The house I grew up in is located across the street from an elementary school, whose playground abuts a modest hill that slopes up to the next street over. My parents used this as a selling point for me and my brother when we moved there, saying it would be just like our old New York City apartment with the park a short walk away. On the night in late June when we arrived at our new neighborhood, the clipped grass lawns were prickly from drought, a critical barrier to a five-year-old’s enjoyment and acceptance of this new play space, and therefore the state of Michigan as a whole.
However, after the cicadas hummed their final note, the chevrons of geese flew south, and the grass was covered in layers of leaves, winter came and snow fell. The sharp newness of our lawn and park across the street was cushioned with the possibilities that come with blank slate of powder. With a gift from our retired neighbors, the full potential of the elevation change across the street could be realized: my brother and I could sled.
The collection of plastic carriages we inherited from our neighbors was one of remarkable variety. The rugged orange one with side handles was ideal to impersonate a penguin’s slide, and the black one resembling an oversized takeout dish was named Torpedo, demonstrating its ability to quickly move you down the hill in a simple straight line. The two blue saucers were preferred for those seeking a dizzying orbit to the bottom, but our most prized possession was the Polyboggan. Hybridly named for its modernist purple plastic and its resemblance to the traditional toboggan, the vehicle boasted four one-foot by one-foot squares molded into its elevated base. These four squares implied the existence of four adventurous sledders, and our neighbors were called into action from a few streets away. When we were younger, our father would take up the rear, and some combination of my brother, our neighbors, and I would fill in the remaining seats. The combined weight was enough to propel us down the longest slope of the park, the slight uphill to the sidewalk, and if we had a good run, spill out into the bottom of our suburban road.
Over the years, our parents faded into the background and our sledding runs became more independent, but the goal of our winter excursions was still to surpass the bounds of the hill, to foray into the streetscape where no kid had slid before.
***
On Monday, after a quick snack break at home, I leave a few minutes later than planned. I jump down the porch steps instead of stepping. At the next intersection, I decide to cut a diagonal across the asphalt rather than crossing the sides one by one. Still, I rotate my wrist only to see I’ve not made up much time, and am behind schedule. I repeat the jaywalking strategy at the following turn, and once again at Huron Street: I ignore the pedestrian crosswalk two hundred feet to my left in favor of my own haphazard alternative. My head is of a prairie dog when I quickly look back and forth, and my presence as a rodent continues as I cross the four lanes of traffic, my feet moving and backpack bobbing with urgency. I step up to the curb, therefore successfully completing this vehicular obstacle course. I know that if I speed walk the rest of the way and carefully dart between traffic at the next road crossings, I can make it to my class on time, where my presence as a human will be re-confirmed.
***
My English class is located three stories above the ground, and features large rectangular windows that form most of the left wall. In the class, we discuss novels and their authors, and we try to figure out what their words mean and analyze their intentions. This can be quite interesting, but my favorite part of the class is looking outside at the trees swaying; watching the branches rock the snow off of their twigs. On the first day of class, I chose a seat directly next to the windowsill, so that whenever a slide deck threatened to glaze my eyes over, I could stare out into the maze of intersecting forms, the limbs dissecting outdoor space into soothing shapes of thought.
Whenever a squirrel climbs high enough to exist in my line of sight, I fantasize a Freaky Friday scenario with the animal acquaintance. The squirrel would take my spot in the chair and analyze the role of setting in Go Tell it on the Mountain, and the only thing I would need to worry about would be how many acorns I desired to eat. I would give the squirrel my work uniform so they could clock into my next shift, and my only task for the night would be finding the best tree that would sway myself to sleep before the next morning. I find great pleasure in this thought even if it will never happen.
***
At four o’clock, I find myself in the university’s student union, descending into the basement, navigating a webpage on my phone to clock into my job. I take my time placing my backpack and jackets into my locker and putting on my work shirt over the rest of my clothes. I arrive late. The first time this happened, I apologized to my supervisor, Lori, and she said “Don’t worry about it.” Now, I no longer worry and consistently show up about ten minutes after my shift begins.
I see Lori. We say hi to each other and show surface level interest in our respective weekends. We talk about the “big snowstorm” that will arrive in our city in a few days. She bemoans the potential wrench in her commute, and I automatically agree on the outside. On the inside, I make a note to text friends about potential sledding outings. Lori leaves a few minutes later, leaving me and Cooper, the other student manager, in charge.
