Reason #1 To Carry A Video Camera At All Times

We're in the grips of several days' worth of snow squalls in our neck of the woods (for those who don't know, squalls are really nasty, but short-lived, storms that brew up over the lakes, whip up really high winds, lay a bunch of snow down and blow it all over God's green acres, making driving a dangerous mess). We're on snow day #2 after a 3-day week-end for the kids. Can you say "cabin fever"?

Yesterday evening, the whole family ventured outdoors. Mom and Dad shovelled and snow-blowed while the kids slid down the hill on the front lawn with their body boards. They had a couple of old, battered body boards, which had been left outside and were now coated in several inches of snow and ice. We had also bought them a new pair of very slick-looking boards at Costco over the week-end, which they were using.

After finishing with the clean-up, Dad decided he wanted to play with the kids. Mini-me made it look so easy, after all. Just grab onto the handles, get a running start, launch the board onto the ground, land on it on your knees and enjoy the ride. Simple, right? So, Dad grabs one of the old, ice-and-snow-encrusted boards, waves the kids out of the way, and takes a running leap onto the hill.

Geronimo!

Did Geronimo know that ice on snow is a very effective braking system? Probably. Dad didn't.

The body board hit the snow. Dad hit the body board, apparently expecting it to go sailing down the hill. The body board had other ideas. It gripped the snow harder than Scrooge gripping his money bag. Dad went from 0 to 60 and back to 0 again in less than a quarter second. The result? Dad did the mother of all faceplants into a foot of fresh snow. From my vantage point, standing safely behind them on the front deck, I saw his head go down and his back-end come up. And that's all I saw, because I started laughing so hard that the tears almost froze my eyelids shut.

Where was my video camera? In my bedroom. Why, oh why don't I carry it with me at all times? That video could have made me a bunch of money on AFV ... or, at the very least, given Dad his 15 seconds of fame on You Tube.