Snow Bunny Hop

Rob and I were in two classes together in college - tennis and skiing.

This is how tennis class went:
I, who'd taken 3 billion summers of lessons, was assigned to somewhere around the third tier of players by the end of the course. Third out of about six. Obviously 3 billion summers of money well-spent by my parents.

Rob, who'd taken exactly zero summers of lessons, was assigned to the very top tier of players by the end of the course. Although he is convinced he'd be playing in the NFL at this very moment had his high school been large enough to support a football team, his better bet might actually have been tennis...which is really annoying when I think of all the summers I trudged the mile there and back from the tennis courts at West High.

This is how skiing class went:
I, who'd skied exactly zero times in my boring life, very quickly fell/ski-snow-shoed/tripped to the beginner group when asked by our instructors to sort ourselves out into beginner, intermediate, and advanced groups.

Rob, who'd been skiing his entire life, nonchalantly skied over to the advanced group who were all looking down at us beginners with disdain.

And then, to my horror and Rob's scoffing annoyance, the instructors informed us they wanted us to do a trial run down the bunny hill to make sure we had sorted ourselves correctly.

The beginner group looked at each other in a wild-eyed frenzy. Someone must have smelled our fear or impending vomit, for we were almost immediately graced with a free pass to skip the test if we couldn't ski at all. Or stay standing once we put on our skis. Or put on our skis to begin with. (Check. Check. And Check.)

Rob, meanwhile, skied to the line forming at the bunny hill, grabbed the rope-pull that brought you to the top, and managed to get about 15 feet before he somehow tripped up, fell flat on his back, and took out about six other skiers behind him.

Ignoring all his protests that he'd skied black diamonds and was only used to real ski lifts, the instructors demoted him to my group. The group who had their gloves on the wrong hands and were three seconds from peeing in their snow pants out of sheer terror.

I thought it was hilarious. Hilarious in a sort of a slap-happy, giggling out of completely shot nerves kind of a way. Which really didn't help things much.

Our very first lesson, we walked up the hill ten feet, gritted our teeth, and then skied ten super-non-inclined feet back to our instructor. Rob just about speared himself in the head with his own ski pole to put himself out of his misery. I started feeling a little bad. And I felt a little worse when he spent his "free ski" time tackling the moguls and the expert black diamond courses, only to be denied promotion to even the intermediate class level.

The rope tow had sealed his both his fate and his placement as the brunt of all my skiing jokes for the next 11 1/2 years.

Poor guy. The legend lives on.