Valet Parking at Church

Before we found out we were moving to Wisconsin, a good friend asked me if I could see myself living my whole life and dying in Florida.  Yup.  I thought I could.

Six years later I ask myself the same thing about my new home.  Wisconsin is nice enough.  What scares me is how I will get around walking on all this ice when I get older.  The roads in town are plowed/salted and easy enough to drive on but large parking lots can get really icy and bad.  

I have a history of very dramatic public falls, going back to my college days.  This is a big concern as my bones get more crispy and my eyesight worse.

Lots of people in this town and in my church work for 3M.  Engineers, the bunch of them.  So you guys can make a post-it note, and people like you can put men on the moon but you can't keep a parking lot ice-free in winter?  

How am I supposed to get to church when I get old!?  Maybe I can store enough canned beets in the cellar to not have to go out for food for four months, but I gotta go to church!  I even considered buying a house up a hill from church and sliding there every Sunday on my butt.  . . . But, I would have to get up the hill again after Mass.

After agonizing about this for years the idea came to me to start a free valet parking service at church. In one of the most awesome moments of my 21 year marriage, my husband offered to make it happen and run the new program! 

The idea is that macho young people who either don't fall down much or who don't mind falling down, can park and retrieve cars of the more elderly and more squeamish.

Interestingly, in the few weeks we have tried this, the biggest obstacle is getting elderly midwesterners to be willing to be helped.  

My proposed solution?  If people refuse to take advantage of this free service, we should get some cute 6th graders raising money for . . . whatever . . . and exchange valet parking for a donation to the whatever-6th-grade cause.  The kids could wave advertising signs for the service like you do at a car wash (but wearing considerably more clothes) and collect donations.

So this is the key to my growing old and dying in this frozen cheese state.   I hope this works!  :)