Episode 2
Forty Stories - "Sleigh Ride Together"
I'm doing a little survey to find out more about ALE listeners. There are just four tiny questions. It will only take a minute or two, and will help me a LOT! Please check it out. Thanks, Cooper
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Season 3 Episode 2Thank you for downloading this episode.
👉The story begins at 1:44 and the tiny lessons begin at 15:30
👉You can find the transcript after the Credits!
👉Visit our website to download the Podcast User's Manual and find out more! https://alittleenglish.com/
A Little English is written, produced, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered and scored by Edward Cooper Howland.
All stories are either in the public domain, or written by me.
Copyright 2024 Edward Cooper Howland
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TRANSCRIPT:
“Sleigh Ride Together”
Hi. My name is Cooper, and this is…A Little English. Every episode, I read a short story. After the story, there are three tiny lessons.
Today’s story is about sledding. “Sleigh” is just a fancy word for a sled. I come from Massachusetts, USA, and when I was a kid, sledding was a big part of winter life. The story is also about family, and about having - or…being - a big brother. Some of it comes from my real life, and some of it is just made up. I’m not gonna tell you which parts are which, though. You can try to figure it out for yourself.
So anyway, let’s listen to it.
“Don’t worry,” said Kevin. “We used to come here every year on Christmas break.”
“Who’s ‘we?’”
“Me and the guys. Mark and Ben and Tommy.”
“Tommy who broke his arm crashing this same sled in seventh grade? That Tommy?”
“Yeah and he was always the first one calling me up and asking me to bring it out. He knows how awesome it is.”
And with that, Kevin carefully laid the sled down in the middle of the trail, straddled it slowly, and sat down. He was gone in an instant, the sled rocking wildly as he barely avoided a large rock on the right side of the trail and shot out into the sunny soccer field. As he slid under the goal posts at the far end of the field. Kevin popped up off of the sled, jumping up and down. He was tiny from this far away, no bigger than her finger. He was waving his arms, probably yelling something, but she couldn’t hear.
It took nearly ten minutes for him to haul the sled back up. His wool hat was coated with snow. His cheeks were red and his smile was enormous. “Go!” he said. “It’s so awesome!”
Mandy’s hands were shaking as she took the bright red plastic sled. She hadn’t ridden it since elementary school, but she remembered it well. She knew that the tiniest error could bang her into a tree or dump her out onto a rock, especially since Tommy’s famous crash had ripped the safety belt out. She tried to pick out a safe route and sat down, holding tight to the sides of the sled.
She felt Kevin’s boot against her back, but she had no time to say anything before he pushed with his leg and she was flying.
There was no time to think, no time to breathe. Her cheeks hurt and she could hear the bottom of the sled scraping along the packed snow and ice of the sledding trail. Pine needles stung her face and the wind froze her eyes.
When the sled got to the bottom of the hill and soared out into the warm sun and the wide-open field, she realized that her eyes were closed. She opened them as she sped across the field, barely slowing down until she, too, had arrived near the goalposts. She was alive. She was free, and nothing could touch her. He was right. It was awesome.
The sunlight bounced off the perfect icy crust of the snow directly into Mandy’s eyes, blinding her. She held one gloved hand up to guard against the glare and grabbed the rope with the other. She started back towards the hill, her feet crunching through the thin sheet of ice into the fluffy snow beneath, dragging their sled behind her.
She was going to murder her older brother.
“You idiot,” she shouted when she got to the top. “You can’t do that to someone on this sled! You remember what happened to Tommy.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You’re fine. You did a great job.”
“If you push me like that again, I’m going to throw you off this hill myself, Kevin. I swear to God.”
“OK, OK. I promise.”
They sledded for hours, each time starting a little higher, going a little faster, a little less in control of the sled. It was only four PM, but the sun was already close to the trees around their old elementary school, the shadows growing long on the snow. The soccer field was marked with dozens of fresh paths, each a little longer than the last, reaching out closer and closer to the street.
