snow days - Carmi style!
I love snow days. Why wouldn't I, right? I'm a teacher, who lives in a town with a lot of country roads. Snow is a happy thing for me. Since I grew up in a household of teachers, we usually knew ahead of time if we would be missing out on expanding our education for that day. For everyone else, I remember there was once a time when parents would listen to the radio to discover if school was not in session. This moved on to broadcasting the information on the news, or scroll across the bottom of the TV screen during your favorite prime time show. Now you can simply log onto news websites to quickly view school closings as they happen. I now receive the wondrous snow day text message from my work phone tree. I then pass on the text to my responsibility of the phone tree, and then a small celebration occurs in my household.
When I see those snow flakes fall, I am taken back to a memory of one of my perfect moments in my lifetime. Have you ever had a perfect moment? A perfect moment is something that sticks in your memory forever, without even trying to remember it. It is triggered by some surrounding stimulus, and takes you back to that moment with the power that can only be compared to a Flux-Capacitor-powered Delorian. When you recall a perfect moment, you can simply close your eyes and experience every sense of that moment again. You feel the cold winter breeze, smell the pine needles, and hear the sled cutting through the ice. A perfect moment is in a word, bliss. Its an occurrence in your life, that you were completely happy - and every time you think of it again, you are again happy.
Snowflakes trigger the memory of a perfect moment that happened to me on a snow day. I can't remember how old I was exactly. If I were a gambling person, I would say nine, maybe. That would make my brother around twelve at the time. One particular snow day, we ventured to our grandparents' house in Carmi. Our grandparents' house sits at the bottom of a glorious little hill. Our great-grandmother's house was at the top of this hill. There were thickets of trees lining both sides of the road on this hill, and it was always a great place of adventure for my brother and myself as children. But today, it was different. Today, there was snow every where. The road was slick with ice, and we brought....our sled. Our sled was NOT plastic. This was a classic sled. Iron frame that would cut right through the ice, and wood to lay across. The front has a fabulous steering system. It rode like a smooth dream. We were very excited, because the hill next to our home wasn't nearly as steep as the one in Carmi. We started out riding the sled together. It was super fun. We only ran into a tree on the side of the road about every other time. Lots of laughs. THEN, it was time to ride the sled one at a time. I went first. I laid down on the sled, griped the front steering, and stuck my feet up and out. Nick grabbed both feet, and began to run! At the perfect moment, he released my feet, and slipped to the ground - I'm sure. I took off like a lightening bolt! I still remember feeling the crisp, cold winter air cut across my face as I sliced through the ice of this hill. The smooth movement of the sled made me feel like I was gliding across a cloud. Unfortunately, as all things go, this ride was coming to an end, and fast. I looked in front of me and there was a patch of NO ice on the road. I may have been young, but expertise in sledding told me - not good. I was predicting that I would be thrown off of the sled - and in all truths I probably would have because when I was nine my weight was comparable with a balloon's. The only thing I could think to do was divert through steering. In a moment of pure panic, I over-compensated in my steerage. My sled suddenly jerked around and did a complete 180 in a time span on 0.2 seconds. This left me staring directly right back up at Nick at the top of the hill. He - who saw the entire thing - just stood there with his mouth wide open in amazement. I had not wrecked! (Half of my body was thrown sideways a bit though, and I was barely still on the sled) The moment was frozen for a split second as we stared at each other. Then, the laughter, the hollering of 'YEAH! That was AWESOME! HOLY CRAP' and quickly dragging the sled up the hill for another go happened directly after.
It was...thrilling. A moment of perfect adrenaline, followed by perfect outcome. Not many of those happen. It may seem like a really lame perfect moment, but to a nine year old girl - it was a moment to be never taken back. Although Nick and I were never able to recreate that moment again on that hill, we did have many other fun times. We really got the use out of that sled during our childhood. And that snow day in Carmi had other memories, that we still share at family get togethers. -Grandpa's truck not being able to make it up the hill. He would get a good run at it, and make it half way, and then slide right back down.
