I'll stick to the ground

Okay, y’all. I know I've lived in Michigan nearly 10 years now, but sometimes, things related to cold-weather life still boggle this Southern mind.

Case in point: We have some ponds at the entrance to our neighborhood. In the summer, ducks live by them. In the middle of the bigger pond there’s a fountain that’s awfully pretty and you’ll occasionally see people fishing on the pond’s banks. In the winter, though, those ponds are frozen. Which means no birds or fountains or fishermen.

But this morning as I drove by, I noticed someone had swept off the ice and made an ice rink. On one of the ponds:

 People, I do not venture onto frozen water unless it’s inside a building on a cooled floor.

When I was 13, I read a book with an opening scene that involved someone falling through the ice and dying. And since that day I have avoided icy ponds/lakes/rivers/streams. Not so hard to do in Georgia. Yet I find myself reliving the scene from that book regularly now that I live in the frozen tundra.

(FYI: Good job writing your book, Betsy Byars! Your descriptions have haunted me lo, these many years.)

Apparently there’s someone in my ‘hood who hasn't read Byars’ book or just likes living on the edge. Either way, I’m glad I don’t have little people any more so keep off that ice.

You can bring a Southern to the land of frozen water, but you can’t make her skate.