Goodbye Old Friend

It was hard to part with you. I don't know why. You weren't really that good to me. 

Yeah, it was fun at the start, driving about at speeds too fast, the wind in our hair. We looked good together. People honked and waved at us regularly when the relationship was new. Many of them were jealous that I had you and they didn't. Yeah, we logged a lot of miles and had some adventures. 

Remember the time we passed that seemingly endless line of thirty two cars in a row on a two lane road? We just made it past the final car with only yards to spare before the road divided and we would have been soaring down the wrong side at 135. It made our hearts race at the time and gave us reason to laugh later on. 

The first years were good. I could always count on you. But over time I began to realize that ours had become a high maintenance relationship. You just had to have the best of everything. When I took you out to a place that most people thought was decent, you'd complain about the service. Sometimes you'd even act out until I took you to a place you liked better. I swear one time you blew smoke you were so angry.

Maybe it was cruel I made you live in the garage for two years that one time. I felt like it was charitable. You had no other place to go and my wife certainly wasn't going to let another woman come inside the house. It was unfortunate that she decided to step on you while you slept that one time. I will never know why she thought that was acceptable. I know it left a wound which never healed and I'm sorry.

It wasn't long after that I started spending time with you again. As much as I wanted to rekindle the friendship we once had, it was never the same. Though I thought you were still a looker, people no longer turned their heads. I bought you nice things, you got dressed up. Maybe it was just me, but it felt like when we went out it was more like work than the play it once was. The relationship was lost to your ever escalating demands for more and more attention.

I tried to send you away. In a desperate plea for attention you spent all of your time with my niece. How long was that? A year? You finally showed your true colors though, letting her down and demanding much more than any sane friend would ever ask. Of course you came crawling, practically dragging yourself back to me.

I let you hang around my house for two years. You were literally falling apart. For the sake of the times we had I didn't complain. I didn't pay your bills though. Finally, a neighbor complained about the woman lurking in the driveway all hours of the night. 

It was time for you to go. You were old. It was a mercy to put you down, to let you become a donor before all of your parts were completely rotted away.

Goodbye Old Friend. It was bittersweet watching you roll away on the back of a tow truck.

Don't be sad. You know I wanted to keep you for my son, to turn you back into something that people would point out, honk and wave. But the crazy people in our neighborhood failed to see that you were still more beautiful than the rusted-out, broken-down pickup truck three houses away or the immobile Camaro with seven colors of primer and rust on the block behind us. They didn't see the promise of a roll cage and a race track. They didn't know that all you needed was a $800 clutch (and someone to install it). 

But most importantly, they still don't know that I sold you for enough money to paint my house Denver Bronco's orange with the logo on the garage door. That should teach them to worry about the garbage in their yard instead of the worn out Porsche in someone else's driveway. That should teach them to go live somewhere with an HOA if they wanna complain. 

Goodbye old friend. Rest well with the other old cars. I'm sure rabbits will come visit and from time to time someone will take a piece of you with them. Just don't let the yellow jackets build a nest in you and you will be fine.

OK, now that she's not listening, anyone interested in a nice set of 17-inch Mille Miglia C2 Cup wheels complete with a nearly new set of Fuzion HRI tires for their Porsche should drop me a line.

War Stories

I finished reading three books in January. Much to my surprise, two of them were World War II non-fiction texts: Unbroken and A Higher Call. I say much to my surprise because these gift books are in contrast to most of what I normally read. I generally lean toward fiction and none of it war stories. Yet both of these books were immensely engaging, better than most fiction I've read and almost impossible to put down. In fact after reading them, I don't even remember the name of the other book I finished this year. Either these two wartime books were excellent or my mind is slipping . . . possibly a combination of both.

After reading them, I paused to wonder why World War Two is so intriguing. How could I be so completely engrossed in tales that revolved around such a horrific time in history? Certainly war reveals the worst of which humanity is capable. We're all well aware of the horrors of German concentration camps, but maybe not everyone knows of the horrific conditions in Japanese POW camps, where Allied soldiers were often literally staved to death. Some might be unaware that the mass majority Japanese Americans living in the United States were interred in prison camps (many of whom were second or third generation Americans). And the war's death tolls? More than sixty million people died during the second world war. Including civilians, death tolls by country were approximately 420,000 Americans, 450,000 from the UK, 3,000,000 each for Japan and Italy, 8,000,000 Germans, and a staggering 24,000,000 Soviets.

