Winter Memory

I thought since everyone else is sharing a winter/snow memory, it's only fair that I do the same. (For the free pass post to the query contest Sun versus Snow go here. For information on the contest and our 15 agents go here.) Here's a quasi embarrassing story from my misspent youth. 

I grew up in Tennessee, not exactly the snow capital of North America. Instead of flaky white stuff that you can throw at people or roll into rotund statues of adorable Christmas icons, my part of Tennessee mostly got stuck with ice when winter weather arrived. Instead of snow days we had ice days.

Another thing about Tennessee, they have lots of tall pine trees. Now ice and tall trees with all the branches at the top are a bad combination. Let me tell you something about icy pine trees, they're really elastic, like an Olympic gymnastic flexible. They bend right down--onto the ground, or onto roofs, or onto, say, power lines. A coating of ice over everything in sight is a beautiful scene until it's a pine tree on your electric line. Then you end up at a motel for a week until things thaw enough for the emergency workers to drive again. Cause yay, Tennessee, no salt trucks either.

But I digress from the quasi embarrassing part. My parents who wanted to give their kids everything, gave us an above ground swimming pool with a nice deck around it going right to the house. A wonderful spot in the summer, but that swimming pool used to turn to ice in the winter as water tends to do. You can see where this is heading, right? But wait, there's more...

In my misspent youth, my sister and I had a favorite hobby of, wait for it, roller skating. This was in the way back, before roller blades, we're talking roller skates. The kind that you might put purple pom-poms on the laces. Sis and I pretty much roller skated day and night, up and down the driveway, all around the garage. It's what we did. Don't ask me why. We used our imagination when we played in those times.

Well one genius day, I decided to roller skate onto the deck. And lo and behold what do I see: a solid surface on our swimming pool. A BRAND new place to skate that had never been skated before! Being the shy little thing that never did anything by herself, I turned back and went and asked my mother. Wait. Are you buying that garbage? I was ten, I didn't ask anyone.  

I skated right out there onto the ice. Look at me; I'm cool on top of the swimming pool. It lasted all of three feet then kersploosh 'cause Tennessee ice ain't that thick, people. So I'm floundering in freezing water with roller skates weighing my feet down like bricks. I'm yelling and panicking. My mother comes racing out, puts her hands on her hips and says, "Stand up."

Yeah. Our pool was only about three and a half feet deep. My family doesn't let me live that one down.