Cooper tells me what there is to do. I spend the next hour gathering various computer related items, scanning them, and putting them in boxes and on shelves so a delivery person can take them away. When I am done with that, I pretend to answer people’s email requests on the computer, but I am actually doing homework for my English class.
When the thought hits me, I pull the cash registers from the front of the store two hours before I’m supposed to, and count them. Cooper says, “You’re counting the registers already?” and I reply with, “There is nothing else to do.” There are other things to do, like dusting the computer screens and helping out customers, but this one advances my agenda of closing the store for the night as soon as possible. I balance the credit card machines and then sit around pretending to exude managerial authority while everyone else does nothing as well.
We play this game for a while until my coworker Ciara asks me if she can “take a fifteen.” As far as I know, “fifteens” are not a part of the Tech Shop break policy, but I say, “Okay, have fun!” I have no idea where she goes or if she will actually be gone for only “fifteen.”
The next time I see her, she is eating chicken tenders. She puts this food on a table in the employee area of the store because we are not allowed to have food next to the computers we are supposed to know things about. Last week, Ciara was sipping on an Oreo shake next to the smart watches. Instead of telling her where the shake was supposed to go, I asked her what was in it and where she got it, and then said, “That looks so good!” I tell myself that at my next shift, on Wednesday, I will become a little bit more like Ciara, and take a fifteen.
After this interruption, we wait around a little longer until a few minutes before 8:00. We then lock the doors, reset the card machines, and by the time we leave the store it is only a minute after close. The early departure I desired has been achieved.
***
I often text my friends Nicole and Lailah when snow falls. They are the most reliable takers of my offers to sled, doing so two out of two times. We used stolen sheets of cardboard from the dining hall storage room the first time, and upgraded to actual sleds the following winter. On Tuesday, Lailah texts first upon hearing about the snow. I reply a few hours later. The group chat stays quiet, the other parts of our lives pulling us back to higher priorities. By Wednesday morning, the urgency of the Winter Storm Warning compels a choice. I try to decide if it is worth sledding alone.
When I visited my parent’s house for a few weeks during the December holidays, I had decided it was always worth it. They get more snow where they live due to the lake effect weather pattern, and I needed to make up for lost time spent at my college residence, the grassy desert of Ann Arbor.
This is how I ended up at the base of the hill across the street at seven in the morning on a Monday after Christmas. We were preparing to leave by car for a day trip up north, but while the rest of my family was getting ready, I grabbed my new favorite sled and hustled to the park. I received this green sled from my parents at Christmas a year prior, and it is now my vehicle of choice for long, snowy inclines. I place it at the top of the hill, the surrounding twilight made brighter by the snow’s reflection, and kneel onto the dish-like object. My gloves dig into the snow to push me down the hill, and my smiling mouth shifts the other parts of my face into an image of contentment.
The speed of my run is likely no more than a modest jog, and the hill is only about ten feet tall. Most of the thrill is in the lines the sled’s plastic shape impresses in the snow, the evidence of a voyage through uncharted space. It affirms the narcissistic part of myself that wants to be an individual, and when I look back up the hill, I see a tangible path, an act that only I thought to create.
Going sledding at odd hours like the early morning is essential for my long-term practice of the sport. A few days prior, in the late afternoon, I was inspired to slide down the hill by the warm glow of the sky and the desire to overcome lethargy. I set out across the street, the diagonal route from my driveway to the park practiced enough times to consider it my own. While walking to the base of the incline, I saw that children, with their watchful parents, were occupying the prime part of the hill. Had I been with my neighbors, we could have slid right in. We would have been older than our grade-school counterparts, but the courage and numbers would have aided us in our quest for a mild thrill. Instead, believing my orange jacket invoked the cautionary tale of a traffic cone, I stayed in a less controversial, sub-par portion of the hill so as to not offend or provide material for maternal gossip; the weight of other’s hypothetical judgment being too burdensome. After five runs down the hill, I decided I no longer wanted to sled, and walked home.
***
On Wednesday, I again find myself in the student union at four o’clock. I arrive late, Lori is already gone, but most of the others from the Monday crew are here today. I am a little on edge because I will be forcing myself to take a “fifteen,” and I am not sure how it will go. I conduct these forcings somewhat regularly, in an non-evidence-based effort to make me a better person. In this case, I am hoping that directly copying the actions of someone else will make me more independent.