It isn't exactly edifying to explore the ghastly darkness of which humanity is capable. But the flip side of this is what made both books remarkable, and what I believe makes many war stories fulfilling. In the midst of all this catastrophe humans have the capacity to either embrace the horror surrounding them or to rise above it.

While most books I read are fiction, I have read a lot of articles on World War II aviators. There are dozens of amazing stories about bombers with devastating damage carrying their crew home. I've come across a couple where an aircraft literally collapsed after stopping safely on the runway. One of the most amazing stories I ever encountered was that of Alan Magee who was thrown from a burning, out of control B-17 at 20,000 feet with no parachute. Right after he prayed for God to save him, the low oxygen and his spinning fall caused him to pass out. He regained consciousness in the Saint Nazaire Train Station in Germany. His fall had been broken by the a skylight in the roof. He not only miraculously survived but fully recovered from the many injuries he'd sustained both in the aircraft and in his serendipitous landing.

We're fascinated by life and death. This is evidenced by the preponderance of law and medical dramas on television. Faced with imminent mortality the stakes of decisions seem much higher. It can bring out the best or worst in people. Death, or the real threat thereof, seems to reveal our true character and values. But perhaps even more intriguing is those who cling to life tenaciously, to cheat death when it seems most inevitable.

A Higher Call tells the tale of German fighter pilot Franz Stigler who encountered a badly damaged B-17 bomber. The holes in the plane were so large he could see the crew bandaging up injured members. In an act of treason (for which his own country could have executed him) he not only spared the enemy bomber, but escorted it safely to the North Sea before saluting the pilot and turning for home. The stories of those who persevere to survive the most extreme adversity imaginable are interesting, but those of heroes who make decisions which value the lives of others above their own are what I hope amaze and inspire us all.

John 12:25 Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity.

But there's something more that runs in almost every positive World War II story: Virtue, Faith, God. During the war, the center of morality for the majority of Americans in the armed forces was the Bible. During World War II 65% of young Americans claimed the Bible as the compass for the way they lived. Today that number is 4%. How odd it seems that during such a tumultuous time people looked to God for guidance; even odder--that we look elsewhere in this current time of prosperity.

Do we turn to God when things are going poorly and forget about him when things seem to be going well? It seems plausible in light of the World War II quote attributed to William T. Cummings, "There are no atheists in foxholes." I imagine most of us, atheist or not, have broken down in a time of extreme distress to pray, "God, please get me out of this!" Faith is what made The Greatest Generation great. While certainly many of them took a strong Christian faith into the war, I have no doubt that many of them only found God in the worst of times.

After the B-24 Bomber, Green Hornet, he'd been assigned to crashed in the Pacific, Louis Zamperini, the subject of Unbroken, found God in the war. Floating in a rotting lifeboat with no shelter, food or water, surrounded by sharks, he cried out to God for help. He'd struggle with faith during his return to civilian life, but eventually he remembered the promise he made to God, “If you get me through this, if you answer my prayers, I swear, I’ll dedicate my whole life to you. I’ll do whatever you want.” Years after the war Zamperini made a couple trips to Japan to see the men who'd been guards in the POW camp where he'd been mistreated nearly to the point of near death. He went not to spit in their faces, but to forgive them. That's something only a man of deep faith would do.

Zamperini was the Bombardier on the crew of this B-24 which crashed on a rescue mission

Where are we now after seventy five years of economic prosperity? The United States of America today leads the world in broken families, abortion rate, sexually transmitted disease, violent crime, teen suicide, divorce rate. We also hold the distinction of highest prison population per capita. Post World War, we led the world economically for more than half a decade, but as of 2014 USA is ranked #10 in personal prosperity. Is our decline the result of having it so easy for so long? Have we been chasing the almighty dollar so long that we forgot the Almighty is chasing us?

