Snapshots of a Modest Life

Sledding (Part 2)

(Before reading this you might want to check out the first part of this story)

Upon discovering the minefield of cow pies, my brothers and I prepared to attack the hill like never before. We knew that getting down the hill would take shrewd negotiations of the cow pies, we would have to steer. Our first attempts were miserable failures. We would start down the hill doing some strategic leaning, and end up with our faces in the snow. Time and time again we tried this, until we finally made it all the way down the hill, leaving an S-shaped path behind us.

One thing we hadn’t realized at the beginning of the expedition was that some of the cow pies had been dropped early that morning and they had not had time to freeze solid. The exterior appeared the same as all the others, but the insides were still soft and smelly. I discovered this phenomenon the hard way.

We had finally mastered the technique of leaning to navigate the hill; at least, that’s what we thought. The run began as all the others had, but on this occasion, I took a lean a little bit too far, steering us over a rather substantial cow pie. Our craft was thrown off balance, and we were sent sprawling in the snow. My lean caused me to be thrown one way, and my brothers the other. I hit the snow on my side and began rolling, why waste a perfectly good walk up the hill? I did not notice the cow pie ahead of me. I rolled over it and hear a definite crunch-squish sound, and, well, let say the odor wasn’t so nice either. I had discovered that candy isn’t the only thing that comes hard on the outside, soft on the inside.

By the time I got to the bottom of the hill much of the manure had rubbed off my jacket onto the snow, leaving dark spots on the otherwise white hill. The smell, however, had not rubbed off. My brothers doubled over in laughter as I huffed and puffed about it. Eventually I got over it, and we continued our sledding.