S-No Kidding–Page 5
Nov/110
"ADAM!! Wait, I didn’t mean it," she said, trying to get up. She just kept sliding and falling. I came back to her.
"Promise not to pull me down?"
"Yes," she stated. I offered my hand, and with it she was able to get up. She shook a little, and I wobbled a little.
"Easy killer. Don’t try to be world class all at once. Let’s take this one step at a time." I showed her how to move her feet to get the rhythm and motion going correctly. We skated together for a while before I turned to her and asked, "Are you ready to try this on your own?"
"Sure," she said. I let go of her hand. I slowed up a bit, and she went a little faster. It seemed like she had gotten the knack of it. I chased her, and she went faster. She started to lose her balance. She fell backwards, I reached out and caught her. I had her under her arms. We were still going pretty fast.
"Are you okay?" I asked her.
"Thanks. That might’ve hurt."
"Not a problem. Can you get up?"
"Umm." She started, trying to get enough force to get up, but she kept slipping.
"Okay, here’s what you do. All I want you to do, is start to bring your feet backwards, I’ll lift you."
"All right." She said. I started to lift her up. She was a lot lighter than I figured. Easing her over to my right side, I kept my arm around her back. She put hers around me. "This is a lot of fun, Adam. Thanks for bringing me."
"Let’s be honest with each other, all right?"
"About what?"
"You’ve never skated in your life before now, right?"
"I wondered how you figured that one out."
"And I. Well, I can’t swim."
"You can’t swim! That’s so funny!"
"Hey, I could let you go right now!" I said, loosening my grip on her side.
"No, no, I didn’t say that. I was just remarking how things are different from where we live."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I grew up in water, practically."
"You’re not a mermaid are you?" I asked with a smile on my face. She punched me in the stomach.
"No. And you were born in the north so you know about all these snow things."
"And skating."
"And skating," she repeated, "It just goes to show how much we could learn from each other."
"Oh, I get it. Well, my dear southern belle, are y’all hungry enough to get something to eat?"
"Sure’n enough I am."
"Well then follow me." I took her over to the booth and exchanged our skates. We put back on our boots, and we walked back to the car. Taking a path that was not used, which you could tell because there were no other foot prints in the snow, Kendall was struggling walking beside me. "Walk in the holes I make." I instructed her. She started to follow in my foot-steps, literally. We got to a place where no one could see, and I turned to her and said, "Would you like to make a snow angel?"
S-No Kidding–Page 4
Nov/110
"Thank you, warden," she said, with a grin on her face. It would be a long time before we would need to be at the Red River, so I suggested to Kendall that we do something while we were waiting. "How about some swimming? This hotel has an indoor swimming pool. That would be fun!" I tried to convince her otherwise, but she insisted. When she gave me the "Puppy dog" eyes, it was over. I nodded yes, and she got excited.
"Just one question."
"Okay?"
"How do you get over there in your swimsuit? It’s has to be below freezing out there."
"Good point."
"Let me just go and see if it is even open, or there is a life-guard, stuff like that."
"Okay." She said. I left the room and walked toward the pool. As I arrived at the pool, the door was locked and a sign read: "Closed for repairs." Returning to the room, I opened the door. Kendall was standing in her one-piece bathing suit wearing high heels. "Shut the door!!" She screamed. After I shut it, she asked, "Well, what do you think?"
"Umm, blue is a good color on you." Giving me one of those looks of hers, I said, "The pool is closed for repairs. Though I did see how to get over there without getting too cold." She was very disappointed, or at least that is what she wanted me to believe. I suggested that we go sno-tubing. Not knowing what this was, I had to explain to her, "You sit on a tube and slide down a hill."
"And that’s what you call fun."
"All right. I admit that it doesn’t sound like fun, but neither does soccer if you figure that all that you do in it is kick a ball around trying to get it into a net."
"I get the picture. Do you know where to go?"
"Well, let’s see if the hotel manager has any suggestions." Calling up the manager, he gave us the name of a place that would not only be fun to slide down, but would also provide the tubes on which to ride. We got bundled up, and headed over there. As we arrived, we noticed that there were not many people there, for it was just after one o’clock. We rented some tubes and had the slopes to ourselves. Sliding down was exhilarating. I showed her all different ways of doing it, spinning, making jumps, and other things. Besides landing head first in the snow a couple of times, being covered in snow, and the time she landed on my back, it was great fun.
Children started to appear, so I asked her if she wanted to ice-skate. She nodded and I took her over to the skating rink. There we traded our tubes for skates. I laced up quickly and moved out onto the ice. I’m no Olympic figure skater, mind you — though very few of us are — but I can manage to get myself going, and stay balanced. I learned a lot from Amanda, though. Kendall had a little rougher time with it. I can imagine why. If you figure that she lives in the south and the only place they can skate is on indoor rinks, well, us northerners corner the market in outside rink availability.
Enough of all that, the point is, she was having trouble staying on her skates. Coming over to me, I could tell that she either hadn’t skated before, or she had forgotten everything. I smiled, thinking how funny it was watching her try to skate. As I was thinking this, she fell backwards. I skated over to her. "That ice hurts, doesn’t it?"
"I’ll say. They need to give us cushions for when we fall down." She commented.
Offering my hand to help her up I said, with a smile, "I don’t see anyone else falling." She took my hand, and pulled me down. I landed on my knees and hands. Getting up I said, "Fine, get up yourself!" I skated off in the direction of some other people.
