It was agreed upon by all that if the mothers had been there, this never would have happened. But the mothers were not there. The mothers had stayed inside with the younger brothers while the fathers took the older sisters sledding. Yes, it was several degrees below sanity out, and yes we were the only people crazy enough to be outside sledding (or driving for that matter), but we were the fathers and we were taking our daughters sledding.
To be fair to my wife, she says that, while she would have protested and cautioned against what we did, she would not have forbid it. Also, you should know that I tested it out myself first before I sent my child flying headlong down a treacherous path filled with icy metal death-obstacles. It was fine! What could go wrong?!
We pulled in to a parking space that we would later need to be pushed out of and grabbed the children and sleds, looking for a good hill to slide down. Sadly, there weren’t too many hills that didn’t lead directly into busy streets. True, there were not many cars out, but conventional wisdom tells us that sliding down a hill into four lanes of a state highway is not the best idea. And the hills that didn’t go into traffic were covered, not with fluffy soft snow, but with sheets of solid ice. That made climbing back up them interesting, let me tell you.
We finally settled on a hill that was only about 50% ice, and at least there was snow at the bottom, but on the side of this hill was a stairway. Three flights of stairs straight down the hill, completely covered in ice and looking tantalizingly terrifying. NO! we said at first. We must not sled down those stairs! There are metal bars and railings surrounding it and it looks dangerous! PROBABLY NOT! we said at second. It seems like a bad idea and the mothers would not like it if they were here. MAYBE! we said at third, reasoning that the mothers would not have to know exactly, and boy did it look cool and fun and tempting. HMMMMM! we said at fourth, as I decided to test it out myself first.
Balancing precariously at the top of the stairs on a small round sled, I stuck my feet out straight in front of me, for braking purposes, and my arms out to the side, for steering and not dying purposes. Then, with just a little nudge, I was flying down those steps faster than Clark Griswold. I caught some serious air and ended up in a snowbank in about one second flat. “Ruby! You have to try this!”
At first she did not want to do it, so I said fine, we were cold and tired, we could go home. But then, standing there at top and looking down, she felt it. The same feeling I had felt earlier. “Actually, I do want to do it now,” she said slowly. She was hooked. And man, did she do it. She caught more air than I did! She hit the snowbank, flew off of her sled, and laughed like crazy as she demanded to do it again. And again.
Ha ha! This was not dangerous after all! I should get a video of this! That will show those mothers who tried to stop us from doing this when we had that conversation with them in our minds an hour earlier! Take that imaginary mothers! We will prove to you how smart fathers are! So I got a cool video, although by this time the ice had started to melt away from all of the sliding the four of us were doing on it, and you could almost start to see the stone peek through, so we decided to stop. The video I got was not as fast, and did not have as much hang time in the air as the previous slides, but it was still cool. And no one got hurt. So we took the video back to show the mothers.
They were fine with it! Yes, they probably would not have done it, and yes they seemed a little, um, excited by the video, but mothers are cool. They like fun and exciting things too. So the next time, the fathers will stay inside and drink hot chocolate and talk about stuff, and the mothers can go out and have an adventure. I eagerly await the video.