Perhaps the lottery offers an apt illustration. Most people (myself included) have dropped a few bucks on a lottery ticket at least once in their lifetime. At the very least, we've all dreamed about how we would spend such winnings. But the stories of many who have reaped that sudden windfall are that of misery. In fact the majority of lottery winners end up spending almost half of their winnings in less than 5 years. Within 25 years the majority of them are flat broke.

It's actually more likely that a person would die on their way to buy a ticket than it is to win Powerball or Mega Millions. In fact it's more likely someone would be killed by a vending machine than it is to be the winner of either of these two lotteries. Most importantly, while the odds of winning one of these mega lotteries are less than 1 in 150 billion, the odds that you will die someday are 1 in 1. Which leads us back to the discussion on our fascination with death.

Ecclesiastes 9:12 
Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.

None of us know for certain we will have a tomorrow. We might live to be a hundred and two. We might have a piece of space junk fall on us later today (the odds of that are somewhere between 1 in a billion and 1 in a trillion depending who you ask). Still, rather than dreaming and scheming for our future maybe we should live like there is no tomorrow.

How many dollars will you need when your life is over? Will people remember you for being prosperous or will they remember you for being a good friend, parent, mentor? Wouldn't love and forgiveness solve most of the problems we have?  Wouldn't it be a better place if we all lived by the simple rules that Jesus taught us?

Matthew 22:37-39 
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Matthew 7:12
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you

If you were looking down the barrel of a gun . . . or in a plane that was crashing . . . or about to be crushed by space junk . . . or killed by a renegade vending machine wouldn't you pray, "God, please get me out of this."?

What are you waiting for?

© Scott Noble 2015

This might have been the most creative penalty I've ever taken

I was a little late getting out of the shop last night before my game. As the result, I was the last guy out of the room and onto the ice. The buzzer announced the end of warm-ups expiring just as my skates touched the ice. I sneaked in four or five laps of our half of the rink while the stray pucks were collected in Homer's Orange Bucket. It was almost enough skating to get the blood flowing a little faster, though not enough to warm any of my many stiff muscles.

As the dubious honor of team captain fell to me this season simply because I was the only guy willing to organize the team. I headed to our bench and was sorting out who would play where. It was slightly challenging due to the odd number of skaters. Ten or thirteen is perfect, we had eight when I left the locker room and nine when I hit the ice (thanks to a last second sub player). I'd set our defensive lines and was working on the offense when the linesman skated over and asked, "Who is your team captain tonight?"

"That's me." I answered, wondering who on the team was in trouble as officials don't generally invade the pre-game strategy meetings.

"We need to talk to you at center ice before we get started."
"OK." This was an interesting development.

I skated to center where the referee and Tom, the opposing team captain, waited.

I asked Tom, "Are we starting out with a team captain fistfight tonight?"

"I'm good with that." Tom replied, a disturbing grin on his face. He's a bit bigger, younger and does cross-fit. (Aside from hockey, the only exercise I've had time for lately is 12 ounce curls). My chances toe to toe with him were more dubious than the question of team captain being an honor.

The ref, apparently not one to mince words, told us, "Both of you are going to start the game in the penalty box."

In response to our obvious but unspoken pleas of innocence, he continued, "The rules clearly state that no one should enter the rink until the Zamboni door is closed. Both your teams were out here early tonight. You're serving bench minors and we'll start the game 4 on 4."

Tom protested mildly, "I was one of the last to leave the locker room."
I added, "I completely missed warm ups."
"It doesn't matter."

I sighed, "Tom, how about you go punch everyone on my team in the face and I'll go punch everyone on your team in the face?"

We decided not to do that, instead thanking our team for the two minute rest we'd get to start the game. Then we settled in for a couple minutes of lighthearted banter yelled back and forth between our glass cages.

"Your sub goalie said she'd spot us fifteen goals tonight."
"That's right, she was playing the night we beat you 15-1, right?"
"I was sick that night."

