When I was growing up there was a pond across the street from my subdivision. In the winter my friends and I would shovel the pond, then skate and play hockey. We were outdoors all the time and often played outside in the winter until we were so cold the warm-up process was painful.
At some point in my early teens my friends and I decided the pond was a great place to throw snowballs at passing cars. The main road wasn’t heavily traveled and had a speed limit of 55 mph. The pond was far enough from the entrance to the subdivision that if someone who lived in the subdivision was going to turn in, they would be slowing down enough so we could tell who they were, and we would not throw snowballs at them. If anyone decided to chase us we had miles of fields and woods at our back in which to escape.
One night a car approached. We readied ourselves for the attack. The car didn’t slow down so we popped up from our hiding places and threw. As soon as the snowballs were in flight, I recognized the car. It was my dad’s.
I cried, Holy crap, that’s my dad! and we all ran. When we stopped running we tried to think what we should do. We knew the fun for the night was over and that we were probably in trouble. I had the idea that we should go to my house and see how much trouble we might be in. My friends thought I was crazy, but I managed to talk them into going with me. When we arrived at my house, my dad was sitting in his chair reading the newspaper. He asked us what we had been up to and we said we were just out walking around.
My dad said, Some kids just threw snowballs at my car over by the pond a few minutes ago. We did our best to look surprised; then inspiration struck. I said, I bet I know who it was, do you want us to go run them off? My dad looked up from his paper with a small smile on his face. He said, “Yeah, would you do that for me?” “With pleasure,” I answered. And back to the pond we went to throw more snowballs.
This blog post was written by Mark Edick, author of the book, Becoming Normal – An Ever-Changing Perspective.
