I did however help the kids prep for their snow day. After dinner last night I went to the garage and filled their snow tubes with air. It didn’t take long for the kids to locate me, hijack a snow tube and sled down our basement steps. That’s the thing with my boys, they have no sense of fear- an honest assessment would be that the sense they are lacking is the “common” type.

When Connie mentioned going tubing I quickly Map Quested local emergency care facilities. I wanted to know how far from a paramedic I would be should I decide to take a day off and go with them. This may sound paranoid but when you’re Shane it’s a smart precaution. I have lived long and dangerously enough to develop my own formula for the likelihood of massive trauma resulting from fun family activities.  It goes something like this: height (H) X weight (W) X slippery surface (SS) X angle of trajectory (degree of slope)= certain bodily harm.

I learned this formula one year when we took the kids to a water park in Delaware. The first day we were there the kids wanted to go down this huge water slide- though it looked like a lot of fun I was content to watch. The trouble was Cayden was terrified of the climb to the top- so he asked me to accompany him. Here is an unknown truth about water slides, the stairs are only used to go up- you must use the slide to come down.

So lets apply the formula that I mentioned earlier.

H= 70 inches

W= 210 lbs

SS= water slide

Angle= 70 degrees (ass puckering steep)

70 X 210 X H20 X 70= HOLY SHIT I’M FREE-FALLING DOWN A HUGE WATER SLIDE AND I CAN’T STOP!

Sitting on the top of the slide before releasing the handholds was the last time that any portion of my body actually touched a solid surface. When I released, my body rocketed from 0 to a million mph in a nano-second. My cheeks blew open like an astronaut going through a G-Force simulator and my testicles disappeared into my abdomen for protection. I may have screamed but I doubted anyone could hear me as I was certainly traveling faster than the speed of sound. Eyewitness statements later confirmed that a string of obscenities were flowing from my clenched teeth- but I honestly don’t remember. When I hit the water I generated enough force to push every other person from the pool and blow over six beach cabanas. Obviously I survived, but it’s taken me 12-months to get over my phobia of slides.

So if 911 is programmed into my phone or I go to the slopes with my personally owned defibrillator it’s not without reason. I’m just a little wiser and a little more aware of what being Shane truly means in the physical universe.