I consider myself an open minded person, ready to try new things, and challenge myself with activities that might be outside of my comfort zone. With foods I'm adventurous and I will gamely go new places because it's worth the experience. When Ms. K and I got to talking about snowboarding once, I confessed that I had never skied or snowboarded before.
"Never?" she asked incredulously. Ms. K had once been an avid snowboarder and was quite good.
Never. But I'll try. I have good balance on the subway! How hard could it be?
What we didn't account for was the fact that I would discover snowboarding to be the most fear inducing activity I have ever taken part in. With my feet strapped unnaturally onto the board, I immediately began slipping in a undesirable direction. As soon as gravity took hold, so did terror. Let me tell you how much my body enjoyed moving 50 miles and hour down an icy decline with only various layers of clothing and body fat to protect me.
Zero percent.
I really wanted to like snowboarding. Ms. K even said that I was starting to get the hang of it, but when my body smacked into hard earth for the fourth time, I crouched there near tears, too terrified to move, and thinking that I would have paid anyone any amount of money to not be on that slope again. For all that effort I only went down the bunny slope once, too scared and sore to attempt again.
So there. I totally punked out. After a calming dose of nicotine, I went to the beginners hill, looked down its gentle white slope for a second chance, and feared for my life.
Ms. K is starting to think that going to Killington, Vermont is a bad idea.
2 comments:
OMG, Ms. Rouge--you MUST be smitten with Ms. K to go snowboarding. I remember the early days of high school when you threw on a pair of jeans for "crazy day", and realize that I do consider you adventurous, but more in a chocolate-bacon sort of way--NOT in an X-games sort of way.
Just so you know, my mental image is of you, crouching in terror, with a board strapped to your feet, and a Marie Antoinette wig on your head.
snowboarding is a death defying activity to be sure. i hit the ground so hard with my head once that the lenses in my glasses popped out. i'm sure that accounts somehow for my lack of s-m-r-t-s. or something. what were we talking about again? oh look! a bird!
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