Does your teenage daughter love ponies, boys, or both? With the school holidays imminent in the northern hemisphere, teenage girls in many countries will be weighing up this major dilemma.
To help them, and to help parents help them, here are some, er, useful tips…
Ponies do not normally get big problems with zits
Why ponies are better than boyfriends
Ponies’ feet and shoes usually don’t smell, unlike a boyfriend’s stinky socks and trainers
You can’t turn a boyfriend out into the field when you want some peace and quiet
You’re not likely to have to put up with a pony’s mum, dad, brothers and sisters at Christmas time
Your pony always thinks you look great, even when you haven’t straightened your hair
Ponies do not normally play, or watch on TV, football, rugby or other boring sports
Ponies do not need to be entertained by PlayStation, Wii, Xbox or other electronic activities
Your girlfriends won’t have any interest in chatting up your pony
Your pony won’t get jealous if you take your friend’s pony out alone for a hack
Your girlfriends won’t have any interest in chatting up your pony
Ponies are not interested in shaving their heads or getting tattoos, body piercings, or holes through their earlobes the diameter of the Blackwall Tunnel
If you want to dump a pony, you just sell it or put it out on loan
You won’t get upset if your pony forgets to send you a Valentine’s card
After you’ve sold or loaned your pony, you know it won’t phone or send you miserable texts at 3 o’clock in the morning
You know your pony would never dump you – well, not in that way, anyway
Ponies’ friends are not normally loud and shouty, and don’t ignore you
Ponies do not normally get big problems with zits
You’ll never have to stand out in the pouring rain to watch your pony play soccer or rugby
Ponies do not play drums or loud guitar music in terrible rock bands
Ponies do not have small, tinny hatchback cars with 900 watts’ worth of stereo system blaring
Ponies’ stables are not littered with a half-metre depth of empty Coke cans, week-old, mouldy takeaway curry leftovers, school books, laptops and dirty laundry
Why boyfriends are better than ponies
Feeding your boyfriend a McDonalds is a lot easier and warmer than trying to tie up a haynet in the dark on a freezing night
If your boyfriend goes lame or gets ill, your parents won’t need to pay his vet’s bills
If your boyfriend gets tummy ache, you won’t need to walk him around and around a chilly yard until the vet gets there
If your boyfriend gets ill, your parents won’t need to pay his vet’s bills
Your boyfriend will usually get someone else to clip his hair, and you don’t have to pay for it
Boyfriends are much less likely to mistake your new blonde hair extensions for yummy haylage and so won’t be inclined to eat them
Boyfriends don’t normally object to getting into a trailer or lorry/truck
Boyfriends are usually (but not always) easier for non-horsey parents to understand
You can communicate with a boyfriend without using more than one or two aids
Boyfriends buy their own shoes, brush their own hair and go to the dentist by themselves
Boyfriends will come indoors out of a muddy, rainy field without you having to go and fetch them
What other advice do you have for pony-mad / boy-mad teenage girls this summer?
Please share your views in the comments!
Excerpted from “The Pony Lover’s Joke Book” by Suzan St Maur… on all the Amazons. You’ll find the UK version here.
With grateful thanks for the use of this wonderful cartoon (above right) by the late and much-missed Norman Thelwell, to the Thelwell Estate 2013.
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