The Poo Pond

Since we haven't posted in a couple of weeks, here's a story for you. It is possible that you have heard this one before. Two years ago I wrote it down to enter it into a true story competition on the Vinyl Cafe. I guess it didn't win. Maybe poo ain't CBC friendly.

In the spring, rural central Alberta is covered with small bodies of water. Ditches and sloughs filled with winter runoff, frozen on top with chilled water of some unknowable depth beneath—a 12-year-old boy’s rubber boot heaven.

Much to my mother’s dismay, my friend Brad and I would spend days dressed in our toques, mittens, spring jackets and our trusty rubber boots jumping on the thin ice of these small ponds. With our boots up to our knees, we felt invincible, yet we always seemed to end up walking home soaked to our thighs and shocked that our beloved boots had become repositories for ditch water. Like the stern priest in Roch Carrier’s “The Hockey Sweater,” mom would always thrust her finger in my direction telling me to the outside stoop to drain my boots-cum-buckets and take off my waterlogged sweat socks.

Some of my city friends don’t realize that, in the country, each home has its own sewage field. Normally, it is an underground drainage area some distance from home. After a while it sometimes collapses or fills up and a new field must be made in some different spot, and this can be a significant expense. That may be one reason why, instead of an underground field, Brad’s family had their sewage drain above ground into a slough next to the horse pasture far from their house. It was a nasty bit of water filled with human waste from a small family, some horse waste and a large volume of winter runoff to dilute it all.

This particular spring of my grade six year, Brad, his younger brother and myself noticed that the ice of the sewage pond had melted all around the edges of the slough effectively creating a large iceberg. Of course, this was a rubber boot opportunity not to be missed.

Since the sheet of ice was about a metre from the shore in its closest spot, we used a long two-by-six board as a plank for the three of us to walk safely to the iceberg. Once on, we realized that the ice was much thicker than expected. It easily hold three jumping elementary children. So we jumped and kicked and played chicken to see who could go closest to the edge without turning back for fear of falling off and drowning in raw sewage.

What made this particular pond great was the realization that it was not simply runoff; it was not just a safe ditch by the side of the road. We knew the water was foul and we honestly did not know the depth of the slough. In the back of our minds, we knew that the water could be deep enough to cover our heads. But, you have to remember that we were 12-years-old and invincible in our rubber boots.

Until we jumped one to many times.

Suddenly, all we heard was moving crack, crack, crack, crack from all directions. The iceberg was breaking and we needed to get off or horrible, terrible things would happen. The three of us were frozen in the positions where we had last jumped. The cracking had stopped, but we’d been in this situation before. When cracking stops, ice begins to give away from under you.

In retrospect, I’m unsure why we decided to move the lightest off first. At our direction, Brad’s brother lightly sprinted off the ice, onto the plank and to the shore with no problem. As I was the largest, Brad was next. With his back to the plank he awkwardly spun in the air, jumping in the direction of the board. With the force of his boot hitting the board, the plank broke through the edge of the iceberg as Brad raced to the shore with only a light spray of the putrid water on his pants.

Now I was left alone. Stranded on an iceberg with a distinct yellow-brown hue dotted with pockets of frozen horse turd. My body was tense, ready to spring to the board and run for my life to safety.

But the wind picked up.

What had earlier been a light breeze was now a solid force pushing against me and the iceberg, moving us further from the shore and the plank. I knew then that I was in real trouble. I was floating on an ice bed above all manner of foul waste that could be infinitely deep and equally disgusting. I was going to die in a pond of poo.

Fortunately, Brad had a plan. He ran up the hill toward his house. Five minutes later, he emerged with his parents. His mother stood on the back deck in a jacket over a housecoat in her slippers, looking the way mothers do in situations where they are not as concerned as they are disgusted with their children. His father ran out, camera in hand, capturing the moment. Brad’s first plan had failed, as far as I was concerned.

But his second plan seemed more promising. He ran to the nearby shed to get a rope, and in true cowboy fashion, he made a lasso. After a couple of throws that only landed in the water before me, he finally chucked the lasso at my feet and directed me to put it around my waist.

Trusting, but not understanding him, I did and he proceeded to pull the rope.

As my pelvis jerked forward and my feet began to slip, I screamed at him to stop. His plan to pull myself and the iceberg to the shore was noble, but misguided. And so we ended up standing there, linked by a heavy, stinking rope, staring at each other, not knowing what to do. Then Brad had Plan C.

“You remember learning about polar bears in class?” Brad called to me.

I did. And while I only remembered that I thought the bears appeared less menacing than we were told, Brad reminded me that polar bears uniquely distribute their immense weight on the thinner sections of northern ice so that they don’t fall through when hunting for seals. He told me to do the same. If I were to get on the ice on all fours, I would somehow last longer on this particular thin ice. Possibly, I could last long enough for the wind to push me to the other side of the slough.

And so I did just that. I dropped to my knees and put my mittens on the ice before me.

And that’s when the ice gave way.

I immediately slammed my mouth shut, adamant that should I ever die, it would not be by drowning in raw sewage. My feet had fallen through first and I was pleasantly surprised to realize that they hit solid ground before my head could go under the water. Brad began to pull on the rope as I brought my arms down on the ice in front of me. I had made a donut of the iceberg and now had to break my way through to open water and the shore.

I remember that the only piece of salvageable clothing on me was the mesh Blue Jays cap that I had once bought for 99 cents. My jean jacket was effectively ruined, or at least Mom would never wash it with other clothing.

I also remember the exchange I had with my dad on the phone half an hour later.

“Dad? Can you come pick me up from Brad’s?”

“No. It’s only a five minute walk!”

“But I’m naked in Brad’s living room and I smell like poo.”

“Oh…I’ll be right there.”