A Horror

a young boy playing with his friends at the top of a snowy hill (one fashioned from a golf course, which with its deep dives & cuts made for an exciting & dangerous fight down & around all of its waves & bends---upon the freshly patted down snow now covered with a thin layer of ice from the precipitation the evening before), gears himself up for his trip down the huge hill---jumping upon his saucer-sled, one of the best---if you are in any way knowledgeable in sleds, sledding, and the outside arts of the adirondack snowy-ness. i watched, probably, in much the same way as mr. collins supposedly saw the guy watch another guy drown, then wrote “in the air tonight” about the whole thing--- but unlike the urban legend concerning phil, this was real. as the child spun down the hill with his hair flying back in the wind and a large smile on his face, with his hands gripped to the sides of the saucer (no doubt exactly as the instructions said when his parents purchased it for the boy), my own eyes followed his flight and zoomed ahead of him as my visual, given the distance, could make out where it was that he was going to end up--- and there it was, plain as day, a humongous ball of rolled up snow (far greater than the child’s size at least four times over) & it was covered in what seemed to be from far away, a hard layer of ice. i could only imagine how thick the ice was up close & personal. & even though i was a teenager i felt deep down in my sarcastic, sardonic, & fed up heart, that this boy was about to come upon a great bit of pain--- and there wasn’t a thing i could do about it. his eyes wide with horror & the inability to stop his sled, only occurred for but a split second, because directly thereafter his head split on the large iceball and blood spat a bright red all over the new snow & ice. children from all over the hill, who had been happily sledding & playing in the snow, began to scream, cry, and run to their parents.