Sledding Dirty

            On Little Rock AFB we lived at the bottom of a steep hill—a hill down which I learned to ride a bike, a hill that provided a buffer from the annoying kid who messed with Benji—took his food and taunted him and ended up with a chewed up face.  But there’s one memory about that hill that stick out right now.

            Christmas Day 1983, or maybe 1984, was one to remember.  My brothers and I raked in a boatload of Star Wars and He-Man action figures.  Well, to us it seemed like a lot.  It probably wasn’t, but who cares?  It’s the memories that count, right?  I think it was that Christmas that we received Castle Greyskull and the Ewok village play sets.  We were in heaven, but that was nothing compared to the fact that it had snowed!

            This was the first Christmas I remember being white.  There may have been others, but this one I actually remember being excited for the slow-falling fat crystals.  I remember trying to teach tiny David to catch them on his tongue, but he didn’t like the cold and wet on his little face.  In reality, the snow wasn’t that deep or impressive (looking at the pictures now)—kind of crusty, with chunks of ice strewn throughout—but to us it was a small bit of paradise.

            Marc got the crazy idea to go sledding.  None of us kids had ever been (that I could recall), and it became an instant obsession.  There was one problem: no sleds.  But for my dad, our personal MacGyver, it was no problem.  He simply cut up the waxed cardboard boxes our toys came packaged in, and Shazzam! Instant sleds.

            After what seemed like hours, Mom finally called us (three boys and Dad) in for dinner.  We had worn the snow through to the grass, but we begged for one last run down the hill on our makeshift sleds.

As we trudged up the hill for one more run, Dad watched us struggle up the hill.  “Is that how you boys have been getting up the hill?” he asked.

            “Uh huh.” Marc nodded.

            We would clamber up a slick smaller part of the hill with our cardboard sleds in tow, grab a frozen rock, and haul ourselves up to the next part of the hill, where we could get a foothold before pushing on to the summit.

            “Every time?”

            “Yep.”

            “You know what you’ve been holding onto, don’t you?”  Dad’s smile grew.

            “Uh….”

            “That’s Benji’s frozen dog poop!”

            And that was the end of that game.