With this new time spent in in the sin bin I tied my personal best of four penalty minutes in a season. Maybe I'll have that fistfight next time Tom and I meet just to improve my penalty stats. I'm probably out of the running for the Lady Byng award this season anyway. Besides, Tom's the kinda guy who'd have a beer with me after the fight no matter who won.

Anyway, that's how you can take a penalty while you're still in the locker room. It also explains that whistle I heard while I was still lacing up my skates. Next week, I will see if I can find a way to serve a penalty for a team I don't play on . . . that might be challenging.

Here's why I'm not changing my name to Clutch McHockey

If I can paraphrase Danny Glover's catchphrase from a few movies, "I'm getting too old for this stuff." (He didn't say stuff, but I'm trying to keep things family friendly here).

Our league, is officially C level, an intermediate level of play with A being the most skilled and D being the bottom of the bucket. Despite this, the skill level significantly exceeds that boundary. The four teams in our league feature one player fresh out of a pro career, several former college players and about half a dozen kids who have played junior hockey (several of whom believe they are on the way to pro or college hockey in the fall). Most of the remaining players at least played competitively through the high school level before retiring to the beer leagues (some of them last year).

I however, was not a pro player, not a college player or even a youth hockey player. Those readers who have seen me play are muttering a sarcastic, “really?” I started playing in my thirties and was nearly forty before I branched out from playing only goalie. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the only guy who took up hockey late in life, nor am I the only old guy out there. But there are precious few of us who are both old and took up the sport late in life. As such I do things like make such amazing fakes while puck handling that I fool myself or impress the other team with my footwork which is right out of the school of drunken hockey.

Our week three game found us playing against the team with the oldest average age in the league. This team definitely features some skilled players, but their two biggest advantages are that they've played together for years and they they don't have anyone who is terrible. My team had played together for two game before facing them. We don't have the luxury of not having anyone terrible (even if I'm only counting me). On the positive side of our balance sheet, we do have a lot of young legs and probably two guys who are more talented than any our week three opponents can boast. More importantly, we have a less . . . shall we say . . . passionate approach to the game.

Our opponents outpaced us on scoring most of the game. We'd close the gap, catching up once in a while. In one such moment, their goalie imploded screaming at the refs as we watched unconcerned. I couldn't quite hear his words across the awkward acoustics of the ice rink. I would guess from his fervor there were a fair number of words approximately four letters long. I did catch the repeated word, “crease!” I suspect he thought we were trespassing in his protected habitat when we scored. Regardless, the refs did not revoke our goal . . . surprisingly no amount of yelling I've ever witnessed has had this effect. Much the opposite, they gave him an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty giving us a two minute power play. The goalie continued to yell unintelligibly. I can only guess after the penalty, he was saying, “Please send another of my teammates to the box. It makes me happy when they shoot pucks at me!”

This seemed to be the start of the end for our opponents. The entire team began taking strange penalties. Guys who are usually pretty calm did things like dole out headbutts and attempt repeatedly to use our goalie as a pommel horse. These things along with a perfect Rob Blake style hip check (imagine backing a trash truck into an unsuspecting opponent it you don't remember Mr. Blake) did not go unnoticed by those officiating our non-checking game. Our opponents also heaped evidence on my belief that feigning indignation and surprise at being caught does as little to change a referee's mind as yelling at them. They might try carrying candy instead. “Hey, you wanna chocolate, ref? Maybe we can discuss that last call while you enjoy it.” Nah, that might not work either.

Thus the stage was set for quite a battle. Our opponents would surge forward by a goal and we would stumble back. Then late in the third period, they managed to extend their lead to 6-4. It seemed this lead would be short lived as they punctuated their sixth goal with two penalties. Once the refs sorted things out and tossed a couple offenders into the sin bin, we decided to stack up the line on the ice with our five best players going against the three they were allowed to put on the ice. There was little doubt in our mind that we'd tie this game up sometime in the two minute penalty window. At the end of two minutes, it was still 6-4. Go figure.

