"Hey, that looks like fun!"
I'm sure I've told this story in here before, but it bears repeating.

It was March of 1993, and upstate NY was being hit by a freak blizzard. I lived southwest of Syracuse at the time, and we got about four feet of snow overnight. I spent two days digging us out, and everything was thickly buried.

Mom called me to ask for help- their house in the Adirondacks had better than three feet of snow on it, and they were forecasting rain later in the week. When a thick layer of fresh snow gets rained on, it acts like a big sponge and soaks it up- and that's what collapses roofs. Dad needed my help to shovel off the roof. So I agreed, we packed the kids in the car and we drove two hours to get there, and the following morning Dad and I bundled ourselves up and got to work.

We quickly developed a routine. The snow was up to the level of our belts- about three feet deep- so we found that we could use the snow shovels to cut it into blocks, get the shovel under it and slide a three foot tall block to the edge of the roof and let it tumble off. It didn't involve any real lifting to speak of, but it was still pretty tiring work.

Dad and I finished it about one in the afternoon, then came down for lunch. We drank some hot coffee to defrost us, ate the BLTs Mom made for us and drank the beers we had waiting, and felt pretty good about ourselves.

"But what about the wood shed roofs?" Mom asked. "They'll never survive it!"

The wood sheds are about twelve feet square, built of timbers stacked like Lincoln Logs so that there are gaps between them to allow air to go through. We normally filled them during the warm months, and used the contents of one shed during the year while the wood in the other one dried for a year- so one was full and the other still had about a quarter of the wood left in it. They stand about three feet apart and have flat roofs that slope toward the back.

Dad was completely wiped out by five straight hours of work. "The hell with them. We can rebuild them later."

Mom turned to me. "What do you think? Are you up for shoveling more snow?"

By now I was warm, had food in me and had had a blast of caffeine. "Sure, just let me get my boots back on."

We got out there and I leaned a ladder against the back edge of the nearer shed, climbed up and made enough room for us to work in, then Mom climbed up too. We started digging and I showed her how to slide the blocks off, and we merrily chugged along with each block making a soft whoosh as it hit the growing pile at the back of the shed. We stepped over to the other shed and did the same there, and after about an hour or two both sheds were free of snow.

I went to climb down and immediately saw our mistake.

I had put the ladder against the back side of the shed because it was the lower edge of the roof, and because it was downhill we had tossed all of the snow off the back edge. The ladder was buried under about eight feet of snow. "Aww, shit... Okay, I'll jump down. you give me a shovel and I'll dig out the ladder." And I hopped into the snowbank, going up to my waist. I worked my feet under me and struggled clear of the snow and stood on top of the bank.

I heard, "Hey, that looks like fun!" and looked up in time to see my 65 year old mother sailing over my head and land waist deep in the snow a couple of feet away.

It took me ten minutes to dig her out because we were laughing so hard...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 12 Feb 2010, 15:52, 5 replies)

This...
is glorious :D
(Skawt, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 15:54, closed)

This
indeed is glorious! Made me giggle like a girl. Very well written too. Thanks.

(I'm not a girl).
(Tighthead, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 23:07, closed)

I totally agree
Thank you
a click is all I have to give, so I hope that you like it
(whiskas loved by 8 out of 10 cats, Sat 13 Feb 2010, 18:01, closed)

My Grandmother once said
old people are just young people,that have been doing it longer....this story epitomises that sentiment.

click.
( bane, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 23:18, closed)

This...
is hilarious. Click!
(ohnonotagain It's worse than you thought. I'm Canadian., Tue 16 Feb 2010, 5:23, closed)