When I met Ricky (fake name fake name fake name everyone in this blog has a fake name), the first thing I noticed was that he is at least ten years older than me. (And I am very old, so that makes him very, very old.) And I was worried. There's just no other way to put it.
I'd been sent by my supervisor to join him, and I found him at the base organizing the three boys in his Level 4 class, or, should I say, trying to. We have a lot of pockets in our uniform jackets, and there are lots of things we have to keep in them (class lists, lunch vouchers, kids' stickers, PSIA books, Band Aids, sunscreen, pens, and, for those of us with selectively fading vision, glasses) and Ricky was having trouble locating the particular thing he was looking for at that particular time.
He was muttering to himself while patting his right chest pocket with his left hand, his lower left pocket with his right hand, pulling his glasses from one side pocket while looking for the class list, taking the pen out of the other while looking for his glasses, dropping something in the snow, bending over to pick it up, which would make something else fall out of another pocket, so he'd bend over again to pick that up, stand up and start again (hey, Macarena!). Flailing like a hapless mix of Mr. Magoo and the panicking robot from Lost In Space, Ricky did little to inspire confidence. And the kids, who, motionless in their helmets and goggles, looked like a row of frozen multicolored fireplugs, were standing and watching, surely recalibrating their expectations for the day. This whole scene wasn't just a little bit amusing to me, and though I did my best to hide my giggling under my gaiter, it was hard. I've always had an embarrassing weakness for the slapstick misfortune of others: people tripping, slipping, fumbling, falling, bonking their heads--this is the manna of my mirth. If you're thinking I'm just mean, please know I got exactly what was coming to me two weeks later, when I stood before my first class of Level One kids (who may or may not have been giggling under their gaiters) doing the exact same thing. Yeah, karma's a bitch.
Anyway, right when Ricky finally got it together, a supervisor came up with a new girl, Emily, to join the class. Her dad whispered in my ear, "She's much more comfortable with women. Also, if she could get her hockey stop down today, that'd be great. It's the only thing keeping her from Level 5." I put my arm around Emily and smiled. "We'll be buddies! Let's stick together!" and she leaned into me. "I'm just in training today," I told her dad, "but I'll pass that on to Ricky."
Two more girls came to join, and Ricky did his "Danger, Will Robinson!" dance two more times, trying to get their names on the roster and stickers organized. As the rest of us stood by, doing our best to telepathically will Successful Item Location, I noticed that Emily was plastered to my side. Every step I took, even a small step to the side to shift my weight, Emily took, too. It was very sweet.
But then, when we were finally on the gondola, Ricky transformed. The doddering administrator was gone, and a relaxed and warm expert ski instructor emerged. He laid out a plan for the day, told a couple of funny jokes, talked about how much fun we were going to have and where we were going to go. While he watched the kids ski their first run, he took me aside and assessed each of them, describing where we were going to take them, what we were going to do, and why. He showed me a really fun game to play on a wide blue run below a slow chair: slalom around the chair shadows to work on linking turns. He also let the kids free ski a lot, which turned out to be a great thing to witness and understand the value of.
There was a little boy from Scotland in the group named Rory who was so damn cute it hurts to remember him. He was the smallest one, very small for his age, but also the best and most athletic skier, which is an endearing combination of traits. His crowning characteristic though, to my mind at least, was that accent. Drop-dead adorable. At lunch, I got a conversation started about what we were each most scared of, and Emily told me she was most scared of Bigfoot. I asked her if she knew the other names that Bigfoot-like creatures were called, she said no, and I told her about the Yeti. Then I asked her if she'd ever read any Tintin books; that there was a great book about the Yeti.
Little Rory piped up, his head barely higher than the tabletop, "He's quite scary, the Yeti." (Jesus Christ, did that little guy just say "quite?" I could barely stand it!)
"Yes," I said, "At first! But then when you get to know him, he turns out to be very gentle, right?"
Rory mentioned that he had all the Tintin books which gave us plenty to talk about, because I do, too, and we talked about our favorites, and we talked especially about the The Black Island, as it not is only set in Scotland, but also features another beast who is scary at first but then turns out to be gentle.
The rest of the day was the combination of things I am discovering this job regularly offers, in varying degrees: fun, educational, humbling, and heart-rending. At its the end, for example, Emily's father was visibly disappointed that Emily had not mastered her hockey stops, and I watched her go from proud and happy to self-consciously slumped as she stood listening to him demand Ricky explain why. But this was at least somewhat mitigated by the fact that a moment later, when we talked about poles (which the kids get when they reach Level 5) Rory turned to me and asked, "Is it quite difficult, skiing with sticks?"
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