Some thirty five years ago, in a frigid cold winter afternoon, my schoolmates and I skated on the frozen pond at school. THe “fishing pond” was shallow and the ice froze hard, so we did a lot of skating. the pond was large and irregular with lots of small coves shaded by willows.

One of our lowerclassmen, a hefty kid named, I think, Pete, had skated into one such cove, and smack dab into one such willow tree, and fell down, and smacked his head on the ice, and knocked himself out as flat as a mackerel.

So we did what all kids our age would do.

We pulled up his shirt and rolled him over onto his ample stomach.

When he came to, a few minutes later, as a result of having his stomach frozen to the ice, he started screaming (which must have been hellish considering the headache he must have had) and three priests came running over to get him off the ice, which they had to do by… peeing on him.

The indignity is something he never lived down, as long as I can remember.

Didn’t help that we’d pantsed him too.