My dad and I have had this conversation several times, and it pretty much always goes the same way. 

Me:  “Uncle Zack taught me to ski.”

Dad:  “That’s incredulous (or whichever over the top, barely applicable word he favors at the moment)! I taught you how to ski!”

While it’s true that some overly serious guy with a shitty job (read: ski instructor at Camelback in the Poconos) spent a few hours desperately trying to hold my 6-year-old self’s attention in order to show me how to click into my bindings, but my uncle taught me how to ski.  Or rather, my uncle taught me how to point my skis downhill and how to stop.  Words fail in attempting to describe the transition from: “It’s cold, my feet hurt, and I’m tired of falling down” to, “I wonder how fast I can go on these things”.  However, Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra rings in my ears and I see the “Star-Child returns to Earth” scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey play in my head when I think on it.  Anyone who hung in there long enough knows what I’m talking about. Click to continue »