If you aren’t crashing, you aren’t skiing…

Please know that I am not going skiing any time soon, nor have I just come from skiing… this memory arrived today at some point and I feel compelled to tell you about it.

I’m not sure where it came from really… what sparked it, but it arrived so vividly, that I must put it on paper… or on the screen…

basically, I feel the need to make you chuckle, again, at my expense.

When I was in the 8th grade, we were living in Philadelphia and we had done the cross country skiing thing. My dad was into getting us out into the open and exercising…but honestly?

Cross country skiing was boring.

We all had our own skis… that’s how much Dad thought this was going to last.

I’m not sure if we asked him to go downhill skiing or if he came up with it on his own, but at some point in time he announced that we would be going downhill skiing… and we?

Were excited.

Dad rented all the equipment that we needed and in true Dad fashion, we weren’t headed somewhere near us…no, we were doing this right. We were headed to Vermont.

VERMONT.

Killington to be exact. Or at least I think that’s where we went. (I looked up ski resorts in Vermont and Killington stuck out at me.)

Off we went.

I remember getting there and seeing all the skiiers… and of course, being the totally boy crazy girl that I was, I was convinced that I was going to meet the man of my dreams. It played out like a fairy tale really. I would fall somewhere and this dashing handsome older boy would come and help me up. He would ask me my name and I would tell him and we would be inseparable for the rest of the day. He would teach me how to ski and at the end of the day, when it was time for me to go home, he would give me his phone number and I would give him mine and we would promise to write one another every day until we could see each other again. And then?

He would kiss me. Never mind that I had never, at that point in time, kissed someone. At least I don’t think I had.

Nice story, right?

Yeah, it didn’t quite work out that way.

After we geared up and walked out of the lodge and in the vicinity of the lifts, fear set in. Not for me as much as for my brother. I was ready to get to the top of the hill. Because I had to fall for prince charming to help me up, right?

So I finally just grabbed him and said “let’s go”. We weren’t sure how to get on the lift, but we managed. He was scared, and I probably was too, but I had other things on my mind.

Now, please keep in mind that we’re on the bunny slope. WHY would the hottie, awesome skiier be on the bunny slope waiting for me? It’s amazing how I never thought of that then.

Getting off the lift was interesting. My brother hopped right off, but for whatever reason, I freaked out. If I hadn’t gotten off when I did, I would’ve been on my way back down to the bottom of the hill. And these weren’t lifts where you go to sit in a little car. That’s what I thought they would be, but no.. they were the T-bars.

But we were finally both off the lift and standing at the top of the hill.

Here is where fear set in for me.

I could see Mom and Dad standing at the bottom of the hill. I know that they were anxiously waiting to see my brother and I come down the hill with grace and poise… or waiting to watch us fall flat on our faces. The reality of it is, they needed to see something… either pure art or humor to compensate the amount of money they shelled out on this trip.

But we just stood there.

We didn’t move.

We were frozen, not because it was freaking cold outside, but frozen with fear.

I heard Dad call out to us from way down there at the bottom to come down the hill.

We didn’t move. We looked at one another, almost as if to see if one of us would go, but no one moved.

Dad started shouting a little louder for us to come down the hill and again, we just stood there.

No longer did I feel cool in my snowsuit and rented skis. No longer did I think that this trip was going to play out like it had in my mind. No longer did I think I was going to live to see my 15th birthday.

And then?

Dad started yelling.

Now, in case you don’t know, my father was an officer in the Army. He knew how to intimidate and he knew how to yell. He knew how to tell you to get a move on and typically, if you were smart, you didn’t let the situation get to this point, but if it did, you listened.

“You better get down here now. I didn’t spend all this money and drive all this way for you to stand at the top of that hill!”

John looked at me.

I looked at John.

“If you don’t get down here, I’m coming up after you.”

It was then that my brother looked at me and said, “I’m either going to die going down this hill or I’m going to die when Dad gets up here. I’m going to take my chances on the hill.”

With that, he was gone.

I watched him go gracefully down that hill. He looked like it was his 100th time down the bunny slope and not his first. He was swaying back and forth and he looked good.

Now, this part I’m going to give you from my mother’s memory as I was still at the top of the hill and scared to death to move.

John didn’t fall once. In fact, he was picking up speed, and my mother looked at my father and asked, “Did you teach him how to stop?”

Dad responded with, “Not going that fast.”

John kept coming. Dad started to yell “Fall over” when it was obvious that John knew that he was going too fast to stop simply by turning his feet in. Mom said the look on his face was classic.

Again, Dad yelled to fall over and all my mother could picture was John going through the wall of the lodge and being able to see his silhouette just like when Wil E. Cyote would go through the walls when chasing the Road Runner.

John finally did fall over… right into a pile of slush.

With all the focus on my speed demon brother they had stopped yelling at me. Once John had taken up residence in the slush puddle that attention immediately came back to me.

“Heather! Get down here or I’m coming up there.”

I really didn’t want my dad to come up after me. I knew that he paid alot of money for us to come. I knew that he went all out for us but I changed my mind.

But I decided it was time to take the plunge. After all, no man could come and help me up if I was just standing there at the top of the hill.

So, I pushed off.

I went about six feet and fell over. And I fell well… like poles everywhere, not within reach, and all entangled as if I had just finished a game of Twister.

I didn’t want to get up. My brother had made it all the way down the hill and I didn’t even make it six feet. There I laid. Not for long, but long enough.

Then I heard it. I heard the sound of rescue on it’s way. I could hear the swish and the swoosh of skis coming near. I saw my pole being extended to me.

I was waiting for the skies to open up and the choir of angels to begin singing as I looked up to see the man of my dreams standing there, my poles in hand, waiting to rescue me.

Except when I looked up?

There was no hottie standing there.

It wasn’t even a boy!

It was a six-year-old GIRL!!!!!!!

She handed me my poles, and helped me get back on my feet and once I was, she was off, no poles mind you, looking like Peakaboo off to the bottom of the hill.

I was MORTIFIED.

But I kept on going and fell a few more times but I finally made it to the bottom of the hill.

I was ready to call it a day, to retreat into the lodge and sip hot cocoa by the fire. There was a better chance of me meeting a boy within the lounge, right?

Not the plans that Dad had.

He sent us back up to the top. Right away.

Reluctantly, we went.

And do you know what happened? By the end of the night, we were cruising down that bunny slope without falling, or falling in slush, and looked like we’d been doing it forever.

We were having fun.

And then dad said we had to go. We so wanted to stay longer or come back the next day. But he said no, and we loaded up our stuff and headed to the hotel (not at the ski place as that would be too expensive…) and were on our way.

It was a lot of fun, once we got over the fear. I know we frustrated the crap out of dad, despite the fun that we ended up having and yes, he pointed that out as we were begging for more time on the slopes.

But I can tell you that I’ve never been downhill skiing since, and come to think about it, I don’t think we went any kind of skiing after that… not even cross country.

And I’m not sure if it was because of the behavior exhibited by my brother and I that day or if it was because when he went over on the bigger hills that he totally wiped out and either lost or broke his glasses… I think he lost them.

Poor Dad.

Until next time…