Pop! Whoosh!

My airbag safety vest was inflating. One moment you’re a horse girl doing horse girl things and the next moment you’re the Michelin Man doing horse girl things.

The last time I hit the ground without intending to, it was at the hands of a stranger who was beating me. Recovery took months of traumatic brain injury rehab. After that I had returned to horses to heal.

Now, Mr. Tall, Dark & Handsome was dumping me.

Marvelous.

My back. My tailbone. My skull.

Please, no. I can’t do this. I can’t get hurt again. My health insurance sucks.

In the late ‘70s and through the 1980s, New York City-area horse racing was huge. Trainers and owners had no space for also-rans, so a lot of green, or young and inexperienced, standardbreds and thoroughbreds were sold for almost nothing. In New Jersey stables, those horses were spun into second careers, often as hunters and jumpers, though some did real well in dressage, too. (Dressage. No? Hang on. Martha Stewart and Snoop “We call that ‘swerving’ in the hood” Dogg will educate you in less than 6 minutes.)

I had a knack for staying on the squirreliest greenies through spooks, though not so much when it came to jump refusals or hell-for-leather bucks. One of my then-instructors, any time she tumbled, landed on her feet. My style was (and remains, turns out) more clump of human plastered to the ground. As riders do, though, I always finished the ride, ouchy but otherwise OK. (Arthritis of the everything would set in years later as a result of all those falls, and that’s a special load of suckola, but in the great scheme? I know riders whose x-rays resemble a hardware store.)

I left horses in my late 20s but returned three years ago, after the attack, to reconnect in a safe, peaceful place that was nothing like where I live.

At the new barn, Victoria, an enormous British warmblood, became my partner. More than that. In Yiddish: beshert. I heard the word once, in an interview years ago, and tucked it away for later.

Beshert.

That mare challenged and tutored and soothed me. True, she had a spook: During roughly one in 10 rides she shied abruptly at certain sights or sounds with a kooky sideways-and-forward dash and hop. But those childhood years on greenies had schooled me to anticipate a spook, to prevent or minimize it. And frankly? Her spooks were kind of fun. The possibility kept me focused, and I felt a small sense of accomplishment every time I rode through one. You can’t dwell on a spook, or it will unnerve you. Instead you do a circle or whatever to show the horse that invisible Uncle Wild-Eyed Monkeypants, or whatever had caused the spook, may have been in the arena corner at one time, but is no more, so let’s move on with our ride so we can get to the really fun stuff, like eating carrots and apples and taking bridles apart to clean them.

Quite a competitor in her younger years, Victoria well into her 20s was an absolute demon jumper, known to grab the bit, set her jaw and bear down on obstacles like a Tomahawk missile.

She wasn’t dangerous. I was never unsafe. Girlfriend, fast and mighty, simply loved leaping stuff.

Sometimes she was a bossy-boots. You’re not supposed to let horses get away with naughty stuff. But here was my reasoning. This smart and wise mare earned the right to do things her own way now and then. I swear she had a lesson plan for me. Victoria voice: I’m going to show you what I’m capable of, all my muscles and tendons and ligaments firing away. And then the next round, missy, you’re going to use some skills so it doesn’t happen again, and if you do, I’ll have taught you well. Mrs. Yoda, that one.

For example. Once we did a straight line of two low fences, in what should have been a calm, unhurried six strides. (Reader, think: We’re having fun, tra, la, la, jump, beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-beat, jump, tra, la, la. That was fun! Let’s do it again and again!)

About 40 feet before the first rail it was clear that this particular exercise would lack tra, la, la et seq. I had a choice: slow her immediately — necessary if this were an out-of-control situation, which it wasn’t — or let her brag and take care of me, and next time I’d follow the lesson plan and get my pathetic self together.

I went for the overly-enthusiastic-but-trustworthy-very-large-baby-sitter option.

One stride after the first fence, and heading toward the next, I started laughing. The six-stride plan was turning into — Victoria voice again — We’re doing this in five and maybe even four, not six, because this is a baby line for babies. (Think: Jump, beeeeeeat, beeeeeeat, beeeeeeat, beeeeeeat — enormous strides. The theme song has exactly one lyric: “Wheeeeeeeeee!” a la Liesel in “The Sound of Music.” Remember? In the gazebo scene, post-kiss with Rolf, the bicycle-riding telegram delivery stooge turned Nazi Youth poster child/Von Trapp family traitor tooting his dumbass whistle in the graveyard. Wheeeeeeeee!)

