I have always been an exceptional athlete, born with an athletic build and sharp reflexes, sports have always come natural to me. This unfortunate curse (I refer to my talent in this context as a curse because of the extreme jealousy that my innate skills invited from substantially less talented siblings) has in fact led to several unique opportunities. For instance, I was once invited to join a traveling band of famous athletes. They praised my parents with such language as special, one-of-a-kind, limited, memorable, rare, and unusual. I would have enjoyed playing with all of their exotic animals, however the chafing I got from my allergies would never allow me to perform with such creatures.
Another opportunity that my athleticism presented to me was the opportunity to train to be a world-class skier. One day I decided to splurge and eat out at Article Circle. As I approached the counter the culinary request technician happened to notice my athletic build. Capitalizing on this amazing opportunity, she had no choice but to provide me with a special invitation.
“Would you like to buy these night skiing tickets?” she asked in a flirtatious, admiring (bordering on worshiping) tone.
“I have never skied before, but I am sure that I would be a natural,” I said to myself while staring blankly at the wall.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” asked the culinary request technician.
“You know what? I am going to take two tickets. I appreciate your confidence in my abilities,” I awkwardly added.
The culinary request technician looked at me with a puzzled squint. I stuck out my chest to augment the quality of the limited time she had dedicated to her stare, the self-time-restriction being required in order to keep her gaze within the strict time regulations for a socially acceptable admiration session.
I took the tickets and strutted to my seat, proud that I had yet again managed to impress the opposite sex with my refined personality and stunning good looks.
I found a nice booth and sat down with Han, my extremely uncoordinated bosom buddy.
“Yum,” I said licking the fry sauce off my chin that was left over from my extremely delicious spicy fries. “So, ya wanna go skiing this weekend?” I asked my friend.
“Nothing would please me more my young padawan, nothing would please me more.” Han was a great friend and he was extremely intelligent when it came to school, but he was a little weird and slow when it came to social issues.
During school the following day Han and I worked out that his sister would drive us up the canyon and drop us off while we skied the slopes for a couple of hours. That night the car pulled up in front of my house about four in the afternoon. Sen, Han’s sister, rolled down the passenger window and I pushed my rental skis over Han’s head. The two pair of skis barely fit on a diagonal. We figured out that we couldn’t quite roll the window up all of the way, but luckily we were all dressed in our warm winter clothes. With the heater blaring and the skis sticking out of the window, we hit the freeway cruising at a comfortable 45mph to keep down the wind chill on the inside of the car.
“Our exit is coming up Sen,” I mentioned as we were about to pass the I-215 turn-off.
Realizing that we were in the far left lane, Sen looked in the rear view where she saw several cars attempting to get around our 45 mph go-cart. She had no choice; time was too short to wait it out. Sen hit the gas while simultaneously pulling the steering wheel to the right. The sudden force put on the skis by the now 55mph wind snapped one of Han’s skis in half.
“My ski, my ski!” Han frantically yelled as we moved parallel across four lanes with half of Han’s body hanging out the window in hopes that his cursing would bring back the prodigal ski.
I looked back just in time to see the ski just miss the car behind us, it hit the road for a brief second until a dump truck ran over the top of it, the ski flew into the air again and disappeared over the edge of the overpass that we were approaching. We drove on toward the canyon, shocked at the events that had just transpired, and frozen because of the huge, wet flakes that had started to fall from the sky.
By the time we arrived at the ski resort we were wet and tired from the long ride. We bought our tickets and got on the lift. As we approached the top of the run I got off the lift and was almost clear of disaster when I felt Han’s icy hand grab my coat. The distraction was just enough to throw me off course and I headed sideways instead of straight ahead. I crashed hard into the ski lift operator and looked behind me to see Han dangling from the lift chair.
“Help, Help!” Han yelled as he hung dangerously 3 inches from the ground.
The operator struggled to stop the lift, but I had unfortunately pinned him to the ground. I tried frantically to remove myself from this precarious position, but the awkwardness of the skis overpowered my agile body.