Finally with about five minutes left in the game we notched a fifth goal. Then inside the three minute mark we tied up the score at six each. Our opponents didn't give up. They rallied back and spent the majority of my next shift in our zone. It's a nervous time to be a defenseman with two minutes left in a tied game. Essentially it's sudden death at this point. I managed to block a pass intended for the open side of our net which even if I'm humble would have been a goal without my intervention. Instead it tipped wide and behind the net off my stick. The intended recipient of this pass is another old guy. Despite having had a heart attack after one game and slowing down a little, he's still got more skills moving and shooting the puck than anyone over fifty should be allowed.

I pressured him at the side of the net, knowing that someone was moving up behind me. He'd want to pass it back in front of the net for the potential game winning goal. When he did I was momentarily pleased to get my stick on his pass. I say momentarily because while I prevented the puck from going to the man he intended, I ended up making it a better play than he possibly could have. Hockey is so often like this. You think, yes! I made a great play, then turn around and realize that it was actually a calamity.

Our goalie had taken away the entire net away from the player my opponent intended to pass it to. Unfortunately, my deflection sent that infernal vulcanized-rubber disc across the front of the net. There, the second guy simply, and without a trace of reverence, placed the puck in our net.

I was dejected as I looked up and saw there were less than two minutes for us to draw back even. My first thought was to head to the bench where I would hang my head in shame. Certainly someone more qualified to put the puck in their net should be on the ice. Instead, as our best forwards lined up, I gritted my teeth, decided to score and stayed on the ice. (I should mention, there is a great deal more to actually scoring than simply deciding to do so . . . otherwise I would have six or seven goals every game).

The goal invigorated us. Apparently we didn't mind not winning nearly as much as we hated losing so we danced about their net, prodding at any weaknesses. At one point I crept up from my position, anticipating a scoring attempt. This went poorly as they took the puck and seeing me out of position, cleared it out of their end. With a mere twenty seconds remaining, our most talented player picked up the puck, roared back into the zone, shot . . . and hit the goalpost.

The puck bounced about in front of the net. No one could corral the thing until it took a hop in my direction. I shot low through traffic toward the part of the net the goalie wasn't covering. It skimmed the inside of the post and rolled to the back of the net. I looked at the clock. We were tied again and there were only 5.4 seconds left.

There is no overtime in our league. There is no shootout. We ended that game in a seven to seven tie. Had there been a shootout, I would not have gone out to shoot until almost everyone else had. Would I have scored? Who knows? I've scored in three games now on three shots. But the shootout is another animal and I'm sure the goalie knows both of my breakaway/shootout moves . . . I'm kidding, I only have one move move.

But I digress. The reason I won't be changing my name to Clutch McHockey is simple. It's a stupid name.

An improbable thing happened at summer hockey last night.

I knew I wasn't going to be bringing my best game as I pulled a muscle and have been struggling with sciatica since Friday. It hurt bad enough I thought about skipping the game altogether. But there was a question of how many people would show up and I didn't want to leave my team short. I jumped on the stationary bike and warmed up for ten minutes before the game. It didn't really help.

Our team is a thrown together hodgepodge of skaters. Half a dozen of them in their early twenties or younger (most of whom have played hockey longer than I). I was in pain and I'm not a big goal scorer, so when everyone was fighting to play forward, I had no qualms about volunteering to play defense. It's closer to my natural home as a goalie anyway. There aren't a lot of guys who will stand in front of a shot in a recreational league game. I can't help myself; it's just in my nature to stand in front of fast moving objects. I don't know why.

The first shift of the game was rough. I was playing with a new partner and we really didn't read each other well. Not to put any blame on my counterpart, but our efforts were just short of making us the best players on the other team. Our opponents spent the majority of my first shift using our goalie as a ballistic impact testing device. Fortunately he was up to the task and kept the barrage of rubber out of the net.

My second shift, I ended up with another defensive partner. My first one headed off to grab a different stick. This was likely an excuse to escape my early game mediocrity and play hockey with someone else. While some might find this insulting, I must applaud that type of quick thinking. Regardless, the second shift was slightly better, though there was one bad breakout when both of us were playing the same side of the ice.

My new defensive counterpart and I discussed this on the bench: 

“I thought you were on left D?”

“Huh, I thought you were.”

“You want left?”

“I don't care.”

