In Idaho you earned a snow day. Its not “Its snowing: school is cancelled”. It’s not even “Its snowing heavily and you can’t see your own hand in front of your face: school is canceled” It’s more like “It’s snowing so heavily that your bus driver has a 99% chance of hitting black ice and flipping the bus and you will have one or both of your arms severed: school is canceled”
Most winter mornings, Idaho school children, before they do anything else, will check the news to see if they can go back to bed or not. And that is exactly what Stephanie, Austin and I did all those years ago. You’d wake up in your pitch black room in your cozy little nest of a bed and double dare yourself 3 times to go check the news. Sometimes my angel of a mother would already have heard and come poke her head in and tell us school was out. Which was always music to my ears.
Then in another hour or two we’d go into our kitchen to get breakfast. Our kitchen had carpet. It was orange and brown. I hated it. I’m sure the house even hated it. And I’m pretty sure that the whole country of America would hate it if they saw it. anyway ;) centered in the middle of the room was an old brown table. It had a huge burn mark in the shape of a ring from I think a coffee pot or maybe some doodah might have put a hot pan of macaroni right in the middle. I’m not sure. Depends on who you ask… my mom or one of us kids. Then we’d eat a bowl of cream of wheat or oatmeal and make our plans for the day. Even if it was sunny outside that wasn’t a sure sign that you could go outside. The sun could be very deceiving. It could still be so cold that your face would freeze like you had just watched the video from The Ring.
So if it wasn’t too cold we’d start getting on our snow gear. Our snow gear was pretty shoddy at its best. It should be okay to say by now that we were pretty darn poor. We had mismatched items, old moon boots, black high heeled boots that were trying to be fancy, stretchy gloves, gloves with fur, mittens, fingerless wool gloves and random hats. We were lucky enough to have some great snow bibs that were leftover from my mom and dad’s skiing days. Austin and Stephanie had matching gray ones and I had purple ones. They were very eighties and very tight. (but sadly not bedazzled)
On this particular snow day after I wriggled in my purple snowsuit I went for my gloves to only find they were still pretty wet from the last outing. No big deal, I just dug though our sock bucket and pulled out 3 pairs of tube socks. Then I shoved one up to my elbow, then the next sock right over top, then the next, then did the same to the other arm. Then Stephanie would get plastic Ziploc baggies and place them around my hand and fore arm sealing it off with a rubber band to waterproof it. Then she’d help me in my coat and zip me up and mash a hat on top of my head. Then I’d waddle in my 2 sizes too big moon boots, after Stephanie and Austin. We’d go through the laundry room, Austin’s room, and finally into the connecting garage. That’s where we’d pick up the sled and head out.
So Austin and Stephanie open the garage door and start making their way to the fields. As they are walking out they see a strange dog in the distance and for some reason or the other… maybe the sixth sense, Austin and Stephanie haul it to this haystack that was about 40 feet away from our house. This haystack is like as high as a one and half story building. They climb up as fast as they can and then when they get to the top they look back and see me still standing in the garage looking completely freaked out. I just couldn’t move… I was staring at the dog… the dog was staring at me. Then for some reason he started running towards me. Teeth were bared, saliva started flying out of his mouth, kill look in his eyes. He got closer and closer. He was so close that I could read his dog tag: KID KILLER.
I know fashion wise I could rock those Moonie B’s but as I tried to move my feet to go anywhere, back inside or to the haystack, it was like they were super glued to that cement floor.
I COULDN’T MOVE I WAS SO PARALYZED!
I looked over to Stephanie and Austin on top of the haystack.
“Shellie Run!” They were shouting
Except it sounded like this in deep slow mo voice
“SHELLIEEEEEE RUUUUUUUUN”
Kid Killer would be upon me in less than .2 seconds and then he’d start tearing into my snowsuit and chomp me so hard and then shake me around and inject rabies in me from his teeth. And then I’d turn into a zombie.
Out of nowhere AC our neighbors old black lab came a flying. I had never in my life seen her move so fast. Her head and tail were lowered. She came from the side and hit Kid Killer from the right. Took him out and knocked him over. But he recovered pretty fast and started tearing into AC. They growled, bit, and attacked each other.
“SHELLIE GO GET BRUCE”
(Bruce is my step dad)
I did. “Bruce There’s a rabid dog outside”
He got his gun. Isn’t this such an Idaho story? We went into the garage and we couldn’t see rabid dog or AC. Austin and Stephanie were still up on the haystack. I ran to the haystack and got up there with them. Bruce went and got Ned and Ned got his gun too. As Ned and Bruce were coming out of Ned’s house AC came running up to them. So they headed off to the direction she came from and saw the dog. Aimed their guns and both took a shot. But they didn’t know who got him because they put a blank in one of the guns so the guilt wouldn’t eat away at them.
Then we got down and I gave AC the biggest hug ever for saving my life. Then I got really scared that she had gotten rabies from the dog and it would be my fault. But she was fine.
The end.
