cold

Its's 99 degrees in the shade today so I will not be talking about the heat. I will be talking about the cold. I remember as a child not having too many friends and playing bymy self most of the times. - At my grade school as is most schools the plowed the snow all to one side of the playgrounds. The big hills of snow from the blizzrd of 1978-79. We would often play king of the hill. Climbing and toppleing one another to the hard ice below. - On the weekends I would walk to school and play on the hills by my self. I would dig through the hard snow and make tunnels and ramps. No walkman or mp3 player just the noise and songs in my head. I would go home with my face red and raw from the wind and cold. Pants wet and refrozen from playing on the ice. I would take my gloves off and pants and hang the on the radiator to dry. I remember the first time I filled up the sink with warm water and dipped my frozen hands in to it. The pain shooting from the finger tips to my still frozen wrists.
As I grew older I made made friends and made many snow forts and had countless snow ball fights and battles. In the near suburbs of Chicago there were no hills and no place to sled. We developed an "urban" way of sledding. The cars of the mid to late 70's were hulking machines of Detriot steel. After a heavy snow fall the plowes were slow to arrive in our neiborhood. We would wait by a street corner. After a car would stop we would jump on the back on a squatted position and grip the metal bumper for dear life. The old cars would slide and start to go on. The car would carry us on our slick soled shoes for about a block or until we fell off. Skitching is what we called it. Some in Chicago proper would call it Skeetiching.
Some times we would wait behind a shopping center and wait for the UPS truck to drop spmthing off. We would grab on to it and fly. -- The cold never bothered us as kids. The wet never bothered me as a kid. Being alone in the cold is what bothered me.