With that not so clearly decided, we both took left D when we got back on the ice. This worked surprisingly well though. We swapped a few times until I ended up on the right side toward the end of the shift. Surprisingly, the game was actually being played in the attack zone once in a while. We were finally starting to gel and even had a few shots on net, but still not quite taking it to them. I'd guess the shot count at this point was about 64 to 3 (us having the three).

The pace was blistering. I haven't played a league game in a few years. It's amazing how much harder people work when there are refs, scorekeepers and post-game beer. Compared to the lunchtime pickup game I play three times a week the only way to describe it is frenetic. It's likely that I was the slowest guy out there, even certain with my pain-diminished skills. Perhaps, other than the opposing goalie, I was the oldest guy on the ice, but that goalie, he's some kind of fitness freak who apparently still can pass cars while riding his bike up steep mountain roads. Why would anyone ride a bike up a mountain if they're old enough to drive?

Thus, when one of my teammates passed the puck to me, the old guy at the point, I was slightly surprised. With the puck on my stick, I made a move to elude the left wing. He was clearly surprised as well as he ended up seven feet behind me going the wrong way. Perhaps the entire opposing team was confused. There was a huge void between me and the net as they ardently protected the boards. I was thinking pass, but as I curled toward the net, I had a shooting lane and a sliver of goal. I pulled the trigger and watched. I wasn't sure I could trust my eyes as the puck tickled the wide side of the net, an inch inside the pipe, four inches above the goalie's leg pad.

The ref pointed to the net. I was awarded with fist bumps and the type of nods generally reserved for a fine painting in a museum. I thanked the teammate who passed it to me and skated back toward the bench. As I passed the scorekeeper's box, the guy inside gave me an inquisitive look. I'm not sure what he was thinking, but I figured it was, “Seriously? With all that talent out there you were the first to score?”

I smiled and nodded at him (mostly to make sure he credited my goal to the right person). Maybe I smiled too broadly. Maybe I nodded too ardently. But my back was killing me. I just scored the first goal of the season. I knew I could it would be okay for me to leave the ice early. 

I left because I felt like I was hurting the team and I knew I was hurting myself. I'll let you draw your own conclusion about whether there is a correlation here--my team was winning 2-0 when I left. They were down 3-2 when I limped out of the locker room during the second period. As I watched from the benches, they struggled back to a 5-5 tie at the end when an opposing player was kind enough to tip the puck into his own net. (That always makes you a favorite with the goalie). I'm not going to say that the guy twice as old as most of his teammates, with the jacked up back was the difference in the first period . . . but as I hobbled out of the rink one of my opponents yelled, “You sand-bagger! You get a couple points and leave?” I'll take that as a compliment on a team with so much skill even if I did only have one point. 

Schizophrenic Weather Musings

Winter has been striking the United States rather capriciously this winter. It seems like at any given time we're hearing about a snow or ice storm rampaging across some part of the nation. Here on the Front Range in Colorado, we have a saying, "If you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes." Our Denver/Boulder weather has been even more unpredictable than normal this year. 

Today (Tuesday) we had a high of almost sixty degrees. Tonight we're expecting 2 to 5 inches of snow. Tomorrow should warm up to near fifty. Thursday they are predicting seventy degrees. Then Friday and Saturday . . . more snow. (I didn't make that up. The national weather service did). Our snow rarely sticks around for more than a few days before simply turning to vapor, leaving a smoke-like trail as it heads back into our dry air, often without even bothering to melt.

Growing up in the north east, I remember snow melting very differently. Sometimes when it snowed in November, it melted in February. In between these times, it often compressed into solid ice. I vividly remember a drive in such conditions one night. My father coaxed our car to a hundred yard stop from the terrifying speed of about ten miles per hour once. Our Impala Wagon came to a halt a couple feet from the intersection (well done Dad!). 

Unfortunately, the guy coming the other direction must have been going twelve miles an hour. Instead of stopping, his car spun in a slow, lazy glide. It had the energy of an amusement park ride winding down long after the exciting part was over. Still, it was coming right at us. My family let out a collective gasp. We gripped seats and dashboard tight. Then in silence we watched the other car, spinning, sliding and shushing past in slow motion. It missed us by inches. Even more amazingly, the car spun another twenty five yards into a crowded parking lot and came to a rest without touching a single vehicle. We drove the remaining few miles home at a nervous five miles per hour.

