Last week we went sledding at the very steep and very fun Veterans Memorial Park sledding hill here in Ann Arbor, and oh what a time we had. Once again, the elderly wooden sleds with metal runners proved the best ride around, but we covered this last January.

About halfway through our outing a woman appeared with a video camera on a tripod. She wasn’t driving a branded NewzVan, but she and her equipment looked professional enough. This is Ann Arbor; she could have been anything from a well-equipped mom covering every instant of little Savannah’s blessed childhood to a grad student doing an impressionistic film about snowflakes. You just never know.

Tonight I was surfing on our antique TV, the one in the kitchen that doesn’t have a remote and requires you to change channels the old-fashioned way. This being Ann Arbor, all the public-access stations are at ridiculously low and sought-after spots on the dial — 16-19, I think — and as I zipped past en route to CNN I thought I saw a familiar sight going by under the community calendar. It was our sledding hill! And that was me, in my new polar-expedition parka, standing at the top getting ready to send Kate down the hill! And there was Alan, on the run where his hat flew off! And Kate again! And we all saw it! We experienced the screaming-monkey thrill of seeing ourselves on the teevee!

What are the odds we’d see something like this? A zillion to one? Why can’t those odds work when I’m buying lottery tickets, is what I’d like to know.