It Always Starts With "Watch This!"

Like these things so often do, the whole thing began with the words, “Watch this!” I think back on it now, (hindsight being what it is), and I honestly can’t remember ever uttering those words and having it end well. This time was no exception.

We’d just gotten the seven or so inches of snow that made every kid in the area crazy with “School’s Out Syndrome”, and a fresh layer of awe-inspiring powder covered the small hill in my front yard that would make even an Olympic snowboarder smile. My kids spent the morning staring from the windows, just waiting for “Daddy” to get done with some business stuff so that I could take them out for some sled-riding fun. Truth be told, I was looking forward to it as much as they. Some of us never grow up, after all.

The first to hit the “Widow-Maker”, (more of a dwarfed-down version of a bunny slope, but we’ll get to my pet-name in a minute), was my son. Our weapons of choice for this attack on the fresh powder were the round, plastic “saucers” that have been the source of so many hospital visits in the past. Nothing is too good for my kids.

As he sat upon the saucer and pushed off the edge of the slope, the yet-unpacked snow shoveled against the front lip of the disk and his protruding snow boots dug into the snow in front of him creating a set of unintended brakes, constantly applied. I took one look at his disappointed face and knew that I had some work to do.

“Don’t worry, son,” I said. “It just takes some packing down. Here, let Daddy take a couple of runs on it and I’ll get a good groove packed in … then you’ll fly!”

“Are we gonna’ build a jump again this year?” He asked, a smile on his face spreading all the way to the edges of his parka hood. I instantly remembered the crying, the swelling, the getting yelled at by my wife the previous year – (all related to my having built him a “snow-jump”) – and answered in the best way I could … “We’ll see,” I said. Truth be told, I really wanted to. Watching him soar through the air last year was a blast … until the “incident”, that is.

I pushed myself on the saucer, working my way down the hill. After two runs, the snow was cleanly packed and I could tell by the nearly six-inch-deep groove that my kids were going to reach a speed of around Mach-26 when their little behinds got on the saucers. I was excited. I got back to the top of the hill and helped my son get situated for his inaugural descent.

I pushed him off – ever so lightly, since it was the first run – and he made it several yards before his feet dug in and abruptly stopped him. Instantly I realized that I was going to have to teach him a better technique. As he worked his way back to the crest of the tiny hill, I began to sit down upon the second saucer and, folding my legs in front of me “Indian-style”, I said the magic words … “No – you gotta’ sit ‘Indian-style’ … here … ‘WATCH THIS’!”

I shoved with my gloved hands like an Olympic gold medalist leaving the gate, the ground barely creating friction beneath my too-heavily-weighted plastic saucer. Instantly I lurched forward and felt gravity take hold, pulling me down toward the steepest part of the hill and on to an award-winning run never before matched by mortal man. It was an awesome thrill that is hard to put into words. It was like flying … like being shot from a cannon … and, it lasted about ten-feet. Suddenly, something at the right front side of the saucer dug itself into something immoveable – perhaps a frozen piece of dog-dropping, perhaps a protruding stump - I’m really not sure. Regardless, my saucer spun around backward – my view now adjusted to include the faces of my laughing wife and children at the top of the hill – and as to where I was headed, I had no idea.

Things may have been okay at that point. Perhaps, had the next thing not happened, I would have safely descended to the bottom, slowed to a manageable speed and ultimately gotten up without injury. As it was, however, somehow I lost balance and leaned back, the sudden shift in weight digging the lip of the saucer into the snow and tossing me over like a drunken gymnast. I felt myself going over – all six-foot, seven-inches and 250-pounds of me – somehow managing a somewhat graceful somersault. This too, would have been fine, had I made it back to my feet and bounced to a solid landing. My family would likely have held up 10-point score cards, judging such a wonderful display of ability.

Unfortunately, at the apex of the somersault – just when all of my weight was forcing my neck into the ground – a loud “cracking sound” filled the air. Not just a cracking sound like the popping of a finger or a joint that you hear within your own body – this one was loud. Parts of Franklin, Crawford, Washington and Gasconade counties reported hearing the snap and I’ve heard rumor that a seismograph at the University of Missouri – Columbia actually registered some movement. Twenty-years ago, I would have bounced up from such an incident and moved on to the next thing. This year, however, I just sort of lay there for a minute – assessing the damages mentally and wondering if death would be preferable to the pain I was about to feel.

It’s been a couple of weeks now, since which time I’ve had a trip to the Urgent Care doctor who awarded me with news of a broken T7 vertebra. I’ve been to another doctor who sent me to a specialist by way of the pharmacy. The specialist has now also granted me bulging disks in T3 and T4. What a guy. And finally, I’ve just today been shot with some sort of pain killer directly into several locations of my spine – a sensation that I wouldn’t recommend while it’s happening, but now that it’s done, I could swear my back is no longer broken. In fact, right now I feel as though I could do a back flip from this chair and land perfectly on my feet! In fact …

“WATCH THIS …”