Some folks take sledding very seriously. I admittedly am not one of these crazed sledding zealots. I do not have a tattoo of a sled on my bicep nor do I have a variety of special sled waxes for any given snow condition. I did buy Uly a new sled for Christmas, but despite its cool design, its function (defined as going fast downhill in a relatively straight line) is abysmal. As it turned out, the cheap little plastic sled collecting dust in the garage surprisingly outperforms the sleek wooden sled. The main drawback with the plastic sled involves how it handles the bumps, or rather mishandles them. Hitting the chattering lumps on Hospital Hill results in two possibilities: 1. Your internal organs can be jarred into a thick and delicious slurry, or 2. You can be knocked headlong and bucking bronco like from the zooming piece of plastic underneath you.
Fortunately, a sledding tube was donated to Uly and I, and it offers an incomparable sledding experience. Growing up, I always had some tore up piece of junk that I would ride down the hills of Western Massachusetts like Hasselhoff rides a rescue can. Those were the days when you would drag yourself home exhausted with limp wet clothes hanging from your skeletal frame as the pale January sky darkened into night and strip down to your generic long underwear while making a cup of hot cocoa the kind with little marshmallows that would usually melt into nothingness as you draped your outerwear upon the heater to dry off. But now with the introduction of the tube, those days are over forever for Uly and I. Upon arriving back home I noticed the tube had deflated in the back of the car. I pulled it out and almost immediately noticed a small puncture on the bottom of the tube. I looked up at the sky while holding the lifeless tube in my hands and cried out to God, “Why God? Why take this too from me?” And God responded in a deep whisper that gently shook the snow from the tree limbs, “Patch kit.”
No comments:
Post a Comment