My First Ski Instructor: A Short Story

                My First Ski Instructor

Junior High was a sun-down enterprise for me. A life haul with no U-turns. The scapes of loneliness haunted me on a regular basis. My father is a good man. My mother is a wonderful woman. In moments when the world and high schools that I stayed at were built to fuel self-destruction, they always knew when I needed a break. My mom took me to Europe to remind me there is more in the world then abusive high school brats.

My dad took me skiing. One year we went to big bear. He assigned me a group with a group ski instructor. He was a portly man who seemed to enjoy crowded admiration ski divers. He loved taking it slow, managing the pace of everyone involved. My case seemed absurdly hopeless. I couldn’t even manage the V shape very well trying to go down the hill. I slowed everyone down, and eventually, he told me he didn’t have time for me. He had to look after the other skiers and didn’t have time to manage the “slow pokes.” I couldn’t blame him really. It was the story of my life. I just couldn’t function the way people wanted me too. Group classes always made me feel inadequate. And my emotional development continued to decline in certain areas throughout my teenage years. Except there were moments like this that led me to understand how expansive the world really is. That my worth was not limited by what some stranger thought about me, or my potential.

I’m getting ahead of myself, however. A young woman saw what they did to me. She is a personal trainer at Big Bear. Or at least she was, when I went there about 20 years ago. This brings me to another point. There’s a reason why I trust and like women more than men, and it isn’t so attached to my obvious regard for Nirvana or Kurt Cobain. Fact is, women have been looking out for me since I was a little boy. And never in any creepy way. I was noticed more and nurtured by women. I tended to make more friends with women as a child. I even fell in love when I was nine years old. That was a scary experience. And I don’t mean like puppy love, ah how adorable nonsense. I mean the adult brutal emotional feeling that comes and demands you change. As a friend of mine once said, being possessed by a demon kind of feeling. In any case, my history has a long list of women who seemed to notice me, and appreciate my worth and remind me that I wasn’t invisible.

She found me feeling the usual pain I had come to know as normal. Skiing away with the blanket icy feeling that stretched beyond whatever slope I was on. To put it poetically, I was reminded that life was like riding down a black diamond sky-lift pretending to be a bunny slope. I knew that one day I was going to lower my head and brace for the sharp incline of icy winds, blistered eyes with no tomorrow. That day though was just a sad boy hoping for death. It was a long period of conditioning for feeling invisible. Invisibility is something I’ve always been accustomed too. Anyone around me might find me amusing, magnetic, or everything they ever dreamed of, but that infatuation always seems to fade. Anything that takes me from the expense of here and now that offers transport into some greater mindscape of invisibility. Away from hurt, pain, or judgement of ignorant people seems to be the logical step in every situation. I want a female to share it with though. An invisible adventure of beauty and romance beyond the obvious decay of defeated lives.

I don’t know what motivated her to take notice of me. A sad child limping away from a sky instructor doesn’t seem to unusual. Even amongst the most idealistic nurturing women, it seems logical that there would be a line where the only natural choice for anyone would be to let sadness just be. She took it upon herself to train me though that day. No lessons were necessary. It was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had as a child. Not only was I able to do that V shit, but I was zig-zagging down the mountain like a pro. Narrowing the distance between my skis down to the football length, and all kinds of techniques that made me feel I was born skiing.

While we were going down, she suggested with some passion that it would be fun to go down and show off my skill to the group ski instructor man and show him how much more advanced I was with her help. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but to my heart it went like this:

“Hey! Look who you discarded! Look who you said was too slow to ski!”

That’s always been my experience with women. I never understood how anyone could view a woman any differently. My experience hasn’t changed since I got older. It seems every woman I meet is like that ski instructor. A woman who reminds the little boy in me that I’m still worth something, even when the world tries to tell me that I should just crawl into a corner and die.