I cannot say for certain, but perhaps it was this same storm which blessed us with sidewalks of pure, silky ice. And yes, I mean blessed. For as a twelve-year-old, there was little more exciting than flying down a sidewalk covered with ice as smooth as if Frank Zamboni himself had put it there. To my regret, I never tried it on skates. That's probably just as well since helmets were considerably less chic than they are now. Instead, half a dozen of us would convoy down the sidewalk on Flexible Flyers.

This was all good and fine if you weren't the guy who owned the house at the bottom of the street. You see the hill culminated with the sidewalk taking a sweeping left turn. While Flexible Flyers do maneuver adeptly in snow, they suffer quite a bit on ice. At the end of a couple days and perhaps seven thousand sled runs, we'd managed to carve through the snow on his lawn . . . and the grass on his lawn. Had he wanted a ditch, we'd made fair headway on it. Apparently, he did not want a ditch.

Rather than thank us for this endeavor, he did a little work overnight. I was second in the convoy the next day. Denny, the kid in front of me, left his sled abruptly in my path. A moment later I struck the sled he'd rudely parked in my path. I was confused until my own sled's momentum was violently eradicated. I slid over his sled landing squarely on Denny (who was himself rudely parked my path). We were relieved at the lack of any apparent injuries for approximately one tenth of a second. The four sledders behind us screamed in procession. Then they added more steel, rope, oak and bodies to the mess on the sidewalk. 

Mercifully the demolition derby ended. We disentangled our limbs and sleds, realizing that by some miracle none of us had been permanently maimed. Our neighbor had painstakingly chipped the ice from his sidewalk and sanded it. Perhaps his only goal was to make sure that no one slipped and fell. I doubt that he envisioned a multi-sled accident as the result. He couldn't have created a more sinister sledding disaster if he'd wanted.

Be safe out there my friends! 

Patience

Erma Hattendorf didn't have any patience for impatient people. She was born in a time when things moved a little more slowly. In her day, people traveled by train, a majestic steam locomotive pulling them across the American countryside to their eventual destination. People dined, slept, played cards with new friends. The journey was half of the adventure. Now people flew everywhere. Where was the romance in looking at a countryside from outer space passing by at six hundred miles per hour?

In Erma's time, men kept a watch in their pocket. No one had a phone there, let alone a device where you could check the weather and news, send messages to people all over the world, take a photograph and share it, store and listen to music. She wondered vaguely what happened to newspapers, letters with postage stamps, waiting a week to get your photographs back from the drug store and phonograph records. She missed the warm, rhythmic imperfections of the phonograph.

She wondered more directly why everyone was in such a hurry. Erma always thought life passed at the pace one kept. Those who ran it like a race, would finish it quickly and be very tired. She'd opted for the more leisurely pace wanting to meet her maker not only having savored every moment of the life He'd given, but well rested so she could greet Him with the proper reverence and exuberance such an event certainly deserved.

It was good that Erma was patient. Since the hip surgery a few years back, she was able to get around still, but only with the help of a walker. Even this was newfangled, a wheeled device with a basket, place to sit, a hand brake and a cup holder. She wondered why everyone had to have a bottle of water with them everywhere they went. Aside from a canteen while hiking, no one carried around water when she was young. To the best of her memory (which was admittedly fuzzy at times) she couldn't remember anyone dying from thirst in downtown Terre Haute.

Terre Haute! Now that was a memory from a far away place a long time ago. Erma wondered if even there people moved so much faster these days. She preferred to remember the saintly patience of Terre Haute in 1939. She remembered block parties and neighbors who helped each other out like family. No one seemed to even know their neighbor's names anymore.

