A Winter Story

The story comes from Halloween of 1991. Minnesota was hit with this massive snowstorm, and I was the only person working at SuperAmerica, since no one else was able to get there. I ended up working from 3 pm to 7am the next morning. It’s a little disconcerting when you're up all night, and strange creatures begin to pop out. I remember one strange person who came in--clearly intoxicated--who looked totally...

My little brothers and I were playing outside, next to our pool which was iced over. It had a cover over it, so we decided to get a stray flip flop, some brooms, and play hockey! So, the ice wasn’t completely frozen, and my little brother was in the middle of the pool, with the ice shaking a little bit. When we tried to grab him with a broom, he slipped on more ice until he fell into some snow be...

It was the winter time: my brother was two, and I was five. My parents accidentally left us home alone, and my brother starts bawling--he was terrified. I go in big sister mode: I’ve got to create fun, and I’ve got to survive. In order to survive, I fed him powdered doughnuts, but I also had to create fun. What’s more fun than going outside to play? So...we decided to go outside...naked, in the s...

When I was five years old, I went to this preschool open house. My brother dared me to put my tongue on a freezing pool right outside, like in the movie A Christmas Story. I did, and I was like, “Ah, this is no problem. This is fun!” And I took my tongue, and I pulled it off so quick. I started laughing, because I thought it was hilarious! All of a sudden, my tongue was burning, and then I tasted bl...

One time in seventh grade, I was laying out in the snow because the door was locked to my house, and I was freezing cold. Then my snow boot came off, and then my foot started freezing. So I kept banging on the door, and then I ended up breaking the glass to the door. Finally, after I broke open the door, my grandma started coming up the stairs. She was like, “Why’d you break the door?”, and I w...

Freshman year, I went to Buck Hill, and I was in a tube going up the conveyor belt. So what had happened was, my tube unclipped on the side and it started falling back and landed on another tube behind me. I landed on that person, and everyone else started tumbling down the conveyor belt. That was uh...that was not fun.