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Back in the 80's, plastic sleds dominated the sledding scene. When lined up on the slopes with the other kids, there seemed to be plastic saucers and plastic toboggans as far as the eye could see. However, my sisters and I were lucky, because we had inherited something from our mother, something out of legend that none of the other kids had ever seen before. We had a genuine runner sled, complete with metal blades that cut through the snow and left behind a satisfying trail of twin tracks, marking your progress down the slope until you remembered to put the brakes on (re: drag your feet) and come to a stop. Even cooler, the runner blades were a rich cobalt blue, which earned the sled the nickname Blue Lightning.

As you might imagine, Blue Lightning was by far the most popular sled we had. Granted, each us had our own little plastic saucers with which to coast downhill, but they just didn't compare to the sheer power of Blue Lightning. Old Blue could easily outdistance any old plastic contraption, and while other kids might've laughed at first when we unloaded her from the back of the station wagon with reverence, but once the saw her in action they soon changed their tune and were begging us for a turn. However, thanks to an earlier incident, we had to always warn them to be careful of Blue's power, because sometimes she'd take you further than you really wanted to go.

Early on in our sledding career, my oldest sister had let the awesomeness of Blue Lightning go to her head, and decided that she wanted to see how fast she could really go. Enlisting the help of myself and our younger sister, she decided to take a running start at the sled, land on it in a pseudo-bellyflop while we shoved the sled with everything we had. Our father was preoccupied at the moment with pulling our youngest sisters, the twins, on the toboggan, so he couldn't stop us and tell us it was a bad idea. This would be the moment by which all future sledding would be judged, and my oldest sister would go down in infamy, to hear her tell it.

Considering all the variables in this plan, you'd think something might've gone wrong, but oddly enough it didn't. Maybe the planets had lined up perfectly for just those scant few seconds it too for her to bolt from the curb to where the sled lay in wait, land on it while my younger sister and I shoved it with all our might and take off down the hill, but it all went according to plan. She was off, zipping down the hill like a snowsuited blur, shrieking

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