The Snowmobile Incident

Lauren wrecked with her friend on a bicycle and they were both scraped up, and it just brings you right back to your childhood and all the times you got scraped up. Did you ever have a close call as a child but miraculously walked away unscathed? For me…being the 6th child of 7, it was a big deal when it was my turn to ride on the back of our Artic Cat snowmobile with a relative driving who shall remain unnamed to protect their identity lol. When he got the snowmobile stuck in the ditch, he asked me to “give it a little gas” after he lifted up the back end out of the ditch. So I immediately reached up to the throttle and genuinely thought I better squeeze this as hard as I can to prove that I am strong enough and capable enough to help out despite being so young, not realizing it doesn’t take much strength to squeeze the throttle. So when he lifted the back end, I squeezed the thumb throttle with my whole hand for all I was worth...that’s when I noticed I was literally flying through the air like the Dukes of Hazard. When the snowmobile and I were airborne and the barbed wire fence was fast approaching, I thought to myself…oh that’s what he meant by a little gas…that’s why he specifically mentioned little. I had no idea where the brake was so when the barbed wire popped the windshield off, I put my full body snowmobile suit covered arms up to protect my neck and thought oh great, I’m in big trouble now! My forearms blocking the wire stopped my upper body on a dime, but my lower body was still sitting on the sled for about two seconds until the sled pulled away unmanned through the field and I did a complete 360 degree summersault around the wire fence. You would think in that instant you would close your eyes in fear, but my eyes were wide open…I think to keep an eye out for how to get out of this mess! I remember at one point seeing my feet straight up in the air and thinking I blew it, I’ll never get to drive this again, ever! It was like I was part of an Olympic parallel bar team with zero training. I don’t know how many times I flipped around that fence, but for my dismount, instead of sticking the landing I landed flat on my back so hard it took the wind out of me. I was thinking well maybe nobody saw that embarrassing disaster where I just destroyed our beloved snowmobile, but when I looked towards the house, everyone had seen it since it was practically in our front yard. They all started running out to see if I was alive…except Mom who stayed by the land line phone ready to dial 911….or back in those days it was 278-3841, remember that? She sent my siblings out to report back lol! This was not her first rodeo. Luckily I wasn’t hurt, and we were able to replace the windshield no problem lol! I bet Mom was re-thinking her decision to have 7 kids at that point. Did you ever have any close calls?