic strap. Mine was retrofitted with a “safety” chinstrap. Ironically, it often fell off the hard hat at inconvenient moments.The chinstrap made my chin break out and so I only wore my hardhat when I was jumping. I was seventeen and my horse, a talented jumper, had only a tenuous grasp of sanity. The other fact that plays into my story is that my horse would get upset and rear, then spin to the left. Always, every time and without fail.

On the day my story begins, I was heading out for a ride. I had no plans to jump but when I walked past my hardhat, for some reason, I put it on. Out into the pasture we went. Eventually, my horse began the antics that would lead to rearing and spinning. Enough of this, I decided I would fix his spotty hide once and for all, and took a death grip on his mane and braced for the left hand spin. Up we went and then for the first and only time, he spun to the right. I was ejected to the left, but with my hand in his mane, I swung under him as I fell. I can still remember the double impact as my head hit the dirt and his hoof came down on the hard hat. I can remember holding very still, wondering if I were still alive or death was a doorway into an alternate universe in which, when I opened my eyes, the horse would be gone, but I would remain.

The horse stared down at me in puzzlement, obviously wondering just why I was laying in the dirt. I sat up, obviously still in this reality, and every blood vessel in my nose down to the tiniest capillaries exploded. In seconds I was drenched in blood. My horse now stared at me in horror and somewhere a dim light of self-preservation lit in his horsey heart and he headed for home. So there I was. I had fallen off, I was covered in blood and now I had to walk home about a quarter mile. I was so angry that I burst into tears.

Not trusting myself to go into the barn with him, I went instead into the house where my mother, whom I thought remarkably unsympathetic at the time but understand better since I now have kids, looked at me and shrieked “What have you done to the horse?” and raced out of the house. She later explained that, based on the way I looked, one of us had to be dead and, Q.E.D., it wasn’t me so it was the horse.

I would like to say that my helmet epiphany began that day, but it took a judo match, an angry black belt, and a concussion that played havoc with my eyesight to convince me that I never ever wanted another head injury. And since the only way to avoid concussions was either to give up what I loved or wear a helmet, I chose the helmet. My adamant stance on helmet usage paid off, when in March of 2011, my daughter smashed into a tree on a downhill ski run. The helmet paid the ultimate price; my daughter walked away.