“Just one more?” he asked her.
“Let’s go together,” she said. “Then neither of us has to wait at the bottom, or walk down from the top of the hill.”
“OK,” Kevin smiled. “Like the old days.”
Kevin sat in the back of the sled and Mandy sat between her big brother’s legs. They both kept their feet outside the sled, holding it in place in the snow and ice.
“Are you ready?” he asked her.
“Ready.” He wrapped his arms around her and she was safe for just one moment.
“Three…two…one…GO!”
The sled shot forward as they both brought their legs in. Pine trees, rocks, bits of greenery flew past them. Mandy screamed, terrified but thrilled. She kept her eyes open, focused on the mouth of the trail, the point where the forest ended and the fields began, where they would fly out into the sun and then they could go home and have hot chocolate.
The tree stump was only a few centimeters around and barely stuck out of the snow at all. The school’s gardeners must have cut it down in the autumn, preparing for the winter. Anyone could have missed it.
They were going full speed when the bottom of the sled hit the stump. Mandy was in the air before she knew what was happening. Kevin was below her, and then he was above her. Blue sky and white snow and brown, dead winter forest spun around her like a kaleidoscope.
When she opened her eyes she was on her back in the snow. The steam of her breath floated off into the cloudless sky. Kevin’s face appeared, blood streaked across his nose and mouth.
“Are you OK, Man?” Was he laughing or crying? Both?
Mandy patted herself. Her arms and legs were working. She coughed and tried to sit up.
“I….think so.”
He helped her to her feet, and they stood there for a while, hand on their knees. He spat some blood into the snow and they laughed.
“The sled is totally busted,” he said, holding up the two halves. “And I’m pretty sure my face is too.”
She held his face in both hands, checking the cuts.
“You’re fine,” she told him. “But Mom’s gonna kill us.”
“Don’t worry.” He gave her a bloody smile. “I’ll tell her it was just me.”
What do you think? Is Kevin a good older brother or a bad one? If you ask me, nobody is all good or all bad with their family. We all make mistakes. We do things we don’t really mean to. Sometimes we hurt each other and we don’t even know why. That’s just part of being family. But so is apologizing, and so is forgiving family members when they do stupid stuff. Like kicking their little sister down a mountain.
Let’s do some lessons.
The Big Picture is cold and snowy today.
Where are they sledding? I mentioned it only once. See if you can find it. They are in their hometown, on a hill near their elementary school. They’re quite a bit older than that now, but a good sledding hill is hard to find.
Can you dance in the Dictionary Disco when it’s this cold outside?
The first vocabulary word is….”awesome.” This is such a great word. See, in English, Awe is like a feeling of respect and wonder, mixed with fear. Like if you met an Angel or something, you’d feel Awe. So awesome originally meant something that makes you feel respect and wonder and fear. Now we use it more just like “cool” or something. But Awe…it’s still in there.
The second word is “stump,” as in a tree stump. Maybe you figured it out from the story, but it’s pretty important, so I’ll explain. When you cut a tree down, the part that’s still sticking out of the ground, attached to the roots? That’s a stump. Not fun to hit at high speed on a sled.
And today’s melody moment?
We talked about MMM a couple weeks ago. How about NNNN? They’re pretty close sounds. This one is usually spelled with an N. So what’s the big difference between MMM and NNN? There are actually two. The first one is, with NNN, you gotta keep your lips open. The second is your tongue. To make NNNN correctly, your tongue has to touch the top of your mouth. Near the front, but not on your teeth. So like the word “Man,” you start with lips closed, and tongue just kinda…chilling. And you end with lips open and tongue…up. Try it…Mannnnnnnn
Let’s do the credits.
Thank you for listening to Season 3 Episode 1 of A Little English.
Every episode is produced entirely by me, Edward Cooper Howland, here in Hiroshima, Japan.
