Day 29. A song that describes a friendship:
“You’re A Friend Of Mine” — Clarence Clemons and Jackson Browne
Today’s selection may be a bit on the nose. Oh well.
I’ve skied three times in my life. (How’s that for a non-sequitor?) The first time was during the winter of 1985-86. I’m not sure of the exact date, but I am sure of one thing: the whole time I was skiing that day, this song was stuck in my head.
The day goes something like this:
- Friends who know how to ski (and convince you of how much fun it is) drag you to the mountain to drop gobs of money on a lift ticket and rental equipment.
- Friends lead you to the bunny hill and give you five minutes of instruction on snowplowing before getting bored and taking off to ski the mountain.
- Somewhere between the first snowplow and figuring (incorrectly) that you’re ready for something harder than the bunny hill, “You’re A Friend Of Mine” plays, getting lodged in your head (much to your chagrin because, let’s face it, it’s not that good of a song).
- Spend the rest of the day essentially skiing by yourself because your friends are so much better at this than you are and they don’t want to be stuck on the beginner trails.
- Enjoy the small victories, like learning to parallel ski (sort of) or making it 500 feet without falling, but spend most of the day on your ass.
- Finish the day cold, wet, and sore.
No, the irony of “You’re A Friend Of Mine” being stuck in my head while being virtually abandoned by my friends for the day is not lost on me.
In the end, I forgave them. Let it slide, really, because a) if I was a good skier, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to get held back either and b) it was far too late to go out and find a new crew of friends. (But I did sort of start to drift away from them over the next few years. Maybe this was the reason and I never identified it until now? Food for thought.)
The weird thing is, I didn’t ski for another three years after that (it took me that long to thaw out), but when I did, I still had the song stuck in my head the whole time. That’s a whole other level of wrong.
In the end, I never did really take to skiing. I’m not big on things that cost ridiculous amounts of money over and over again. Skiing. Golf. Things like that. Plus, I have a knee that likes to go out at unpredictable times, so visions of a mangled knee with my lower leg dangling helplessly—attached to a ski—sort of keep me from trying it again.
And frankly, I never need to be that cold again.