Bunnicula Slopes

Just logged into Facebook, after a day, and immediately found an event invite staring me in the face, from the right side of the screen. I usually get excited about these things.

But this event, all by its lonesome, was definitely not what I had in mind.

"[Friend] has invited you to Hit the Slopes - Private Event - Saturday, December 11 at 12:30 PM..."

So I have nothing better to do on this particular Saturday, but I really don't want to go skiing. And here's why:

Fourteen years ago, I lost my skiing virginity. I signed up for a class trip with the Ski Club (yes, we actually had one of those) because I figured I might as well try it. Some friends of mine were with me at the time, and we signed up for the whole package, with skis, poles, shoes, and lessons. (On a side note, why would people sign up for packages without some of these components... like getting skis without poles?) What my friends neglected to tell me until we got there was they were already somewhat experienced skiers. We can totally skip the lessons, they said. We'll teach you everything we know, they said.

You can already tell where this is going.

First, I fell off the ski lift. Fortunately, there wasn't too much of a distance to fall at that point. And then the ski lift seat decided I was in the way and pushed me until I fell down into the fake snow. Great start already!

Somehow I got up and slowly walked (as best as beginners with skis can walk) around to face the bunny slope ahead. And stopped and stared.

See, my "friends" never actually planned on teaching me anything they knew, and I should've foreseen that from the way they didn't help me get up from falling off the damn lift. So I watched them all slowly go down, only having time to yell out, "It's easyyyyy!"

Except when I shrugged my shoulders and proceeded to push off, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I managed to get down the first hill of the 3 part slope before
"WATCH OUT!!!!!"

I had collided with a snowboarder. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" The snowboarder barely uttered an "it's okay" before going off again, leaving me to figure out how to get up. Somehow I managed to get up to my knees before I started to go again, this time unplanned.

WHOOSH. I slid right next to another woman sitting on the ground. Without looking up at me she asked, "First time." "Yeah," and we sat in silence, pondering the color of the sky and the artificial snow. Her husband/boyfriend/significant other/friend approached to persuade her to get up and start enjoying herself, until he spotted me, just sitting there awkwardly. We re-established that it was indeed my first time, and went over a few details to confirm this was in fact the case. Finally he helped me up and gave me the lessons my "friends" never could.

Once up, I thanked him and moved down. That was the glorious part of the evening. Until I paid more attention to my feet than my direction and had to plop down again. This time I was too close to the edge and had no choice, unless I wanted several bad injuries.

Unfortunately, the nice gentleman didn't teach me how to get up, so I spent what seemed like 20 years trying to figure it out myself. In retrospect, I would've loved to see how this must have looked to an ...onlooker. A young girl sitting down on the ground, focused intensely on moving her feet around and around, as if doing so would somehow make her fly to her feet. Or something. Whatever, it was probably amusing.

But being the adolescent that I was, I soon found some of the popular kids from my grade approaching. Thinking all too quickly, I busied myself with the scene behind me, as if trying to look for one of them "friends." Why I would be sitting down looking for them still escapes me.

When they walked away, I turned and finally spotted one of those "friends" on the lift. I shouted her name as loudly as I was capable of doing, and she squinted her eyes and blankly waved. After another brief struggle with my skis and feet, I spotted and yelled out another "friend's" name along with the word help until she began to clomp over.

This is the best part, so keep listening.

I was probably down for about 20-30 minutes. There was a lady in yellow standing near me the entire time, occasionally giving me the glance-over. When my "friend" began to clomp over, this lady came over and asked, "You need help?" and got me up in two seconds.

Lesson learned: Never go skiing again.

Or should I? What do you think? Think I could've done things differently? Let me know below.