Snowy Slope

It snowed here in Cleveland for about five days straight. The past two days we have had a nice break. But, I believe, according to the very accurate weather forecasters, snow is on the horizon again.

With that, I am reminded of a time right after I got my driver's license. It must have been the winter of 1999-2000. At the time my brother, Nick, and I were sharing a car. A beautiful silver Honda CR-V. Beautiful until Nick, of course, wrecked it up.

When I think about it, it is amazing that with all the wear and tear I put on that poor CR-V, that Nick is the one who wrecked it. I remember specifically heading to basketball practice on a snowy afternoon. I was very impatient at 16. I did not want to take the time to clean the snow off of the car and figured that I could simply run the windshield wipers. And that worked, but only for the front and back windows. To save time, I simply unrolled all four windows and rolled them back up. That worked quite well too, except for the window on my driver's side door. 

When I unrolled it a second time, I put it all the way down and held my arm against the window to push the snow outward. My genius, time-saving idea did not work. The snow fell inside the window and right onto my lap. Without thinking, I opened the door and stepped out to brush the snow off. Before I got my second foot out of the door, the CR-V went barreling backwards down our nicely sloped driveway. 

By the time I sprinted and dove into the car, slamming on the brake with my hand, the CR-V and I were across the street, just getting on to our neighbors lawn. I quickly gathered myself and checked out the scene. No damage done and nobody watching. Perfect! Nothing more than a simple running warm-up for basketball practice!