If you are a middle-age man and you sometimes do stupid things, you should take the time to read this. If you do stupid things more often than you should (like I do), do yourself a favor and print this post and read it from time to time as a reminder. It could save your life! I Am Stupid By: Dan Brown As I lay on my back in the slushy, wet snow, gazing up at a beautiful azure blue sky, my first thought was, Yes! I did it! Then I looked down to discover my skis were no longer attached to my ski boots. At that point I came to understand that I “double ejected,” which, when snow skiing, is never a good thing, and usually results in a less-than-desired outcome. Okay, time to back up a bit and rethink this: what exactly did I do? I was feeling a bit disoriented, so I remained somewhat motionless in the snow and took inventory of my present physical state, all the while thoroughly enjoying the pretty blue sky. I thought I heard birds singing, but realized we don’t have any indigenous songbirds whose call is, “Holy shit! Did you see that?! Holy shit! Did you see that?!” I went over the sequence of events to determine what exactly went wrong. It took some time while standing at the top of the ski hill to convince my two boys that I could in fact bomb down the hill and ski over the standing water and make it unscathed to the other side of the pond. (It was Slush-Fest last weekend at Wild Mountain, if you’re wondering why there would be a pond of standing water at the bottom of a ski run.) Anyway, my oldest boy, Anders, later told me that I was going way, way too fast. He said I was going, like, 50 miles-per-hour when I hit the water. Sort of a stretch, but I got the point. Where was I? Oh yes. I skied across the water, successfully I might add, as evidenced by my dry ski boots and ski pants, but the whole plan dropped a deuce when I failed to keep my weight back and hop up to the level where the snow met the water on the far end of the pond. Witnesses later told me my ski tips slammed into the snow bank on the downhill side of the pond, causing the immediate double-eject, sending me cart-wheeling in the air. I do remember making a loud “OOOF!” sound when I landed flat on my back against the hard-pack and slid a number of feet to a merciful stop. My two boys are quite the aerialists on our trampoline at home, as well as in the terrain parks on their skis. I do know that when a body spins forward or backward, there are certain degrees that are good, and there are others that are bad. If you’re doing a front flip, 360 degrees is a good thing. What I nailed on Saturday, after being violently ripped from my skis, was a 270. That, of course, is not nearly as good, because a 270 can cause broken bones, internal bleeding and head injury. See the difference? As I was spinning like a rag doll, I do recall the snow rushing perilously close to my face and thinking, Okay, I got this. I’m at 180, and if I tuck right now, I could fully rotate and land a 360. But, without skis, or a body that is able to actually tuck on command if I wanted it to, I only got to 270. Every once in a while I have a hard time reconciling and coming to terms with my chronological age. When I suffer periods of temporary insanity, as I clearly did last Saturday, I attempt to do things my body simply cannot do any longer. As my wife, Su, gently reminded me after witnessing my double-ejection-ass-over-tea-kettle feat on the ski slope, “ARE YOU INSANE! YOU’RE ALMOST 50 [insert favorite expletive here] YEARS OLD!” Just last summer I attempted a back flip on the kids’ trampoline in our backyard and, you guessed it, didn’t quite make it all the way around. Again, the dreaded 270. I landed on my stomach and my shins slammed against the galvanized steel outer frame of the trampoline – CLANK! When the blinding white pain finally subsided and I could actually see, I looked down and half expected to find my lower legs and feet lying on the ground. I bring up the trampoline mishap because there is clearly a pattern here. When will I learn? When will I finally listen to others when they plead and beg me to not attempt some cockamamie, half-baked stunt like I pulled last Saturday? Boy, I hope it’s soon. These epic failures are beginning to take a toll on me.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 20:46:25 +0000
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