Friday, January 2, 2009

Slider

So when did I get to be so freakin’ frail that a trip to the mailbox in the dead of winter becomes a lesson in not breaking a hip?

Yes, I realize I’ve moved to a home with a longer, steeper driveway…but still.

I came very close to sending up a flare, standing down...and waiting for one of the boys to notice my absence (probably centering around a meal), hurry down the drive, solicitously take my elbow and lead me back to safety. Or more accurately, CARRY me back to safety….that’s what I really wanted…yessireebob.

It probably didn’t help that I was wearing my infamous fuzzy-Sketcher-slippers with the industrial-strength rubber-treaded soles and that the snow depth was significantly greater than the height of said slippers.

But, why would I go to the trouble of putting on boots, gloves, hat and a scarf for what I believed was a thirty-second trip to the mailbox and back? In my last abode, I might’ve actually tried running out without a COAT. Could you imagine?




Let’s face it…there is no defense against a two-inch layer of solid ice. I don’t even have a teeny-weeny landing-strip-of-a-swig of blacktop to garner a simple foothold…and it’s only the beginning of January....this does not bode well, folks.

Of course…those who know me know I panic at the first sign of anything slippery. On the ground, that is…(out of the gutter, people.)

The other day, my car started skidding about ten feet up my drive. I got the whole anti-skid icon on my dash and everything...and I immediately panicked.

So, I slowly backed up onto the bumper to bumper empty street and gunned the gas ever-so-gently gunned tapped on the accelerator. My singular thought was getting out of the street and not driving sideways, winding up half on the drive and half on my neighbor’s fence.

(The above is not me, by the way. It is used here as a visual aid so we can share the same image that was running through my mind at that exact moment.)

As I’m skidding sideways at an alarming speed, it dawns on me: “Huh. I do believe that I have a front-wheel-drive vehicle…which evidently means the front tires are doing all the pulling…and since I’d neglected to allow any contact between the front tires and the actual dry pavement, I am DOOMED.” (This thought process takes place in a fraction of a milli-second….like your whole life passing before your eyes right before you die. Or so I’m told.)

Obviously, I corrected this slight error in judgment…and I escaped catastrophe relatively unscathed. Of course, I will NEVER share this story with my dad...who would be positively horrified to hear that all his how-to-drive-safely-in-bad-weather warnings have fallen on deaf ears, at least with this child. This infraction is tantamount to cutting a bagel towards your body…simply inexcusable.

So…this is just between us.

Anonymous said...

I'm famous for underdressing in this weather too. It's like I don't want to give in, or something. And you can only do so much to adjust to the driving conditions.

Anonymous said...

Ha, the book I started today opens with the first chapter the guy is wearing slippers on his frozen driveway to get the mail & he falls! Glad you're ok, other than need some sympathy.

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