A Little Christmas Adventure

Come on in, cut yourself a slice of fruitcake, dip up a cup of egg nog, and settle down by the fire. What? What do you mean you don't like fruitcake? Of course you don't. No one does. Fear not, we'll serve cookies instead.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! It's already getting quite a bit colder here in the Midwest, so I thought you could do with a humorous Christmas adventure from my childhood to warm you up!
A long, long time ago (after the dinosaurs went extinct, but before the invention of the Internet) my cousin and I were left to run wild with the understanding that we wouldn't kill and/or maim each other. I'm older by about 21 months and should therefore be the voice of reason when we planned an escapade. Right? Well, it didn't always happen that way.

The view looked something like this only
with less water and more shag carpeting.

I'm notorious for coming up with harebrained plans. One Christmas Day, riding down the staircase on a cookie sheet seemed like a brilliant plan. We innocently asked for a cookie sheet and were refused. That didn't dampen our enthusiasm for the idea. Lucky for us, there happened to be an unguarded, empty box available for use and no adults in sight. We placed the box at the top of the stairs, which I should add, have no banister. There's a rock mantel a couple of feet from the bottom for stacking wood to put into the fireplace. What could go wrong with this plan?

Due to the differences in our ages and sometimes being forced to share, we often fought over who go to do an activity first. There wasn't enough room in the box for both of us to fit. This time, let's say I was feeling more than a little generous. Christmas spirit and all that. My cousin climbed into the box and I asked if she was ready. She seemed nervous, but agreed that she was. The box tipped toward the edge of the first step. When it was at an angle, I prepared to let go, my scrawny arms straining from the weight. Suddenly, the very real consequences seemed to strike. She wanted out. The staircase is narrow and there wasn't enough room for her to climb out (in retrospect, why not step over the end onto a lower step, but young minds, right?). So we started yelling for help. My grip was slipping, she was struggling to clutch the wall. Finally, when it looked like my arms would be ripped from their sockets, our moms came to find out what the noise was about.

Luckily, we didn't get our butts beaten until we looked like Rudolph on a bad day. We wound up putting a stuffed dog into the box and letting it rip. Neither box nor dog fared so well. However, as an adult, I can solidly reason out that that's because the dog didn't really weigh enough to keep from bouncing everywhere. Say 40 pounds of small child would have handled the descent a little better. Except there's no way she could have navigated that turn and not bashed her head on the mantel. But maybe with some cushioning at the bottom, we could avoid an impromptu trip to the ER. Hmm . . . .

Happy Holidays, y'all. See you next year!

When I'm not here, I'm blogging at Have Novel, Will Edit, hanging out on Facebook, G+, and Twitter.