Erma watched the eight lanes of traffic in front of her flooded with cars clearly disregarding the 45 mile per hour speed limit. This was the part of her biweekly trip to the grocer which always proved most frightening. She was certain it was only a matter of time before someone too busy to stop at a traffic light would run her down in their shiny, fast-moving automobile. If that was how Jesus was going to call her home, she could live with it. A slight smile crossed her lips as she realized the irony of the thought--living with the way she might die. Well, it was only ironic to those who thought that dying was the end instead of the start, but still amusing.

Oh, there would be some sadness when she left this world. She didn't really want to leave Glenda, Dorothy and Arlene behind. They'd all joked about how hard it would be to find a fourth bridge player their age when one of them made the journey home. None of them wanted to have to resort to playing 500 Rummy. She knew they'd miss her. At least she hoped they would.

Her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren? They might believe they missed her for a little while. But they were too busy to visit, so how bad could it be? Even as they closed on retirement themselves, both of her sons worked so many hours they were rarely home to get to know their children. It didn't matter, the great grandkids had schedules so jam packed with school, sports and other activities, they probably wouldn't have been there if their fathers stopped by anyway. They'd be fine. There was no place for a slow old lady in their world. Eventually they'd forget about her as they had forgotten about playing outside, eight hour work days, Sunday church or sitting down for the evening meal.

The cars finally crawled to a stop and the walk sign started flashing, a little, green symbol of a man telling her it was safe. Erma wasn't so certain. She waited until each lane had stopped before pushing her wheeled walker off the curb. Oh how she ached today! The eight lanes might as well have been the Sahara desert at the rate she was moving. The cup holder would come in handy there, she mused. She'd cleared the first three lanes and was moving into the turn lanes when the orange hand started flashing. She'd have to stop halfway across and wait.

In the final turn lane, the man in the German sedan looked impatient and distracted. He was furiously typing something into his phone. Worried he might pull ahead when the light changed leaving her stranded in traffic, Erma willed herself forward as quickly as her old legs would allow. She was right in front of his car when the hand stopped flashing. In an instant he'd have a green arrow. It had been a long time since she'd felt anything like a surge of adrenaline so she didn't expect one now. But when his horn blared the instant the light changed, she felt a surprising burst of anger and energy.

She stopped at the edge of his front bumper, thinking momentarily she would simply wave a fist at him. Another thought came. She pointed to the front of his expensive looking car, doing her best to feign surprise. Erma yelled, "Oh my! Fire. Your car is on fire! I see smoke."

The man rolled his window down and yelled, "Come on! Move it lady!"

"Your car, it's on fire! I see smoke from under the hood."

A clear look of panic replaced the impatience on the man's face. He popped the hood and practically flew out of the driver's door, his expensive suit fluttering in the hot breeze. Let him feel the wrath of the twelve drivers waiting in line behind him. He should know what it's like if only to make him more sensitive. Already the cacophony of horns had begun in the lane behind him. Welcome to the world where everyone moves faster than the speed of sensitivity, she thought. She'd expected him to run to the hood, instead he ran to the back of his car.

Erma was about to move to the safety of the highway divider to wait for the next cycle of the lights. But instead she watched as this impatient, self-important man ran from the back of his car with a small fire extinguisher. It was the quickest she'd moved in a month, but she left her walker behind and made it to the open door of his car as he fumbled with the hood latch. As soon as he had his head under the hood, she laid on the horn.

A moment later as the man stood cursing and holding the spot where his head hit the hood, a police car stopped on the other side of the intersection. Lights on, the officer stepped out of the cruiser. "Ma'am, are you OK?"

"Yes, I'm afraid I'm just too slow to make it across a street this wide these days."

"May I help you?" The officer said, offering his arm in a manner she hand't seen for forty years. It reminded her of her late husband, a gentleman to the end. She took the arm of the young policeman and allowed him to help her across the street. They moved as slowly as a sailing yacht on a smooth sea.

"Oh, my walker . . ."

"I'll bring it for you once you're safely across, ma'am."

"Thank you young man."

"My pleasure ma'am." he replied before turning back to the man in the expensive foreign sedan. "Sir, you need to move your car out of traffic. If you're still there when I'm done, I will write you a summons."

Erma smiled. She'd have one heckuva story for bridge tonight.