Parenting 101: If you promise them something, deliver. My promise was to go snowboarding with Nick, and that's what I did today. It's something that I've been meaning to get around to anyway but having an eight year old around to constantly remind me made it inevitable. I checked out a lesson that we could take together and found it to be a bit pricey for my taste. Group lessons would separate us, entirely missing the Parental Promise Point. Besides, he's had lots of lessons and needed a free boarding day. The only thing left was to take a lesson from an eight year old, which struck me as a fine idea.
Turns out that Nick was up to the task, he just had an awful student. Wait a minute, that assessment may be too harsh. I've never met anyone who was good at snowboarding (or anything worth doing) on the first try. My issues were compounded by heavy snowfall and accumulations of heavy, heavy snow. You know the kind: Great for snowballs but basically weighing in at about two pounds per cubic centimeter. The good news: It softens your falls. It also, however, makes this whole "turning" thing something of an asterisk when you throw a rookie into it. I also found that it makes a person almost impossibly wet when you wear a coating of it for the better part of six hours.
And wear it you must, because time spent in the vertical position will be at a premium. No, I never fell off, at, or near a lift. After approximately f...well, let’s just say "several years" of skiing, I'm pretty lift savvy and have the common sense and willpower to keep it together with that many people around. For me the problem was in the general transportation realm, as in getting from point A to Point B... Alive.
Or reasonably intact, and that concept led me to another epiphany, one that has to do with why easy tasks become almost impossible when tackled by someone with a retarded skillset. Under those conditions, “Hansel & Gretel” becomes the moral equivalent to “Hangman's Hollow” on a glare ice day. Why was this easy slope suddenly trying to kill me? Like skiing, just when you think you have it down, cruising at a decent pace, carving a few turns, WHAM! You find yourself slammed into the slope at whiplash velocity, forward or backward. Both feel like someone has taken a baseball bat to the striking surface, in my case either my chest or the back of my head (and yes I wore a helmet; If I hadn’t, this entry would read thus: “5v874ytnwvbsnyv:-):-}:-):-))”, given that I could even remember how to start the computer). I’ve never had the wind knocked out of me that many times or that badly. The only way to describe it is to say that it’s like being hit by a soft car. I was reminded of Rob’s experience snowboarding, when he fell and bruised his ribs on the whisky bottle in his vest pocket. Now I know why he was carrying whisky in the first place. By the way, Rob has promised - and you’re reading it here first - that he and I will take a snowboarding lesson next year with whomever else wants to go, a promise that I have every intention of holding him to.
So gross incompetence turns out to be very hard work. Brutally hard at times, such as when one is stuck in a tree well and has to “hop” their way out. Thirty or forty hops later and it’s mission accomplished, although now too exhausted to ride or even walk. Not long after freeing myself, I caught up with Nick at the end of the day, at the bottom of our last run together. We were fifty yards or so from the base of 7 and we both assumed the Snowboarder’s Position, butts in the snow, watching the world go by before heading in for the day. I was spent, wet, and sore, almost beyond comprehension. I wasn’t even sure that I had the last fifty yards in me.
I said: “I get what you mean about turning on the front part of the board”
“I could tell.”
Then silence for a minute;
“I think I’ve improved a lot, don’t you?”
“Yeah Dad, you did great”.
More silence, watching the people go by, then simply:
“I love you Dad”
All better. And I’ll be boarding for a bit next time too. No sense in wasting all those new skills.
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