I wait to do this until after my co-worker Matt leaves, because he has worked here years longer than me, and if I tell him my plan he will likely see right through it. Until then, I do the same tasks as I did on Monday. They make me feel mildly useful. Matt’s shift ends at six, and at six-thirty I tell Cooper I am taking a “fifteen.” He says “Okay, have fun!” and suddenly I am released to do whatever I want.
I bring a book with me, and scout the chairs in the study lounge on the floor above. An empty rocking chair near the window implies the existence of a relaxed person, and I decide that person to be me. I sit down, begin reading, and allow my form to sway forward and backwards like the tree branches outside. I feel this is the human equivalent of being a squirrel in a tree, my body succumbing to the perpetuity of the rocking chair.
These moments are interrupted by realizations I am still clocked in, and still at work; I rotate my wrist to catch a glimpse of the time. I badly want to stay here, in my chair, swaying to the freedom of small defiances, with Ciara’s shadow giving quiet applause. My watch and the thought of a timekeeping Cooper, however, move me back down the stairs and into the workplace I belong to for the next ninety minutes. I could easily take more time for myself, as nothing of relative importance is happening in the Tech Shop anyways. It is the fear of being thought of as lesser due to my diversion that haunts me, and I would hate to be recognized as someone who does not care.
At close, even with my unauthorized break, we lock the doors and leave the Tech Shop at 8:01.
***
On my walk home Wednesday night, I follow my regular path, and ponder the possibility of a nighttime sled. I will need to eat dinner and watch a recorded lecture, but after completing those obligations, I will designate the night as mine.
There is not much opportunity to jaywalk on the route back to my neighborhood, but I make up time where I can, ignoring flashing red hands meant to grab my attention. I encounter Huron Street, the asphalt moat that separates houses like mine from Downtown. The four lanes of traffic are relatively busy tonight, and instead of outright dismissing pedestrian signals I will wait until the cars I am rebelling against have the red light. I will take control of the few-second gap between this occurrence and my signal to walk, and render it mine.
Huron has the red. I step out into the road, and move over four crosswalk stripes before hearing the honking horn and the screeching brakes from a Cadillac SUV. It is swerving between lanes, barrelling towards me from the left. I run back to my side of the street in shock as the car speeds away.
I pause, and then laugh haphazardly, as if the front tires have just told me a funny joke. I restart my crossing, humbled by the higher power of the automobile, and walk with uncharacteristic care the rest of the way home.
I eat dinner and watch my recorded lecture. With the fate of the group sled still unanswered, I decide to go solo in the Arboretum to take advantage of the fresh snowfall. I know there will be moments where I feel out of place, but I try to overthink these ahead of time so they won’t feel as awkward in the moment. Ideally, this forcing will help me be more confident as a social being, and steer me away from the regret of a missed opportunity.
I wear winter boots and my orange jacket, but forgo the youthful tradition of puffy snow pants in an effort to blend in with society. I grab my favorite green sled by the side handle and walk down Catherine Street, partially sledding down the incline to the next intersection. I am a fool from afar, kneeling on plastic atop snow atop a walkway, but upon reaching the bottom, I feel satisfied in creating a deviant way to use a sidewalk; I am taking advantage of all of my night’s affordances. I continue walking.
I arrive at the Arboretum. I walk past people alone or in groups, and we occasionally make awkward eye contact, before their pupils look down to my side to observe the sled. This is the part I like, because I feel like I could be a piece in a lively social puzzle. I mentally push propaganda towards them, hoping they pick up on the hypothetical scenario I am acting in: My friends are already at the hill, but I was running late. Even with homework, I just couldn’t miss a chance to sled with fresh snow like this, there’s really nothing like it! The hills are so peaceful and quiet at night. When I get there, I will have the time of my life! Sledding is so fun, especially with friends. It’s not just for kids, you should try it sometime!
The pretend people I am meeting evaporate once I reach the hill. A group of real college students, all strangers to me, is having the time of its life. They show what could easily have been part of my night, but what isn’t. They are just dark silhouettes against the snow and stars, and because of this anonymity, I give myself permission to portray them as the antagonists in my sledding narrative.
I always make myself sled at least five runs, to make sure my desire to stop is not just the nerves of being watched. I do this to lessen the effect of other people on my actions, at least in theory. I reason: the antagonists are occupying the hill I want, but if I sled five times on this other slope, perhaps they will be gone by the time I am done. I will get the hill to myself, and I will carve new paths through the trees, foraying where no one has slid before.
