The Poosey Digest... by Freida Marie Crump
Techniques for surviving winter weather
Greetings from Poosey.
As I was lying there spread-eagle in the middle of the supermarket parking lot, the sleet still coming down, my groceries a colorful display of plastic and cellophane on the muddy snow, an excited shopper standing over me shouting (too loudly) "Are you all right? Are you all right?," and an elderly lady who had not seen me fall still backing out of her parking space toward my stunned body, I asked myself, "Did anyone ever advise me on the proper way to do this?"
Once the slick weather hits we get shovelfuls of advice on everything from how to prevent frostbite to the proper way to de-ice a sidewalk, but has anyone ever covered the delicate art of landing flat onto your butt in the parking lot?
Since I now have put in enough hours on my frozen rear to get a degree in the subject, let me pass along some of the finer techniques of the Midwinter Hiney Splat.
Technique One: The Nonchalant. Being good Midwesterners not given to sudden outbursts of emotion, the nonchalant approach is the most favored in our neck of the woods. The blasé, detached approach requires the splat-ter to casually look around to see if the proper number of limbs are still attached, casually roll over onto his stomach, then to his knees, finally reaching the door handle and pulling himself up to a standing position. If you're quick you can do all this while you're still in shock, and the pain won't hit you until you try to get out of the car back in your own garage.
The toughest thing about being a nonchalant is that you're lying. But, if again you're a true Midwesterner, this shouldn't bother you much. You live in a part of the country where the response to "How you doin'?" must necessarily be, "Fine. You?" even though you may be half-dead at the moment.
Technique Two: The Intentional. This method is never actually accepted by any sane bystander, but it's a highly refined form of performance art and you might really be able to convince yourself that someone out there believes you. The actual routine varies, but a common practice of The Intentional is to roll over on his stomach, start searching through the snow as he mutters, "I know I dropped those darned keys here somewhere."
Technique Three: Denial. It's simple, you hop yourself to your feet and pretend it didn't happen. This of course is completely negated by the fact that it did happen, at least a dozen people saw it happen, and you now have a back x-ray awaiting you that proves it happened. You might think it silly to even mention so ridiculous a technique as The Denial, but because it's so common in politics I thought I'd throw it in.
Technique Four: Grandma's Method. The only time I actually saw my grandmother flip head-for-heals and out of control was not on an icy day but the middle of a hot July scorcher. It was chicken killing day on the farm and grandma used the hatchet method. Anyone who's cut off the head of an old hen knows that the hen does not take this lightly. You stretch the chicken's neck over a tree stump, then you hang onto the head and whack. Note: you do not keep hold of the chicken. In fact, for the remaining minute or so of her life, the chicken is free to do pretty much what she wants, which usually entails a lot of running around in circles and spraying blood over whoever happens to be in the path of her final chicken dance.
Grandma was pretty good at the whacking part but her age prevented her from escaping the bloody chicken. I remember well that hot July morning when the chicken, with some sort of extra-sensory revenge, headed right toward her, flinging its bloody stump this way and that. Grandma backed as far as her black-heeled pumps (it takes a classy grandma to kill chickens while wearing heels) would allow.
I saw the bush but grandma didn't. As the chicken from hell approached the elderly farm woman she fell back onto the bush. I don't think grandma ever watched a football game in her life, but somehow she managed to make the touchdown signal with her legs. When we went scrambling over to the bush to see if grandma was dead and thus supper would be late, we heard her laughing. That was it. Splat. Giggle. Shock-and-Guffaw.
I don't think I'm stretching the point here to say that the world would be better off if we could latch onto grandma's technique of simply laughing at ourselves.
You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. If I don't answer the door, check the back steps.
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