Years ago – I can no longer remember exactly how many – I was entering every CBC writing contest that I could get my hands on. I naively thought that this was the way to go to get my writing career started. Looking back, some of the stuff I wrote to submit to their contests and social media challenges was not great, but at least I had fun doing it.
I think this one was for a Facebook challenge. We were encouraged to tell a winter tale that had to be a true story. I decided on the story of an eventful walk in the park that I had embarked on with my sister and our family dog, Toffee. I still cannot believe we thought it would be a good idea to attempt that walk after such a massive snowfall.
Enjoy!
It was the Christmas break, and my younger sister and I spent an evening walking our dog. As we looped around the last corner, just before the start of our street, we came across a small park. It was roughly the same size as the property of the house beside it. No one had set foot in that park all winter and the untouched snow was far too tempting. We decided that we would give in to temptation and cross through the park to get to our street. Walking through the park was a slightly shorter trip than walking around it. At least, it was supposed to be.
The moment we set foot in the park we realized that this would become a bit of a challenge, but we continued on because it didn’t seem all that bad at first. That year there had been more snow than usual and the park was completely covered. The snow was so deep that it came up to my hips. My sister and I began to wade through the snow, chuckling a little at how silly this was, when we suddenly encountered a problem. Our dog had been trying to walk on top of the snow, but the snow was so deep that he kept sinking. Also, when he gets too cold during a walk, he will stop and give us a look that says: “I’m cold and I don’t want to do this anymore.” We were getting that look. At this point, we were exactly halfway through the park, so instead of turning back and walking through the path we had created, we decided to continue our journey forward.
My sister scooped up the dog in her arms, and the two of us continued through the park. She was struggling as she walked because she had the added challenge of carrying the dog. The two of them looked so funny that I suddenly burst into laughter; not just regular laughter, but the kind of unstoppable laughter that brings tears to your eyes and leaves your stomach hurting for days. My sister began to laugh too, and eventually her arms got so tired that she handed me the dog. This was when the laughter got worse. I began to laugh so hard that I could no longer hold the dog and I dropped him in the snow. I was laughing so hard that even though I tried to hold onto him, I just couldn’t do it. My sister and I were both laughing hysterically, but she was the only one who was able to pick him up again and carry him, although it became more and more difficult the closer we got to the exit.
By the time we had reached the edge of the park and had freed ourselves from the snow, we were both out of breath from laughing, my sister looked like she was ready to kill me, the dog did not look happy, and the three of us were freezing!
