11 of 18

Write now Article Tools

As a kid, living in south Louisiana, we did not get much snow; it would get bone chilling cold due to all of the moisture that is in the air from the Gulf of Mexico, but rarely any snow. In fact is seems that every ten years or so we get a nice cover of snow. It is usually just enough to build a snowman for the night, but by the morning everything would have melted away. So needless to say, we find it chilly since there is so much moisture in the air, so we're not going to go outside, and we need to find that perfect indoor activity. So what is a kid to do on those cold wintery days?

Well, we had a staircase and some torn up foldable mattress, that we called the Blue Things. You might remember them from the '80s as those mattress that can be layed out on the ground to sleep on or can be folded up into a huge chair. Or as I like to remember them, the perfect sled to fly down that staircase with.

What we would do is put about five blankets draping over the railings across the staircase; I'm assuming that this was, as a little kid, our suprise factor of "what's next" as we make our decent. Next, we would gather up all of the other blankets that we could find and lay them down on the stairs so that we could have as smoothe and as fast of a ride down the staircase. We would all pile onto the Blue Things and we would push ourselves with our feet to get some momentum going. Once we got going, we would hit the hanging sheets and they would fall on top of us, blinding us, as we pray not to slam into the front door and bust our heads open, which suprisingly never happened. We would stand up, lost in the draped blankets that fell on us, laughing, and we would haul the Blue Things back up the stairs only to set it up to do it again for another four second thrill down the staircase.

Another plus to our Louisiana version of sledding was that you were indoors that whole time, so you did not need to pile on all of the clothing that a person would normally have to put on to go sledding with. In fact, you could do this in your pajamas if you wanted to. Now you might want to put on a little something just to have some extra padding in case you go slamming into the front door, or if your older brother wants to play a prank on you and open that front door as your fly down and you get that burst of cold air. For the most part though, your house is nice and warm, and the need for much warm clothing is nill.

I guess we could have gone outside, if it was a sunny day, but most likely, it was a rainy day, with the cold biting through your skin,. We found something more productive to do, right? I guess we really wanted to know what the thril of all of this sledding was about, and it seems like our backwards Lousiana verison was ten times better, since you could stay indoors and not be in the wintery cold, than what anyone else could have reproduced for us, especially when at such young ages you come up with the idea yourself and pray that your parents do not find out!

Learn more about this author, Lane Fournerat.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Humor: Sledding?
We want to hear your view. Write now!