Never in a million years did I ever think I'd take a photo like this.
Well, I guess that's not entirely true. The morning of the show, as I was driving up the winding curves of Alltech Lane towards the arena, marveling at the giant clouds of gnats that were so thick I mistook them at first for patches of fog, I did say out loud to myself, "I'm winning a glossy prize model today." I laughed out loud after I said it - how utterly ridiculous - but I had a feeling.
It's happened before. When I worked with chronically mentally ill adults, I used to randomly sense things about patients; more often than not, the crisis phone would ring a day or two later, or we'd get a call that the patient had presented for evaluation at the hospital. It happened often enough to freak out my boss.
Two weeks prior to BreyerFest, at my bowling league, we all bought our individual 50/50 tickets and our team 50/50 tickets as usual. When they announced that it was time for the drawing, I looked at our tickets, then at my teammates, and said, "Someone at this table is winning tonight." And we did, on a group ticket.
I don't really believe in precognition or psychic abilities or willing things into reality by saying them out loud. I'm way too logic-based for that. But maybe, once in awhile, something aligns just right and logic takes a back seat to what the universe wants to happen.
The horse that won the glossy prize model is a regular run G1 Morgan Mare (#5038, made from 1976-1987) that I found via an advertised yard sale on Craigslist in August 2012. The ad just mentioned Breyers, so I wasn't sure what to expect. When I arrived, there were five of them all jumbled up in a box - a springtime frolic Ashley, a dark palomino G3 Standing Stock Horse from the Riding Academy set, a buckskin G1 Morgan Stallion, a leopard appaloosa G1 QHS, and the Morgan Mare, who I named Clarissa. The Ashley was priced at $3; the rest were $1 apiece. Five models for $7, and three of them G1s? Not a bad deal at all.
Being all thrown together in the box, I expected the worst, but Clarissa was pristine and had really nice shading. I don't show my minis all that much anymore (because I'm usually judging them!) but Clarissa has made the table probably a dozen times. She's accumulated a bunch of 2nd through 5th place ribbons in her show career. Never first place, though. She was always a bridesmaid, never a bride.
Then she did this at BreyerFest Live. I was beside myself - she'd finally come out on top! At one of the craziest shows there is, where you could put a horse with two dozen NAN cards and multiple NAN championships on the table and it might not get a single look. And she achieved my solitary goal for the show, which was getting a single ribbon out of 40 models shown. In my first class of the day!
I would have been happy enough with just that.
I put her back up for section callbacks, but didn't expect her to really do anything there. First place in the Arabian class was a LOVELY bay G1 Arab Stallion, and a mulberry Alborozo SM had taken first in the Andalusian/Lusitano class. If it were my callback table and I were judging purely on breed and conformation, I would pin both of those over the G1 Morgan Mare - even a really nice one like Clarissa. That's fully what I expected to happen in the callback class.
The G1 Arab Stallion was announced as section reserve, which made sense to me - as I said, he'd have been one of my picks. I thought sure they'd call the Alby as section champ. But then they said, "Clarissa, owned by Melissa Grant."
I'm positive my friend Macie shrieked even louder than I did, as she was sitting right next to me. My friend Chesna came over, high-fived or hugged me (I don't even remember at this point), and said, "See? And you weren't even gonna show!"
She was right - I almost didn't. My mental health was so, so terrible all spring, and getting ready for BFL felt like too much. I also didn't think I could compete on a stage as large (or unpredictable) as BFL. In the weeks leading up to BFL, I drafted a few emails to Michelle, backing out, but never hit send because my friends talked me back into showing, every time I tried to quit.
Shortly after I floated back to my table with Clarissa and my prize model, my friend Korin handed me this sticker, which could not have been more appropriate or more meaningful.
My day was made right there, but I still had the entire rest of the show to go. No other model did as well as Clarissa, but I still came home with 10 ribbons! That's way more than I expected given the show and the size of the classes. Here are all my winners:
I was gonna talk about each one in detail, but I'll save that for my Show Stoppers series once I get the blog back to normal in August. This post is getting long enough already.
I never expected to enjoy BFL as much as I did, and it wasn't just the prize model that made the day fun. I thought I'd be running around like a maniac and missing classes left and right, but the show was extremely well-paced (we were done by 3:00!) and yet easy to follow, so I mostly sat and gabbed with my friends all day. It was the highest-stakes show I've ever done, by a lot, but it didn't really feel like that most of the time. [Except waiting for that final overall callback table to be judged. I thought my stomach was going to eat itself, even though I knew in my gut that Clarissa had done all she was going to do.] Chunk brought us some amazing fried chicken and sides for lunch. I got to cheer on my friends Mackenzie, Donna, Rachel, Amanda, Jackie, and Korin when they also won Shiny Prize Things, and also cheered on Macie as she tried to complete the ribbon rainbow. It's the most fun I've had at a show in a really, really long time.
Moral of the story: if you have friends who believe in you when you don't believe in yourself, friends who know you well enough to understand that you'll have a good time if you just give it a shot, friends who tell you that you can do something when you think you can't - keep those people close to you, cherish them, and listen to them, because they're probably right.
