The Pragmatician

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I don’t know how many of you have had a chance to ski, but I bet that those who have, loved it and those who haven’t would very much like to try it out.

For me skiing is like math, both being awful childhood traumas.

I’m particularly sensible to the cold and skiing is certainly not a conducive activity to feeling warm and fuzzy.

But since the family packed up to join the hordes of sheep-like people going to the mountains every winter, I wasn’t exactly asked whether I felt like going along.

My earliest memory of skiing goes back to when I was but an innocent child of eight.

I went along with a group of kids and one teacher (only 1 for perhaps 10 kids!!).

I kept falling and hurting myself, not to mention that with every fall snow crept in my clothes and slid over my already icy body.

The teacher didn’t pay much attention to me, he must’ve thought I was a troublemaker, and the other kids all seemed to be pros, as if they had skied right out of the womb.

So it happened year after year, I complained, even begged not to have to go, but it was easier to ignore the cries of a weird child (which normal kid doesn’t like skiing?) than to find an alternative to keep me busy during the winter break.

The second year I feared the worst only to find out it actually gets worse, we went higher up and for that we had to take the “platter ski lift”. To me then a frightening engine that would surely drop me, and swallow me whole if I didn’t jump out on time before the platter turned back.

I've had needles the size of a pen injected in my back around the same age and wasn't half as scared of that than of these lifts. (just to give you an idea)

Needless to say I fell out sufficient times, got hurt and lost and only thanks to H’Ashem’s kindness found someone I knew after walking with heavy ski’s for 45 minutes.

That same evening I vowed to recite 30 kapitlers Tehillim(psalms) if I wouldn’t fall off the platter lift the next day, and believe it or not, I didn’t. And yes I honored my vow.

This went on for years until one year I actually dared fight back against my parents.

That morning I refused to leave the house and while they tried everything from cooing to threatening, I stayed at home.

Being an compliant child neither my parents nor I knew very well how to handle this rebellion.

It was a very unpleasant period; I tried to make amends but insisted on not skiing and so these issues we only resolved once we got back home.

Since then I haven’t skied and I don’t intend to ever again!Rereading this before posting I realize it’s sort of a childish post, but with my friends all running off to the mountains to have ‘the time of their life’, all these memories flooded back and I needed an outlet!