#342 – Down

One winter I went to a local hill to do some sledding. Someone had built a nice ramp at the bottom that I was eager to try out. When I got there another kid was just getting to the top of the hill. I yelled up to him “Hey, see if you can jump over me!” and so I knelt down behind the ramp and when he started down the hill I got down on my back and watched his sled fly over my face. “That was awesome!” So now it was my turn. He got down on his back and I started up the hill. When I got to the top I aimed myself carefully and then hopped onto my sled. I guess it must have seemed like a long time because right when I reached the ramp he popped his head up to see where I was. My orange plastic sled plowed right into his face knocking his glasses across the yard. I landed and turned around to see him balled up on the ground next to bright red blood on the pure white snow. I gave him his glasses and helped him walk across the street to his house. I never met him before and never saw him again.

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0 thoughts on “#342 – Down”

  1. Victor says:

    Damn, thats right! Hehe…

  2. Micah says:

    Badgers? We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers!

  3. A Captain says:

    Ah, winter sledding. How does anyone ever survive childhood, I wonder? I managed to break my friend’s collar bone when we were sledding. He was in the front steering and I was standing up on the back of the crazy carpet (a crazy carpet is… well, it’s a tough plastic sheet that bends in the front, allowing you to travel at insane velocities on snowy slopes), then we hit a bump and I flew over him, smashing my knee into his neck.

    Good times.

    Good times.

  4. Imaginary says:

    I never really had a sled as a child, growing up in a place where it’s snowed (seriously snowed) a total of three times in my seventeen years of life, I guess I never really needed one. But cold rain does produce ice, so I would just get in one of the totes made for toys and slide down an ice covered road. Once I ran into a jutting pipe, I’m really surprised I survived that, and without a single mark to show for it too.

  5. pieman says:

    badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom
    badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom
    badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom
    badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger a snaaake, aaa snaaake, its a snaaake, its a badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom
    badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom
    badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom
    badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger a snaaake, aaa snaaake, its a snaaake.

  6. pieman says:

    imaginary: do you live in england by any chance?

  7. Your Metal Lord says:

    Wow, poor kid. As a child our house was halfway up a hill, the top being the street and the bottom the woods. I would sled down it and aim for the water drain beside our shed so it would shoot me i nto the woods. It was always bumpy and ended in scrapes, but still so much fun

  8. Vargan Shnargal says:

    pieman: That’s exactly what popped into my head when I read this comic

  9. Rachael says:

    Quite unfortunate. I grew up in California, so we barely knew what snow was. Now we live in New York. Sledding’s fun until the cold stuff gets in your hood and down your jacket.

  10. Dr. Doom says:

    I actually have sledded when I was 4, visiting scotland. For some reason we did it on overpasses, but noone complained at the time.

  11. thewho1 says:

    It snowed once in Guildford. School was cancelled and everyone went to the Mount to go sledding. It’s about a 30% gradient though so loads of people got bruised when they hit the bushes at the bottom.

  12. Seraphine says:

    I never tried glissading in summer
    just for that reason. Think what
    might have happened if that badger
    popped his head out of the hole
    and had *his* glasses go flying!

  13. Gobbledegook says:

    LOL!!
    Good one!

    Story time:
    I used to have a really steep hill (~50-degree gradient) in my backyard growing up; it was a b**** to mow in the summer but perfect for sledding in the winter.

    In early ’93 we got a blizzard that lasted off and on for two weeks and dumped about 4 feet of snow on the ground (our area’s avg. was 6-12 inches a year). Me and my brothers ended up shoveling paths to the edge of the hill, getting a running start, and then hurling ourselves off of our makeshift cliff. We’d fall about 15 to 20 feet and land in fluffy snow on the slope.

    ‘Course, then my twin brother got too much of a running start and actually cleared the entire hill. He fell about 40 feet and landed on his back in densely-packed snow. He might as well have done it in the middle of summer; the results would have been the same. Fortunately, he’s a friggin’ tank and he was able to walk it off with no injuries other than a huge bruise.

  14. Danicus says:

    I live just down the road from a ski resort, and after they close, my friends and i usually go sleeding there. the snow lasted until mid-may this year!

  15. kenshin620 says:

    I don’t know what’s more ridiculous: Biff skiiing in the summer or him not being able to steer clear of holes.

  16. Alex H says:

    That kid had yet to learn the first lesson in not getting a sled in the face..

    NOT TO STAND UP!

  17. MaskedMan says:

    The first rule of Sled-in-the-Face club: You DO NOT stand up in Sled-in-the-Face club!

    Growing up, I lived a several different states where snow was common – one of the first things I would do on arriving at a new home would be to scout out all the posssible sledding spots. One place had an absolute jackpot of a hill, starting off at about a 40% grade, tapering to about a 1% grade, all the way to the backdoor of my house, 2/3 of a mile away. Yes, with good snow, you could run from the top of the hill all the way to the back door of the house, get a cup of hot cocoa, then go back and do it again. With luck, you arrived in the backyard with enough speed to flip the sled over when you hit the back porch.

