Aspiring directors, or maybe just the people who made Madame Web, please pay close attention to the following TikTok. In just three and a half minutes, it tells a complete story that will warm you and charm you before ultimately leaving you heartbroken for both a little girl’s dreams and the state of the country.
Mom Annie Muscato took to TikTok to share the apparently adorable story of her daughter’s tireless campaign to make her horse her class pet. Annie explained that as soon as her eight-year-old got home from school one day she excitedly told her mom how she was aiming to convince her principal to let her horse, Salsa, be the school mascot. As Annie explained, Salsa is a “1000lb American quarter horse,” so the odds of this logistically happening were slim, but she was willing to let her daughter roll with it for now.
Throughout the evening, though, Annie’s eight-year-old — who has apparently been making to-do lists since she was three and is a second-grader reading at a fifth-grade level — kept making her campaign more and more ambitious. Proving herself to be Leslie Knope from Parks & Recreation reincarnated, Annie’s daughter devised an impressive plan in which she could get all the kids in school to sign her petition, which she would then present to the principal for approval.
She even put a lot of thought into how Salsa the horse would be able to travel to and from school and where they would be kept during the day — which Annie admits mostly involved her “hauling the horse back and forth.” Her eight-year-old’s comprehensive plan of action was so compelling and convincing that Annie got to the point where she was seriously thinking about how she might pull it off if the principal agreed.
And then, suddenly, the next morning Annie’s daughter completely changed her mind about bringing Salsa to school for one utterly devastating reason.
“Mom, I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring Salsa to school,” Annie recalls her daughter telling her. The stunned mom asked why she’d had such a change of heart, to which the eight-year-old replied, “Well, I was thinking about it, and you can’t hide a horse in a closet, so I’ll have no way to keep her safe in an active shooter situation and I don’t want her to die.” A tearful Annie then concludes, “And then she went and put on her shoes and got her breakfast bar and I just…”
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t encountered such a genre-changing, gut-punch of a plot twist since Bridge of Terabithia (for ’90s kids, see My Girl). TikTok users did not sign up for this when they clicked on the video, so the comments are full of stunned and weepy reactions. “I was ready for Salsa to be a class pet and now I’m crying,” read one comment, speaking for all of us. International users were particularly floored. “I’m Canadian, the ending made me actually gasp,” shared one. “I never thought about their reality, this breaks me so much, children should not be living like this.”
Tragically, Annie’s daughter’s heartbreaking but undeniable argument is well-founded. 2023 saw a total of 346 school incidents occur across the country, resulting in 248 victims either wounded or killed (not including the shooters). 2024 looks to be no different. By Jan. 5, four shootings had already taken place, including an incident at an Iowa school that left a sixth-grader dead and five other victims wounded.
Annie’s TikTok is a powerful short film that exemplifies the gut-wrenching reality that American children are growing up in, that you’d hope it would raise awareness if it received a bigger audience. At least, it sounds like Annie’s daughter is a passionate and intelligent person who could well go on to use her positive attitude, organization skills, and knack for galvanizing a crowd to make some positive changes in the world when she’s grown up.
