Ski School

06:26:2006
Written on 18 02 06, recently discovered and posted today.
--m is learning to ski. He’s driving his teachers mad. Their method is to show the kids how to make a basic ‘snowplough’ shape with their skis- a shape they liken to ‘pizza’ ie two sides of a triangular skice of pizza. Then when the kid is in motion down the hill they shout ‘Pizza!’ at the kid, and the kid makes the snowplough shape and learns to control their speed and direction.

It’s not working on --m. Or it would work if he paid any attention to them, which he doesn’t. As each kid is launched down the slope there’s at least two teachers shouting pizza! PIZZA! at him but he just keeps his skis parallel and shoots down the hill as fast as he can before colliding with a snowbank at the bottom. He remains cheerful throughout. After one such Wile E. Coyote-like streak down the hill and collision with the snowbank, one teacher picked him up and just said ‘Not Possible. Not Possible.’ To me. I got a shivery flashback to some of the more shit teachers I’ve had in my life and felt oddly proud of the boy. I am told I started skiing in exactly the same way, and no exhortations from ski teachers or parents had any effect on my preference to just shoot down the hill as fast as possible without turning.
Nowadays though, I’m just an averagely shit turner and I whinge about pains in my legs to anyone who will listen.

I then noted that --m was unable to get on the ski lift without causing at least two pile-ups bad enough for the lift to be stopped by the attendant, a fat, sweaty white guy with mahogany skin. He had the key to restart the lift, but had to restart it at a lock under which end of the lift the emergency had occurred. When --m fell against someone and they both fell over and tripped the next kid coming up, the lift operator would come puffing down the slope with a look of disgust while the teachers slowly untangled the kids, many of whom were in tears throughout the whole afternoon.

I should say one thing at this point. My ski suit is a rather spiffy red and white affair which coincidentally looks almost identical to the instructor’s suits. The upshot is I’ve got other skiers asking for my help at all times. Old ladies ask me about the cable cars in German. Americans ask me in halting German where the toilets are, and children of all races, creeds and colours ask me to help them get up when they have fallen.

So I’m there standing by the children’s ski lift which is basically a slow moving conveyor belt that the kids stand on in their skis. I was checking on --m’s progress up the hill and I realize this girl’s been shouting at me in German for about five minutes. I had tuned her out because that’s what you do when other people’s kids are screaming every two minutes.

She was lying at my feet, next to the ski lift which she had just fallen off and was unable to get up as her skis (and feet) were pointing in different directions. I look around and the other instructors are ignoring us both. One of them may have looked round but all they’d have seen is another person in a red and white suit dealing with this fallen kid. I picked up her ski, the foot still attached, and tried to swivel her leg round the right way. Unfortunately, as I am not a real skiing instructor, I swiveled it the wrong way, further twisting her leg round. She screamed harder and started cursing me in German. I snapped both her bindings and released her boots from the skis. I then picked her up so she was at least standing up, handed her her skis and told her to put them on out of the way so that other kids could use the lift. She shuffled off. Apart from the leg-swiveling bit I think I handled the situation OK. Later on she fell over on the lift again. I tried to help her get one of her skis on but she was being such a bitch about it I let another instructor take over.

Later on, while attempting to untangle –m’s legs from a metal pole, I helped out a small English boy who had also become stuck. As I set him right, he said to me in a quavering voice: “I… I don’t want to do this…”. His accent indicated well-off parents probably shooting down a red run somewhere. –m told me he had had enough of skiing and wanted to go down the toboggan run. Five minutes later and free of his skis he was laughing and shouting as we slid down the hill in a rubber ring while the rest of the kids in his class whimpered and Pizza’d on.

The next day I saw a guy calmly take the last six croissants off the breakfast buffet and stick them into his pocket, evidently for eating later on the piste. Breakfast hadn't finished, and more importantly I hadn't had a croissant myself. I felt like staving his face in with a honey dipper; not the best choice of weapon but the only one to hand.



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