Alright, so I’m not going to say this was my mom’s fault, but I am going to say that she’s to blame.
As we all know, Jeanie Carroll has an undeniable knack for forcing people to do things they don’t want to do, and several times in my life this something I didn’t want to do was go for a long walk while a natural disaster/storm was happening outside.
During the Blizzard of 2001, Jeanie made me, Jamie and Jack the Dog walk all the way to the Holleder Center to catch Dad’s basketball practice. Halfway there, Jack’s glom was frozen to his face, and Jamie kept screaming “I’m not in a very good place!” When Jeanie came to visit me in January 2010, she forced me to walk the 3 miles to and from Zaftigs in Coolidge Corner. My body hurt so, so much the next day, since I was bracing myself for a fall on the ice the entire time. And most recently, in North Carolina last weekend, Jeanie led a group along the “trails” of Cary, only to be caught in a torrential downpour from which my clothes have still not dried. And this, of course, resulted in the destruction of my most beloved sneakers.

