I Was Not Meant To Ski

Last week, the Kodak company announced that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This fact depresses the heck out of me. The company is over 130 years old and is such an icon. Hopefully some restructuring will be done and Kodak will come out okay.

My intention for today's post was to pay homage to Kodak and share some old photos taken on a Kodak camera loaded with Kodak film. Actual film, hons. Not digital. But I got distracted looking at old photos and remembered a story about the time I almost died skiing and my husband took photos of the experience.

On Kodak film, of course.

Picture it: January 1996. I was a thin, perky boobed, 23 year old gal with considerably less jiggle than I have now. I was bitching and moaning about snow and winter and my intense desire to see both vanish from my existence when I decided that I might enjoy winter more if there were some activity I liked that required snow.

Something like skiing. An idea was born.

Enter the ski trip of 1996.

My husband and I went with a big group of friends to Michigan to spend some time on the slopes. It was my first (and to date, only) ski trip. My excitement level was pretty high that morning. Just look at me (on the left) with my friend, Gina.

We certainly look like we know what we are doing. Actually, Gina did know what she was doing. I was merely pleased to be standing upright on my skis and not face down in the snow. Note the death grip I have on my poles.

I took a first-timers ski lesson from a dude named Rick that lasted all of seven minutes and I was off to the ski lift. Riding the ski lift was easily my favorite part. I discovered that I am exceptional at riding the ski lift. And I managed to gracefully exit the ski lift as well.

The first few runs down the ski trail were decent. I fell a few times, but overall I managed to go shushing down the mountain with surprising skill.

On my third or fourth run I pulled off the most epic fall. A fall that incorporated quite a bit of flair and ended with me skiing over my own thumb.

Let me repeat that. I skied over my own thumb.

How does one ski over her own thumb you ask? Well, I'm gifted.

After that run, I decided that the best use of my talents would be sitting in the lodge. Turns out, I'm not a good skier but I'm excellent at sitting in the lodge.

As the day wore on, my thumb got nastier and nastier looking. I didn't think it was broken, but you never know. A quick trip to the ER later, my thumb was pronounced dislocated, not broken. The most embarrassing part of the ER experience was having to tell the doctor how my injury occurred.

Doctor: What happened?

Me: Freak skiing accident.

Doctor: Was it a fall or did someone run into you …

Me (changing the subject): How 'bout them Cubs, huh?

Doctor: It's January. The Cubs don't play in January. How, exactly, did you injure your thumb?

Me: Weeeeeeelllllll … I may have skied over it.

Doctor (suppressing laughter): Are you serious or have you been drinking?

Me: I'm serious and I haven't been drinking.

Doctor: How does one ski over her own thumb?

Me: I'm gifted.

Doctor (raising eyebrows): Go on.

Me (sighing): It involves a fall that kinda sorta becomes a cartwheel with some legs flailing about wildly. Yeesh. Way to browbeat an injured person, doc.

I got a nifty splint thingie and was sent on my merry way.

Fast forward a week to when I picked up the pictures of our trip from the store and noticed this picture:

Big woo, right? Look over here:

See that red circle? That's me in the red circle, falling to my death.

Okay. Not my death, but geez. I skied over my thumb. And my husband, my beloved, took pictures of the whole incident. Not that he told me about it at the time.

He admitted it upon seeing the photos. While on the ski lift, he noticed that I was shushing down the mountain at break neck speed and he thought it would be nice to shoot some photos of my near Olympic record breaking speed (I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm 90% sure that's what he was thinking).

And I agree. It would have been nice to have great action pics taken from the vantage point of the ski lift.

Instead he got me and my fancy cartwheeling fall.

Did my beloved feel bad about documenting my fall? No. He laughed. He laughed because it was the funniest thing he'd seen in a long time and the pictures brought it all back.

He still finds it hilarious. To this day, any time skiing is mentioned three things happen in rapid succession: my husband starts to laugh, I shoot him the ol' stink eye, he ignores my ol' stink eye and tells the story anyway.

Actually, it is pretty funny. Now. Sixteen years later.

And thanks to Kodak, we'll have pictures of it forever. Pin It Now!