Pete and Susie’s Sled Adventure

    They didn’t know it that cold morning in 1939, but the mothers of Pete and Susie had just set them on a life long course of love and hate. The mothers merely thought they were putting their children together for a fun picture taking session and sled ride. And a getting to know the new neighbors day, of course.

    But the picture tells the whole story of 40 years of give and take, back and forth, I’m right, no I am. It seemed to start off alright. The mothers set them down on the sled. And right off the bat Pete was mad because Susie was at the front and she would get to do the steering. He of course should get to do that, he was the boy, and she was just a girl. So he yelled at his mother until she did something. Susie of course would not give up her seat to some boy. So the best Pet could get was sitting the backwards and pretending to steer. Boy was he mad.

    Over the years to come, Pete and Susie saw each other innumerable times. After all they lived next to each other, were only a year apart in school, and their families walked together to church. During the years they were growing up they had many arguments, large and small. But their families understood those to be transient, childhood problems. It was decided very early on as the parents became very close, that the children would obviously marry. It would be so perfect to keep the families together that way.

    Pete’s father told him after high school he would start working full time at the hardware store. After all, one day, it would be Pete’s. Before that he worked there only on Saturdays. And when it was busy. Pete didn’t mind most of the time. But when he was going to sleep at night he would dream of becoming an airplane pilot and flying every where he’d studied about in school.

    Susie grew up amidst a gaggle of other pretty girls at school who talked constantly about all sorts of silly things. Then when she came home, she helped her mother care for her grandfather who was very old and didn't seem to remember things right. Susie like helping with her grandfather and often thought about becoming a nurse after high school. But her mother and father always talked to her about when she and Pete were married and the number of children she would have and how they were going to be living right next door with Pete’s family at first.

    And all of that happened, because that’s what the parents expected would happen and they had raised good children. Unfortunately, Pete and Susie didn't really love each other. They spent much of their life together each trying to steer the sled. Neither could figure how to sit back and enjoy the ride. Finally after their children were grown, and long long after their parents were gone, they saw the folly of staying together and parted if not in friendship, at least in peace.

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