With guidance from my coach, the rest of the lesson went real well. Miss Thing, all proud of herself, settled into six strides.

All these many months later, where did it go oopsie with Mr. Tall, Dark & Handsome, and why was I taking on the appearance of Bib, the Michelin Man?

Big as Victoria was, Mr. TD&H is a land yacht. He moves so big that you feel him thinking of moving big. As a result of his superb dressage training — I had nothing to do with it — he can propel himself laterally as deftly as he can go forward. He’s what we call a schoolmaster, or a horse who knows advanced steps like that and can teach a rider how to ask for them. I mean, ideally. In my case, with a lot of adult supervision, practice, Mars in retrograde and a full moon rising.

Zipping sideways is no fun, though, when Mr. TD&H spots invisible Uncle Wild-Eyed Monkeypants and decides it’s a good moment to act startled and throw in a little lateral this ‘n’ that.

During a fast-ish canter.

On a slightly downward slope.

With a coach on the ground and two other riders in the arena, one on a green horse described, accurately but quite lovingly, as a — I’m paraphrasing — full-on dum-dum-head.

We zigged, Mr. TD&H and I, and we zagged. Ta-da! The next time along that side, I could tell he was thinking about The Thing That Spooks Me, and I blocked him before he demonstrated another half-pass or whatever other spontaneous dressage antics he could demonstrate.

The third time around, I wasn’t focused. Up popped the wildeyed-and-monkeypantsed-one-that-only-horses-see. We got the zig, but at the zag we bid one another adieu. (Speaking of “The Sound of Music”: “Adieu! Adieu! To yuh and yuh and yuh!” … Sorry.)

For this I was prepared. My former coach had insisted on the airbag safety vest, one of those items that costs a bleeding fortune and you hope you never have to use it. I’d worn it for every ride since I purchased it and never set it off. Alas.

As I hurtled through space, the pressure and tension on the vest’s lanyard triggered a built-in CO2 cartridge, just like a car’s airbag.

Pop! Whoosh! The vest felt like a very, very tight hug, an instant air cushion around ribs and pelvis, hips, tailbone, spine and c-spine.

Splat.

My back and tailbone hit first, landing on what felt like an extra-firm mattress. Neat trick to feel no pain after a 70ish-inch drop.

My skull hit next. My helmet — another costs-a-bloody-fortune-and-hope-you-never-have-to-use-it item — has a multidirectional impact protection system, or MIPS. The technology is really quite simple. It allows the skull to slip, so some energy dissipates rather than beans your brain. It’s supposed to prevent concussion or worse.

OK. This is nothing like last time, meeting asphalt with my bare head. When I had tip-top health insurance. And now I don’t. But I’m fine. We’ll watch for concussion but I’m not worried.

When I started riding almost 50 years ago, air vests like this didn’t exist. Helmets weren’t called helmets, but hunt caps: velvet-covered hunks of plastic with elastic chin straps, a nod more to chasing-foxes-on-horseback fashion than to furthering safety. Today, velvet has almost totally vanished — tragedy! — and helmet models have names like Defender and Trauma Void.

The horse world is divided on whether such fancypants equipment can prevent catastrophic injuries. Participants in an online horsey forum had chest pain and shortness of breath when a Virginia Tech study showed that some relatively inexpensive helmets offered better protection than some of the trendiest looks (cough because priciest cough) that are common at super-duper-big-big-big competitions.

Here’s what I know.

The morning I tumbled off TD&H, I mounted again, completed the lesson and headed home to an epsom salts soak (thanks, Jo!) and two days of naproxen and Tylenol for soreness and a mild headache. In the past, a fall like that meant two weeks or more of body aches. I don’t want to think of the potential head trauma.

For the vest I got two replacement CO2 cartridges. I hope it was a waste of 80 bucks.

But then: This is horses we’re talking about. We faw down an’ go boom, as Eddie Cantor sings. And we check ourselves and we check our horses and we get back on and we try again. Always we try again.