When I was a kid, maybe ten or elven, if that, my dad took me to Mohawk Mountain, where you can go skiing. Now, don't get me wrong, I had a really good time. But I don't think I was really cut out, as a kid, for anything even remotely athletic, except possibly for swimming - fat kids float better.
There were ski instructors there, and if anyone has ever seen that South Park episode where the kid has to learn to ski from the overly cheerful guy who uses cute catchphrases in lieu of intelligent adult conversation, that's the instructor I got.
At least he was nice... in a retarded sort of way.
So... anyway, I've already tried out the bunny hill, where you learn basic ski skills like "Don't fall off the skis while you are standing still," and "make sure you are paying attention and don't begin sliding down the hill backwards." I also learned "Do not attempt to use a tree to stop."
That's correct. When you are on skis, and you are traveling at thirty or forty miles an hour, and you are four feet tall and three feet wide, and the tree is moving at zero miles an hour, trees are dangerous. I'm lucky that I had all that kid-fat underneath so many warm clothes that I looked like the kid in "A Christmas Story" who couldn't lower his arms. I was only stunned for a minute, and didn't actually lose consciousness.
Here is another safety tip - don't bundle your kid up in so many "warm" clothes that he cannot move his arms and legs, and then put him on skis, or any other fast-moving mode of conveyance that requires physical dexterity to avoid painful death.
So... anyway... off the bunny slope, and on to something more challenging. The instructor and I go up onto a larger hill, that you use a ski lift to climb. At the top, he explains that the most important thing to learn right now is how to speed up, slow down, and stop.
Hell... I already knew that. The tree told me.
He explains that in order to slow down, you angle your skis together, with the edges of the skis tilted out - and yes, he made the "pizza" analogy here.
So... armed with this important information, we head off down the slope. We're going faster and faster, and he's alongside me, shouting "Slow down! Make Pizza!" And I'm shouting back "I am! It's not working!"
We're going faster and faster. At this point, we're going fast enough that I'm pretty sure that if I hit an acorn, I'd end up in orbit. He's still shouting at me to angle my skis inward. And I'm shouting at him, "I am! Look!"
So... he looks down, and sees what I see. Which is that both our skis are angled inwards, and that the snow around us is perfectly still... but we are both moving at high speed. How is this possible?
Easy. We were standing on a huge chunk of snow and ice that had broken off the side of the mountain in one piece, with us standing on it. Like a giant snow raft of death. Angling our skis is having no effect, because we're standing on a giant piece of frozen danger that's shooting down the hillside with us on it.
By this time, we are going way to fast to attempt to ditch. The instructor has now begun yelling "Hang on! Oh shit! Hang on! Don't Fall down!"
You'd think I'd find that more alarming, but at least, at this point, I felt he was being realistic, which was a nice change.
So... we shoot all the way down the hill, and are moving at quite a clip across now-horizontal ground. There is no way to steer, and I'm afraid to try to get off this piece of ice. The bit with the instructor on it finally broke off into a separate piece, but we were both still fairly close together. We finally slowed down and stopped... amid crumbling bits of our impromptu snow-sled... wait for it...
On a frozen pond. Next to a sign warning "Danger! Thin Ice! Danger!" (it said "Danger" twice.)
So... now the instructor is coaching me on how to be very, very careful, so that we won't fall through the ice. He tells me to make "X's" out of my skis to distribute the weight. All this did was make me unable to move, because my skis were now on top of one another, and we're surrounded by jumbled up bits of ice and snow from our now-defunct, snowy murder-toboggan. So, I hobble carefully towards the edge of the pond, and the whole time, the instructor is telling me to be careful, and telling me what we'll do if I fall through the ice.
And then, of course, the ice broke, huge jagged cracks proceeding almost all the way across the frozen pond. And I see that the ice is indeed thin. Very thin. Because the whole pond is maybe six inches deep, total. I didn't even get my feet wet. I've seen deeper birdbaths.
The instructor asked me if I was okay, little buddy. I treated him to a short, bitter monologue to the effect that I was not called "Little Buddy," "Sport," or "Chief," and that in future, he could make his own pizza and French fries.
Coyote