Run One: I kneel onto my plastic green carriage and hold the ropes in my gloves. My horse is named Gravity, and we giddy-up down the hill, steering past a fence post. Unfortunately, we then tumble over an obscured divot and spin out into the white, where the two hills meet in a bowl. The antagonists are at the top of their hill, having inaudible conversation. They look so small from faraway, and I tell myself that I can use that hill too. They will be frightened by my lack of fear, and Run Two will be the slide of my dreams. I climb up my hill, and make the turn up the path to the top of theirs.
Run Two: the antagonists look much bigger up close. I turn around, and go back to my part of the slope out of fear that they’ll recognize my lack of confidence in social rebellion. I think: it will be a little while before they leave because of their numbers; they don’t have agency like I do. Half of them don’t even want to be there, anyways.
As I push off towards the bottom, I tug the ropes strategically to steer away from the fence post, away from the divot, and navigate through the opening of trees. I am now in the woods, controlling the sled over curves and jumps to where the path spits out in an open field. After I get out, it’s a five minute walk up stairs to the top, so I have time to plan my next move.
In between cold breaths, I decide that Run Three will be shorter and end at the intersection of the two hills, so I can climb up to the ridge next to the antagonists, without having to cross their path. This will prevent me from unpredictable, humbling interactions, ones that are too great to be overcome by a forcing. This will give me the sledding experience I desire.
Run Three: I sled into the bowl as normal, but must turn myself away from other people that have slid into the same area. More of the antagonists come down the hill. The close encounter involves a weird type of ignoring, and we pretend the other party is not there even though we both know it to be the opposite. I think about my intentions to climb, my goals of conquering this summit of self-doubt. It is a long way up, and their stares make the wind blow harder.
I think again. I will come back with Nicole and Lailah, over the weekend. We will bring sleds, we will brave the lights of day. The social puzzle I pretend to be a part of will be real. Our numbers will give us the courage to trespass next to the antagonists. We will deviously slip through their ranks, social signals that prevent us from sharing the space rendered inconsequential. The sleds we bring will imply the existence of sledders, and we will decide those sledders to be us. We will allow our forms to sway forward and backwards with the turns of the sled, like the tree branches around us. Our legs will succumb to the perpetuity of climbing up after sliding down. There is only one choice once we get to the top, and I will sled however many times we want.
I decide this is a sufficient enough rendering of my future experience to resolve the urge to conquer the antagonists’ hill, and that Run Four will be my last of the night. But because of this, I feel that I’ve failed myself, and that I’ve let others take the better of me. This sense of defeat necessitates a greater thrill, a greater proof of thrill.
Run Four: I place my stomach and chest upon the inside of the sled, and decide that my final time down the hill will be made more magnificent by going head first. I lean around the fence post, steer away from the divot, and slide down the path through the woods. My eyes are forced open as I hold on to Gravity, my breathing is shaky from the rough ground passing below me, and maybe it’s this personal earthquake that shakes my future plans into a state of irresolution. Why couldn’t I walk up the hill? The woods end and the moon illuminates the wide field. Why can’t I bring myself to do what I want? I reach the bottom of the slope and my sled plows through the deep snow to a stop. I should have just waited for friends. My hands push into the white to bring myself up. How much of an individual do I need to be? I begin to mold the past forty minutes into a misleadingly positive story that I will tell my housemates if they ask where I was.
Run Five: is an impromptu sled down a small mound in the Arboretum on my walk home. It is the most satisfying of the night.
***
On Thursday, no plans for sledding are advanced in the group text, but we decide to go see a concert at a local music venue the following week. I look forward to this. On Friday, I find myself rotating my head more than normal while crossing streets, paranoid prairie dog, and the red hand of the pedestrian signal looks intimidating up close. I still jaywalk, but with small hesitations.
On Saturday night, I walk home with my friend Mark. We are coming from a football watch party at a mutual friend’s apartment, and we make conversation until we turn our separate ways. Among the pleasantries, he asks what my plans are for tomorrow while I watch his feet step on the sidewalk. I don’t have much homework to complete, so I state simply: “Whatever I want.”
Mark looks up and laughs genuinely, as if I have just told him a funny joke. He then says little, falling silent, and I am given space to choose a different answer.
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 