These next stories are some of my all time faves. If you have known me a while you've probably heard them but if not enjoy they're fantastic.
I forget the year, or our ages but I remember the snow. Utah had record high snowfall and there was concern that your roof would cave in if you didn't get up there and shovel it off. So a couple times a week we were getting up there to clear the snow. Then Josh had the great idea of piling all the snow at one corner of the house so we could jump off the roof into it. We did, it was fun, but after a day or two the snow became more ice and less fluff. Then Josh had an even better idea of turning this pile of snow into a sledding hill where you could start at the top of the roof, fly off the edge, hit the ice hill and "safely" slide to the bottom.
It took a couple hours of preparing the hill so that there was a track that the sled could easily slide on. We also had to put some snow back on the roof so that there would be something to slide on there as well.
We finally have it ready and are getting set for the inaugural launch. It has been decided that Josh and I will be the guinea pigs (again, I have no idea how I got dragged into it). It just so happens that we are doing this at about the time the procession from church is arriving in our neighborhood on Sunday afternoon.
Most of my readers probably know what I'm talking about, but if you don't I'll try and explain it really quick. In Utah if you're mormon (and most people are) you go to church with the people in your neighborhood, so every morning a line of cars can be seen going to church and every afternoon they'll be coming home. It looks very similar to a funeral procession.
So now we have an audience. I think there were 4 or 5 cars that had stopped, everyone else just ignored it and drove past. Now at the time I thought these people that had stopped were really excited for us and were thinking
oh this will be really cool to watch. Looking back I'm pretty sure they thought they were about to see 2 Schultz children end their lives. I would also like to take this moment to point out that they didn't get out of their cars, they didn't try to stop us, they just watched. I can only assume they were in their cars planning the celebration of 2 less Schultz's in the world (it would have been complete with funeral potatoes and green jello I'm sure, and maybe even some sparkling cider to show it was a happy event). Well we didn't die. We flew off the roof barely grazed the ice hill and landed quite hard on our rears destroying the sled and any hopes of making it bigger and better. It was awesome!!! All 5 cars drove away, probably a little disappointed.
The next story happened much later in life. We were adults, or at least he was and I almost was. That morning I had followed him into the basement where both our rooms were and where it was quite dark. He just walked through the hall all brazen without a light on, and I said "don't you want to turn a light on so you don't step on something?"
He replied "no, I've got my steel-toed boots on, nothing can hurt me!" He was working county fire and thought he was bad ass.
That day my father decided to install a door in the basement hall where there had never been a door before in our entire life. My brother comes home late at night, so of course it's pitch black in the basement, I'm laying in bed and all of a sudden I hear this huge THUD "what the hell?". Steel toed boots can't protect your face from smacking a door you didn't know was there can they Josh? Next time you should turn a light on.