WPC: Beginning

Nice coincidence that this week’s photo challenge is “Beginning” as we just got back from Santa Fe, where Mr. C spent a lot of time starting to learn how to ski. So I’ll use this week’s challenge to write about his new skill.

When I was a kid, no one I knew skied. One of the reasons must have been the cost, but I think it just was not something that was done by the kids I knew in my Boston neighborhood. Parents just didn’t consider skiing as a family activity, and if they did, it was thought of as something only the very rich were able to do. There was also a perception that there were really only four sports that kids played; baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Things were starting to change by the time I was in high school, but there were still just two or three kids who knew how to ski. They would walk around school with their lift tickets on their jackets for months, they were the ‘cool kids’.

My skiing ability consists of putting on the skis, and then immediately falling down into the snow as soon as possible, flailing about like an upside down turtle. If I do manage to get going downhill I end up sprawled out in seconds, with all limbs extended, spinning downhill as if I were a starfish. So the skiing instructions were handled by the very expert skier in the house, Ms. J.

 

My inability to ski extends to all sports in general actually. My antics in hand-eye coordination caused much hilarity on the playing fields in my long ago school days. So it was great to see Mr. C take to skiing so quickly. He was going down the beginner slope by the end of the first day. Any sporting ability he has will most likely be inherited from Ms. J, and not me. Hopefully his success so far will lead to the confidence to try other sports too.

It was surprisingly crowded on the slopes of Santa Fe Ski mountain over the holidays. So I thought he might end up crashing into another skier at some point. In fact the only time I saw him fall down was when he was just about to slam into an adult skier, but instead he purposely leaned to the side to fall over at the last second in order to avoid the collision. Pretty smart for a 4 year old who had just put on skis about two hours ago, I thought.

 

I told him to keep the lift tickets on his jacket. It’ll impress the other kids in his pre-school class.