on my disconnection with the youth of America

Went to Hidden Valley to ski for my sister’s birthday.

My father and Debbie apparently never had any actual intention of getting on the slopes, hence their inviting beststephi and me. All of the kids decided they wanted to snowboard instead of ski. I was kind of weary of this since, I can’t snowboard and therefore can’t actually help or teach anyone. But oh well, that’s what lessons are for, right? Lift tickets for juniors are $45. Equipment rental is $20. Lessons are $18. There is a special deal where “first time snowboarders” can get lessons, equipment and a limited (beginner trails only) lift ticket for $40. That seemed perfect for them to me, and that’s what I told them all to get. Sent the kids off with my dad to get their stuff, and beststephi and I went off to get our lifttickets and skis.

We took a quick warm-up run down a beginner trail and then went over to the ski-school area to check up on Jackie and her friends. None of them were there and the lessons were starting in 3 minutes. I was a bit worried about that. Looked around and found Jackie going to exchange her snowboard because it was too big. Found out that she and her friends decided that they didn’t want to take the $40 deal because that meant “when they got better, they wouldn’t be able to go to the bigger hills.” They also decided that they didn’t want to “waste the extra $18 on lessons” because they could just figure out how to snowboard by themselves. The plan: “teach ourselves to snowboard on the easy hill, then go hit the moguls.” I expressed my views that this was a bad idea. They went and kind of practiced standing up on bunny slope by the rope tow a few times and the next thing I knew, my sister and 2 of her friends were trying to go up the chair lift to another, slightly harder, beginner trail (the other 6 being no where to be seen). I told them to wait for me at the top of the hill. “No, we’ll be alright” I was told. They were 4 chairs in front of us. When I got to the top of the hill, I found them laying in the snow trying to remember how to stand up.

Steph and I helped them and they kept trying and basically managed to “Snowboard” 20 feet, give or take, and fall over. Each time they did this they counted this as one time they snowboarded. So if you ask my sister how many times she’s snowboarded, she’ll tell you six. After about 100 feet or so, they gave up on this and walked down the rest of the hill. Jackie says she hit her head, had a concussion and was afraid she’d go into a coma. That was it. They called it a day after that. The three of them essentially paid $65 each to walk down a hill one time. The other six got some more snowboarding in (it turns out 3 of them actually had been before), and I believe only one even hurt himself looks like just a twisted ankle.

I don’t know. Maybe its me just being old. But I don’t think so. I started skiing when i was 13 years old, and I had the good sense to take lessons. In fact I took lessons of some kind (either just general lessons or later racing lessons) every year til I was 18, and there are still some times when I look at a slope and say “hmm, that might be too much for me.” I tend to think I’m kind of adventurous, too. Maybe todays kids are just braver and stupider than even I was.

I had brought my laptop and some DVDs to watch with me, and my sister was going through my bag to see which movies I had brought. She was impressed by “An Evening with Kevin Smith” because Kevin Smith is the “best writer/director ever.” She went on to tell me about how she and one of her friends who were there, Amanda, I think, were more intellectual than everyone else in their school because they watch all kinds of “Sundance movies” like “Dogma” and “Chasing Amy” while most of her friends don’t even know what “Clerks” was. She asked me to name a better filmmaker and I blindly threw out the name “Tarantino” just because I knew she knew who he was. She told me she meant she wanted me to name someone she didn’t know so she could expand her horizons, I guess, so I told her Scorsese. She asked if he was funny and I said “sometimes.” I guess that satisfied her because she went to rejoin her friends and watch the movies they had brought. I later discovered that maybe she was right. Maybe she is the most “intellectual girl” in school. The rest of her friends appear to have “Austin Powers in Goldmember” memorized in its entirity. I mean, I get that people like certain movies and that they know every line of those movies. I know every word to “Star Wars” and “the Princess Bride” I know a lot of people who are freaks about Monty Python or Rocky Horror. But Goldmember? I mean even the earlier Austin Powers movies I could see. Who goes through the trouble to memorize Goldmember?

I fear my finger is slipping away from the pulse of the nation. Maybe I am becoming a crochety old man. Perhaps I should give up my dreams of returning to college and try to get back into High School. Bleah… on second thought, I remember High School. Maybe not.