If you like the show, tell someone about it! A recommendation from a friend is the best way to get someone to listen, and I would really appreciate it.
This season, all the stories are written by…me! I use chatGPT by Openai.com as an editor because I can’t afford to hire a human. It’s an amazing, free piece of software, and you should check it out.
Again, thank you so much for listening.
For now, be kind to yourselves, and to each other.
Transcript
“Sleigh Ride Together”
Hi. My name is Cooper, and this is…A Little English. Every episode, I read a short story. After the story, there are three tiny lessons.
Today’s story is about sledding. “Sleigh” is just a fancy word for a sled. I come from Massachusetts, USA, and when I was a kid, sledding was a big part of winter life. The story is also about family, and about having - or…being - a big brother. Some of it comes from my real life, and some of it is just made up. I’m not gonna tell you which parts are which, though. You can try to figure it out for yourself.
So anyway, let’s listen to it.
“Don’t worry,” said Kevin. “We used to come here every year on Christmas break.”
“Who’s ‘we?’”
“Me and the guys. Mark and Ben and Tommy.”
“Tommy who broke his arm crashing this same sled in seventh grade? That Tommy?”
“Yeah and he was always the first one calling me up and asking me to bring it out. He knows how awesome it is.”
And with that, Kevin carefully laid the sled down in the middle of the trail, straddled it slowly, and sat down. He was gone in an instant, the sled rocking wildly as he barely avoided a large rock on the right side of the trail and shot out into the sunny soccer field. As he slid under the goal posts at the far end of the field. Kevin popped up off of the sled, jumping up and down. He was tiny from this far away, no bigger than her finger. He was waving his arms, probably yelling something, but she couldn’t hear.
It took nearly ten minutes for him to haul the sled back up. His wool hat was coated with snow. His cheeks were red and his smile was enormous. “Go!” he said. “It’s so awesome!”
Mandy’s hands were shaking as she took the bright red plastic sled. She hadn’t ridden it since elementary school, but she remembered it well. She knew that the tiniest error could bang her into a tree or dump her out onto a rock, especially since Tommy’s famous crash had ripped the safety belt out. She tried to pick out a safe route and sat down, holding tight to the sides of the sled.
She felt Kevin’s boot against her back, but she had no time to say anything before he pushed with his leg and she was flying.
There was no time to think, no time to breathe. Her cheeks hurt and she could hear the bottom of the sled scraping along the packed snow and ice of the sledding trail. Pine needles stung her face and the wind froze her eyes.
When the sled got to the bottom of the hill and soared out into the warm sun and the wide-open field, she realized that her eyes were closed. She opened them as she sped across the field, barely slowing down until she, too, had arrived near the goalposts. She was alive. She was free, and nothing could touch her. He was right. It was awesome.
The sunlight bounced off the perfect icy crust of the snow directly into Mandy’s eyes, blinding her. She held one gloved hand up to guard against the glare and grabbed the rope with the other. She started back towards the hill, her feet crunching through the thin sheet of ice into the fluffy snow beneath, dragging their sled behind her.
She was going to murder her older brother.
“You idiot,” she shouted when she got to the top. “You can’t do that to someone on this sled! You remember what happened to Tommy.”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You’re fine. You did a great job.”
“If you push me like that again, I’m going to throw you off this hill myself, Kevin. I swear to God.”
“OK, OK. I promise.”
They sledded for hours, each time starting a little higher, going a little faster, a little less in control of the sled. It was only four PM, but the sun was already close to the trees around their old elementary school, the shadows growing long on the snow. The soccer field was marked with dozens of fresh paths, each a little longer than the last, reaching out closer and closer to the street.
“Just one more?” he asked her.
“Let’s go together,” she said. “Then neither of us has to wait at the bottom, or walk down from the top of the hill.”
“OK,” Kevin smiled. “Like the old days.”
Kevin sat in the back of the sled and Mandy sat between her big brother’s legs. They both kept their feet outside the sled, holding it in place in the snow and ice.
