It Was Just a Snowball...

Welcome to this week's installment of Friday's fun family facts...

Warning: the content of this entry has the potential to cause hostile sibling confrontation - proceed with care. A special thanks to Brandy Briscoe who always edits my blog to be sure that there isn't no mispelt words or awephul gramer...

It was the last thing I heard my brother say as I was rushed to the hospital..."It was just a snowball!"

In Upstate NY, it snows. When it snows you have a couple options - curse God and die, or try to make the best of it. My brothers and sisters and I would usually find the positive. After all, there were snow forts to build, sledding to be had, and ice-skating near death experiences to escape. Besides, in the Upstate you only have about 10 months a year to experience these wonderful wintry blessings, so you have to enjoy them while you can.

On this particular day we began with simple, innocent sled riding. But as these things go, sledding turned into snow-ramp jumping which turned into ice-ramp-death-tempting-jump marathons which, as always, degraded into a full fledged snowball war. And, during this war, since I was considerably smaller then my older brother, I assumed a defensive posture behind my sled and began to scheme my plans...

My strategy seemed flawless: I would wait until Nathan had to take a break. Then, at just the right moment, I would lob my perfectly formed snowball in his general direction. My hope was that he would be stunned by the unforeseen retaliation from the younger brother and that this momentary discombobulation would be all I needed to secure a technical victory.

This was a dumb plan!

There was a pause in Nathan's flurry - and there was a feeble lob from behind the sled-fortress - but stunned was no where to be found.

In fact, it soon became apparent that the only reason there had been a pause was to allow Nathan time to pick up the entire ice ramp that we had spent the morning creating. So as my pitiful attempt at autonomy splatted unnoticed 15 feet to Nathan's left, a large ice-ramp shaped missile was flying towards me; casting a dark shadow on my future.

To top it all off, I was bamboozled by the doctor who savagely set my arm back into place. While I was still wincing with pain he suggested that I pick the lime green, nylon cast...you can't even sign a lime green, nylon cast!