    Flipping the sled at the end of the run was the best part.

  18. Kanki-chan says:

    Nothing much for sledding stories since I had low hills, but I have somehing more for the badger holes: Walking through cornfields isn’t that much fun when every five feet you trip and fall from a muddy gopher/badger hole. The yells of surprise people give are intresting tho.

  19. John Gardner says:

    “This is the city. A million weary people lie in bed or sit staring out the window, trying to make sense of it all.

    “Sometimes one of them gets the urge to pet a small, furry animal; that’s where I go to work.

    “My name is Friday — I carry a badger.”

  20. Synchro593 says:

    Why did the kid put his head up? He should have just yelled or something.

  21. Aaron says:

    ha, I live in Ontario (Canada) so theres snow on the ground more often than not

  22. Natester says:

    Wow, I knew one could summer ski… but that just sucks!

  23. I haven’t been sledding for a few years now. Either the snow was of crappy quality, or I was away at college without a sled. But I’m going off to live in Norway for a while, and really looking forward to the winters there.

  24. Ben says:

    The college I went to was on top of a hill, and there were all kinds of places to sled. Of course, very few people brought sleds to college, but that problem was very easily remedied by stealing cafeteria trays. Nothing like speeding down an ice-slicked hill through a forest on a two foot long plastic tray.

    That’s good stuff.

  25. 2s+3-4e*(45/5)3x says:

    hehehe badger

  26. Arctic_fox says:

    umm just to clarify what the heck is snow? (my family has ALWAYS lived in deserts btw)

  27. Marioman64 says:

    Snow is rain that freezes before it hits the ground, making a nice fluffy layer of ice that looks like a white blanket over everything.

    lol badger

  28. Jameson says:

    Me and my friends always use one of our mutual friend’s fireplace to sharpen normally harmless tools… A few weeks later one friend was trying to toss a sharpened screwdriver into the trunk of a tree to see if it would stick in. Instead of sticking in the screwdriver deflected off the bark and hit me right in the boney part of my nose where your nose meets your eye. Now I have a nice scar 😀

  29. Daniel says:

    I live in Seattle, where we get a lot of rain but it only snows every few years, and only twice a decade is it actually sleddable. So there was a huge hill in an alley that we were sledding down one year, until all the snow was melted off from us.

    Not to be deterred, we found a 2 foot long, 3 foot high planter with a ton of snow and about a 45 degree angle. Ow, but fun to shoot off that thing.

    We also sledded down these sand cliffs that we would party at in high school. And by sledded, I mean we found a plastic sled, sat on it and jumped off the cliff.

  30. Neteeee says:

    hahahahahahahahahahahaha awesome.

  31. Accursed says:

    is it ironic in the fact alone a guy named arctic fox has always lived in a desert?

    but back to the topic at hand.. sled related injuries were all to prevalent in my family growing up, my sister and i always ended up flipping them halfway down the hell or getting too much of a running start ending up hitting a bush, a car, or each other

  32. Psychosis says:

    The only thing worse than badgers are wolverines. But you still don’t want to get on a badger’s bad side.

  33. BluwWaterDragon says:

    John Gardner: Cool man, reaaal cool.

    I got run over by a sled when I was 4.

  34. LiesAreForever says:

    I love in Sakatchewan, and Most of the time, the summers are friggin’ hot (~30 Centgrade) and the winters are friggin’ cold (~-40 Centigrade) Except for one year quite a while ago, when, (Where I was, at least) It snowed every day except for about a week in July. (And it was hot. At least fifty above.) Ahh, gread sledding.

    Good times.

  35. Takanero says:

    I live in the California desert so I only see snow when I go to Big Bear. My bro would always fly off his tire tub we would shed on and he would get run over by it every time

  36. Mr random says:

    wow you are lucky i live in Western Australia and i want snow i need to travel to Sydney or queensland and go for a 3-5 hour drive to the blue mountains to see snow.

  37. Alice Love says:

    You know what also hurts? Learning to skate for the first time on gravel roads sloping downwards.

  38. SurveySays says:

    my greatest sledding memory is Wolf hill. i dont know why its called that but you have 2 choice the safe slope down the left side where the only danger is the light post(and only then if you aim and are going fast enough to reach it) or the side that faces the narrow road that is so twisty cars dont have a chance of seeing you till after you’re dead. on the other side of that road is a house with a metal fence that runs almost the whole length exept for the garden gate. I have many fond memories of rocketing down the hill and launching out of the ditch at the bottom, across the road and slamming full force into the fence while the man who lived there laughed at me and my friends. we did this almost every weekend while there was snow on the ground. I made it thru the gate one time. it was pure awesome. i launched out of the ditch, narrowly missed a car and-still slightly air borne- flew past the gate, hit the ground and slid all the way to the guys house. i don’t know who cheered louder-me or him.

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