The ski patrol rushed to help Han as he unfortunately continued on the lift that could not be stopped.
“Jump!” they yelled at my dangling friend.
“I can’t I’m stuck, get me out!” Han started to panic as he kicked and screamed like a trapped, overweight female badger.
Just as the situation looked hopeless as Han’s chair made the loop to go back down the mountain, one of the ski patrol made a daring leap and grabbed Han by his boots. I heard the rip and I immediately knew something had gone wrong. I looked up just in time to see one of the sleeves of Han’s coat disappear down the side of the mountain.
I looked over at my friend with his broken ski and missing sleeve as some of the ski patrol reached down and helped him up. The men wished us luck as they looked questioningly at Han’s half ski and naked left arm.
We started off down the hill, but only made it a couple of feet before I saw Han approaching me extremely fast out of the corner of my eye.
“Watch out!” I yelled in a terrified, hopeless voice.
It was too late. I found myself pinned under Han’s 95 lb. skimpy body, sucking in fresh powder with every breath.
“Get off me you big oaf!”
“That was awesome,” was all that he could manage to say through his high nasal laughter. He stood up and took hold of my coat to attempt to pull me out of the snow bank that had recently become my best friend.
“Han, your stupid broken ski is giving me splinters get it off my back!” I said, but unfortunately the snow translated my perfect English into a mumbled mess.
Han fell over laughing leaving my face planted in the snow and my backside covered in fiberglass slivers from his wind damaged ski.
“Get back over here, this isn’t funny, I can’t even breath,” my mumblings only making my former friend laugh harder and harder.
He came over and after several more tries he managed to pull me up. Now I was wet, tired and irritated at my little laughing grasshopper looking partner who happened to think that everything was hilarious.
Two hours later we sat together on the side of the mountain. We still had not made it down the hill and both of our legs burned.
“I may be extremely good at skiing, but my legs sure to ache.” I complainingly remarked.
“Fun,” replied Han.
“I don’t think this sport was meant to be fun, it’s too painful.”
“Let’s go faster.”
“Yeah, we sure could go a lot faster if you didn’t have your stupid, gimp ski,” I thought to myself, but what I actually said was, “Han, you’re right, this time let me go first and let’s see if we can’t make it down this next hill with some real speed.”
I took off with a determination to make it to the bottom of the 30 foot hill. “Stay on your feet twinkle toes, stay on your feet,” I kept repeating to myself. I began to pick up more and more speed. I was flying now and I felt like I could conquer the world, at least until I thought about the fact that I had no idea how to turn and I was headed right for an orange, plastic fence. I immediately froze and began to imagine how horrible I was going to feel after I collided with a florescent barrier. I didn’t have to much time to think about my tragedy before I slammed into the fence. The tips of my skis went through the wholes in the plastic, the material naturally wrapped around my legs and through me into a beautiful front flip. My head stopped my flip as it slammed into the ice. There I sat upside down with a perfect view of the hillside that I had just skied down with such finesse. I noticed an object heading toward me.
“That looks a lot like Han,” I thought to myself, “He sure has a lot of balance to be able to steer straight when half of his left ski is missing.” As I was deep in thought I remember hearing a loud screaming noise coming from my own mouth, and then everything went black.
When the lights came back on the only difference that I noticed was that I was experiencing more pain throughout my entire body, I also now had a partner with whom I got to pass away the time in the giant florescent orange human spider web.
“Nice move,” I sarcastically complimented my friend on his aim.
“Thanks, that was fun,” Han commented as he started into his laughter again.
It didn’t take the ski patrol long to free us from our misery once they found us and took several photographs. Unfortunately for myself, my fame as a world-class skier was too tempting for those amateurs. They couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pose with such an amazing athletic specimen.
Our luck turned for the better on the way home, we were fairly comfortable before the hypothermia set in. My first training session had not been exactly what I had expected, but I had learned my lesson and I would never go skiing with Han again. I never did make the Olympics, I had to drop training due to a lack of finances, but to this day my picture remains posted in the lodge where I first went skiing.
