Another One Bites The Dust

So my good friend Lil'emo got home from her Reno volleyball tournament - read about it on her blog; see "Freinds Blogs" at left - three days ago and so yesteray she came over to say hi. Well she happened to catch me messing around with my horse. I put together a curb bridle for him and wanted to see if it fit him...well I ended up riding him bareback out in the pasture to "see how he worked in it". If you know me, you know that's not why I was riding him :D So when Lil'emo came over I was still riding and I offered to let her ride Smokey too. She decided to "take me up on that".
So she got on my horse and her and I had a long conversation while she sat on my horse and I sat on a creaky old table that was sitting out in the pasture. We had used it as a mounting block and Lil'emo decided to dismount onto it, too, when our conversation was over.
Right at Lil'emo put her first leg on the table, Smokey decided to walk off, dragging Lil'emo - and the table - along with him. So the table fell over, grazed Smokey on the side and ended up under the horse. Lil'emo ended up in the same position. This confused my poor horse and Smokey took off prancing, reins dragging on the ground. By some miracle his prancing hooves didn't hit Lil'emo and both horse and rider survived.
Later Lil'emo asked me "Does that count as my first time falling off a horse?" I thought about it for a second, then replied, "No...is that your first time falling off a table?"
After Lil'emo's flying dismount, I got on my horse and rode him around the pasture some more. Eventually I decided I wanted to go chase Banjo, our goat, around, as I often do when I ride Smokey (see "Monthly Post Archive", June 2007, and the post "Rodeo Star Wanna-Be's"). So my sister brought in the goat and I let Smokey at it.
We spent about ten minutes chasing the goat around. Finally I stopped Smokey along the fenceline, with Banjo panting beside us. I remember turning sideways on my horse and looking at my sister and Lil'emo and saying "OK, I think we're done." Then everything happened really really fast.
I remember feeling Smokey completelly explode out from under me, and as I was shrieking "Oh my gosh!!!" and falling off the bolting horse, I saw Banjo making a mad dash for the other side of the feild. I didn't put two-and-two together at the time, and I remember thinking "Oh my gosh, I'm going to land on my head, and I don't have a helmet on." So I did some sort of fancy flip in the air - how klutzy old me managed to pull it off is a mystery - and I ended up landing hard on my side.
When I got up I almost couldn't breath. The wind was almost knocked out of me, but not quite, and when I finally stood upright and started laughing, my sister and friend laughed with me. Then my sister plainly asked "...what just happened?"
So the three of us started piecing the story together. Once all three point of views were joined, we had a pretty good idea of what had happened.
My sister and Lil'emo remembered seeing Banjo dash for the other side of the pasture, as had I. However, turned around like I was, I hadn't seen my horse's ears go back and his neck snake out, obviously interested in chasing the goat; that explained the random bolt. I remembered flying backward when Smokey bolted forward, which is why I fell; I wasn't moving with the horse, not at all. We all decided I must have slid off backward and spun in the air, landing on my left hip, facing away from the fence; if I had fallen forward I would have been on the opposite hip facing the fence. And Lil'emo cheerfully added that I hit the ground, hard, and then "bounced". What a pleasant picture, all together.
Well, besides a bruised hip, sore wrist and dirty elbow, I was perfectly fine. Lil'emo managed to damage only her pride (she fell off a table, for goodness sakes!). And Smokey survived both falls without injury.
At the end of the day Lil'emo helped me feed both horses, all four goats and the barn cats like a good friend, and then I headed over to her place to watch movies. We stayed up until 5 in the morning watching "Overboard", "A Walk To Remember", and "You've Got Mail". We actually got to watch the sun come back up outside!!
I still can't figure out how me and my best friend managed to fall off the same horse, on the same day, within an hour of eachother...let's just only we could pull it off. But hey, that's how we roll ;)