I squinted through my goggles at the orange helmet bobbing over the snow with that ungainly gait that comes from wearing ski boots. I recognized the orange helmeted instructor at once to be my co-worker, Isaiah, and he was walking purposefully towards me with a boy of about twelve lagging a little behind.
“This is William,” he said in that overly cheery tone that you adopt when talking to kids, but widening his eyes in a manner that told me clearly that there was some kind of hitch here.
“Hi William!” I said, smiling brightly. “Have you ever skied before?”
“Yes, I went yesterday and the day before,” he said earnestly, “but I don’t like it because if I go fast I’m going to fall off a cliff and die.”
“Oh,” I said, a little taken aback. Isaiah raised his eyebrows meaningfully and I realized that I had my work cut out for me with this kid.
And so began another day at Winter Park Ski and Ride School, where I worked during my gap year as a Kids’ Ski Instructor. I spent December through April doing everything from holding three year olds’ hands as they skied down bunny hills for the first time to teaching level fours how to put more weight on their downhill skis. At the end of the season, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment that stemmed from a lot of different things: living on my own, passing my Level 1 exam, becoming a better skier myself and teaching private lessons-- but there were also individual days that made me feel hugely accomplished, and that day with William was one of those.
After Isaiah departed with a final thumbs up, I took stock of the situation and decided that I would have to clear up a few misconceptions if we were to get anywhere that day.
“So William,” I said. “There actually aren’t any cliffs where we’re going to ski today. None at all! Plus, if you go too fast and fall, the worst that could happen is that you’d slide a few feet and eventually stop. That doesn’t sound so bad, right?”
William, however, was not so easily convinced. He wasn’t dramatic about it, he was just very certain that skiing would ultimately lead to his death. I kept up a steady stream of encouragements and subtle reminders about there not being any cliffs the whole time that we were working on the basics, but he still didn’t want to go up the lift. After about five laps on the bunny slopes, I told him that staying there any longer would be excruciatingly boring and that we should be adventurous.
“I don’t like being adventurous,” he stated conversationally. “I like doing regular things.”
However, I played the instructor card and used my authority to get us up the lift with minimal complaints. But once we got onto the real runs, he regressed and started panicking about how steep they were.
“Oh no, I really don’t like this,” he said shakily, grinding his skies out into the biggest wedge I had ever seen. Suddenly, I had an idea, and skated quickly in front of him and turned around, so that I was facing him and skiing backwards. “What regular things do you like to do?” I asked, resuming our previous conversation and still skiing, albeit slowly.
“I like watching movies!” he said, his eyes lighting up, his skis slowly moving towards me again. “My favorite one right now is Big Hero Six, and I watch it almost every day!”
And so it went: we talked about movies the whole way down the run and by the time we got to the bottom he looked at me and said enthusiastically, “I wasn’t even afraid coming down just now, because we were just chatting! It didn’t feel scary at all!”
We did two more runs like this, skiing and talking about movies, playing games and chatting on every lift. By the time his mom came to pick him up, looking apprehensive to hear what I had to say about her son, he was so proud of his progress that he told her all about the day himself: about how he wasn’t scared anymore and how he didn’t fall a single time after lunch.
Just seeing the enthusiasm on William’s face when he was talking to his mom about skiing made me feel that I had wrought a significant change in him. Chances are that William probably won’t go on to win a gold medal for skiing in the Olympics, and he might not even continue to ski after his mom stops making him. But at least his day went from scary to fun, and that’s something I can be proud of.