-Dad and Uncle John sledding with me and Nick.
-And Holly(the dog) running right along side of us while we slid down the hill.
The snow flakes trigger these memories. It makes me think of that perfect snow day moment. It makes me smile.
When I see those snow flakes fall, I am taken back to a memory of one of my perfect moments in my lifetime. Have you ever had a perfect moment? A perfect moment is something that sticks in your memory forever, without even trying to remember it. It is triggered by some surrounding stimulus, and takes you back to that moment with the power that can only be compared to a Flux-Capacitor-powered Delorian. When you recall a perfect moment, you can simply close your eyes and experience every sense of that moment again. You feel the cold winter breeze, smell the pine needles, and hear the sled cutting through the ice. A perfect moment is in a word, bliss. Its an occurrence in your life, that you were completely happy - and every time you think of it again, you are again happy.
Snowflakes trigger the memory of a perfect moment that happened to me on a snow day. I can't remember how old I was exactly. If I were a gambling person, I would say nine, maybe. That would make my brother around twelve at the time. One particular snow day, we ventured to our grandparents' house in Carmi. Our grandparents' house sits at the bottom of a glorious little hill. Our great-grandmother's house was at the top of this hill. There were thickets of trees lining both sides of the road on this hill, and it was always a great place of adventure for my brother and myself as children. But today, it was different. Today, there was snow every where. The road was slick with ice, and we brought....our sled. Our sled was NOT plastic. This was a classic sled. Iron frame that would cut right through the ice, and wood to lay across. The front has a fabulous steering system. It rode like a smooth dream. We were very excited, because the hill next to our home wasn't nearly as steep as the one in Carmi. We started out riding the sled together. It was super fun. We only ran into a tree on the side of the road about every other time. Lots of laughs. THEN, it was time to ride the sled one at a time. I went first. I laid down on the sled, griped the front steering, and stuck my feet up and out. Nick grabbed both feet, and began to run! At the perfect moment, he released my feet, and slipped to the ground - I'm sure. I took off like a lightening bolt! I still remember feeling the crisp, cold winter air cut across my face as I sliced through the ice of this hill. The smooth movement of the sled made me feel like I was gliding across a cloud. Unfortunately, as all things go, this ride was coming to an end, and fast. I looked in front of me and there was a patch of NO ice on the road. I may have been young, but expertise in sledding told me - not good. I was predicting that I would be thrown off of the sled - and in all truths I probably would have because when I was nine my weight was comparable with a balloon's. The only thing I could think to do was divert through steering. In a moment of pure panic, I over-compensated in my steerage. My sled suddenly jerked around and did a complete 180 in a time span on 0.2 seconds. This left me staring directly right back up at Nick at the top of the hill. He - who saw the entire thing - just stood there with his mouth wide open in amazement. I had not wrecked! (Half of my body was thrown sideways a bit though, and I was barely still on the sled) The moment was frozen for a split second as we stared at each other. Then, the laughter, the hollering of 'YEAH! That was AWESOME! HOLY CRAP' and quickly dragging the sled up the hill for another go happened directly after.
It was...thrilling. A moment of perfect adrenaline, followed by perfect outcome. Not many of those happen. It may seem like a really lame perfect moment, but to a nine year old girl - it was a moment to be never taken back. Although Nick and I were never able to recreate that moment again on that hill, we did have many other fun times. We really got the use out of that sled during our childhood. And that snow day in Carmi had other memories, that we still share at family get togethers. -Grandpa's truck not being able to make it up the hill. He would get a good run at it, and make it half way, and then slide right back down.
-Dad and Uncle John sledding with me and Nick.
-And Holly(the dog) running right along side of us while we slid down the hill.
The snow flakes trigger these memories. It makes me think of that perfect snow day moment. It makes me smile.
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