“Are you ready?” he asked her.
“Ready.” He wrapped his arms around her and she was safe for just one moment.
“Three…two…one…GO!”
The sled shot forward as they both brought their legs in. Pine trees, rocks, bits of greenery flew past them. Mandy screamed, terrified but thrilled. She kept her eyes open, focused on the mouth of the trail, the point where the forest ended and the fields began, where they would fly out into the sun and then they could go home and have hot chocolate.
The tree stump was only a few centimeters around and barely stuck out of the snow at all. The school’s gardeners must have cut it down in the autumn, preparing for the winter. Anyone could have missed it.
They were going full speed when the bottom of the sled hit the stump. Mandy was in the air before she knew what was happening. Kevin was below her, and then he was above her. Blue sky and white snow and brown, dead winter forest spun around her like a kaleidoscope.
When she opened her eyes she was on her back in the snow. The steam of her breath floated off into the cloudless sky. Kevin’s face appeared, blood streaked across his nose and mouth.
“Are you OK, Man?” Was he laughing or crying? Both?
Mandy patted herself. Her arms and legs were working. She coughed and tried to sit up.
“I….think so.”
He helped her to her feet, and they stood there for a while, hand on their knees. He spat some blood into the snow and they laughed.
“The sled is totally busted,” he said, holding up the two halves. “And I’m pretty sure my face is too.”
She held his face in both hands, checking the cuts.
“You’re fine,” she told him. “But Mom’s gonna kill us.”
“Don’t worry.” He gave her a bloody smile. “I’ll tell her it was just me.”
What do you think? Is Kevin a good older brother or a bad one? If you ask me, nobody is all good or all bad with their family. We all make mistakes. We do things we don’t really mean to. Sometimes we hurt each other and we don’t even know why. That’s just part of being family. But so is apologizing, and so is forgiving family members when they do stupid stuff. Like kicking their little sister down a mountain.
Let’s do some lessons.
The Big Picture is cold and snowy today.
Where are they sledding? I mentioned it only once. See if you can find it. They are in their hometown, on a hill near their elementary school. They’re quite a bit older than that now, but a good sledding hill is hard to find.
Can you dance in the Dictionary Disco when it’s this cold outside?
The first vocabulary word is….”awesome.” This is such a great word. See, in English, Awe is like a feeling of respect and wonder, mixed with fear. Like if you met an Angel or something, you’d feel Awe. So awesome originally meant something that makes you feel respect and wonder and fear. Now we use it more just like “cool” or something. But Awe…it’s still in there.
The second word is “stump,” as in a tree stump. Maybe you figured it out from the story, but it’s pretty important, so I’ll explain. When you cut a tree down, the part that’s still sticking out of the ground, attached to the roots? That’s a stump. Not fun to hit at high speed on a sled.
And today’s melody moment?
We talked about MMM a couple weeks ago. How about NNNN? They’re pretty close sounds. This one is usually spelled with an N. So what’s the big difference between MMM and NNN? There are actually two. The first one is, with NNN, you gotta keep your lips open. The second is your tongue. To make NNNN correctly, your tongue has to touch the top of your mouth. Near the front, but not on your teeth. So like the word “Man,” you start with lips closed, and tongue just kinda…chilling. And you end with lips open and tongue…up. Try it…Mannnnnnnn
Let’s do the credits.
Thank you for listening to Season 3 Episode 1 of A Little English.
Every episode is produced entirely by me, Edward Cooper Howland, here in Hiroshima, Japan.
If you like the show, tell someone about it! A recommendation from a friend is the best way to get someone to listen, and I would really appreciate it.
This season, all the stories are written by…me! I use chatGPT by Openai.com as an editor because I can’t afford to hire a human. It’s an amazing, free piece of software, and you should check it out.
Again, thank you so much for listening.
For now, be kind to yourselves, and to each other.
