Baby it's cold outside...

                             

       The last of the leaves are tumbling across the road; dodging speeding cars, roaring motorcycles, and obnoxious semis... Fall has been here and is packing his bags to make room for a new and rather frigid guest…

Winter.

      Did anyone else just shiver in remorse for all the days wasted inside chewing popcorn, watching movies, and Facebooking on the picturesque summer days?         

      Let me set the record straight for you, I do not hate winter. It’s um…nice? Yeah, we’ll go with that. I mean, if you forget about the bulky five layers of Weather Channel approved coats and scarves that are just about enough to make a rake handle look obese, and the numb fingers you get when you’re trying to wipe all the snow off the car windshield with your bare hands because your windshield wipers are frozen together and you can’t find your handy dandy snow brush thing, yeah…winter is great. Oh but I forgot to mention the hard glacial ice that attacked the Wal-Mart parking lot, I bet you’re reminiscing now about how last winter you were walking a little bit too fast for conditions and, *slip* there you go, sliding across the parking lot, dodging rusty cars and shopping carts. Oh crap, your shopping cart! Where’d it go? You guessed it. The decrepit old cart just slammed into some billionaire’s car, now they’re going to sue you for all your groceries.

Just kidding, billionaires don’t shop at Wal-Mart.

(Please excuse my grammatical errors while I paint you a picture of my agonizing trip to Winter Wonderland.)        

Me: Ahhhhhhhh!    (ßMicrosoft Word doesn’t have that word in their dictionary…apparently Mr. Microsoft Word hasn’t met ice yet.)

Friend’s Mom: Come on Holly! You can do it!

Me: Yeah right, ice hates me. Not to mention, the feeling is mutual.

Friend’s Mom (holding me up while I step cautiously out onto the ice in my rental skates): You’re going to be great at this!

Me: Okay I think you can let go now (I smile, totally taking ‘You’re going to be great at this’ literally.)…

So I begin to skate, first sliding with my left foot (Cuz I just do things backwards like that) and then my right. I’m now up to a speedy 0.000009 MPH. I so own ice skating. Yes, at last all was well and I was rocking this. What could go wrong? The skates weren’t killing my feet yet, my fingers showed no signs of the dreaded frostbite; the wind was at my back…it was a heavenly experience.

Friend’s Mom: Hey Holly, I wanna show you something…it’ll help you when you fall.

Me: Okay I’ll be right there—

But it’s too late, down I go flailing my arms and screaming (Which doesn’t help by the way), then I hear a crack, (my back wailing in protest) but that was all drown out by the pudgy little punk kids that were standing around laughing at my little rendezvous with the ice.

Okay, so that was like, five years ago. Yet my terror of ever stepping out onto the ice again sends shivers down my frail spine, though I didn’t suffer any lasting injuries (Other than my pride), I will never forget the pain of my ten years smacking the ice. And I know what you’re thinking, “What a wimp…” am I right? If I am right then so are you, I am indeed a wimp. I’m also a nerd, deal with it. If however you see me as a brave heroin (which if you do….you should really stop reading this kind of stuff and go watch some hockey) then thanks for your support, if only you’d have shown it way back in 2005.

So there’s my most terrifying winter experience…enjoy. And please…whatever you do, DON’T GO SKATING ALONE. Heaven knows, it’s so much better to have others laughing at your pain.