“That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separate things” – H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

There’s a game my wife likes to play where she talks to me from another room and complains that I don’t listen to her.  Despite the TV playing or a podcast streaming on my computer, despite the turns in the long hallway or the as-often-as not closed door between us, it’s my fault I didn’t hear her say, “Would you grab hold of this before it shatters?”

The other fun thing she does is ask if I heard her phone go off when it’s either A) in the bedroom, B) on silent, or C) all of the above.  And I’ll answer honestly, no, I didn’t hear the phone vibrate over the sound of Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey arguing whether Puerto Rican is a racial slur on 30 Rock (the consensus seems to be that it is).  And yes, I turned the volume up on the TV because we don’t have a decent speaker system, so I didn’t hear her say she was taking her motorcycle out for a ride.

When we sit together reading or watching Chopped, Angie starts talking and I have to interrupt and ask her to repeat herself.  What? and Start from the beginning have replaced Sorry and I’m pretty sure I paid that bill as the most frequent words and phrases I utter in a week.

Each of these examples end with Angie shaking her head and asking me quite pointedly if I need to get my hearing checked.

The reason I didn’t help this little boy when he started to choke on that graham cracker is NOT because I didn’t hear him; it’s because he didn’t share.

It’s true I don’t usually hear what Angie says the first time she says it.  In my defense, though, the first time she says something I’m usually doing something that monopolizes my attention.  If I’m reading or watching a movie or making a mental list of why the sport of baseball is dying for a future blog post, and the wife says, “Look at the size of this spider!” you bet I’m going to stare off into space for a moment and then look up and say, “Huh?”

I’m not deaf, I’m just a shitty multi-tasker.  It takes that extra second for my brain to hit the brakes, do a three-point-turn, and change direction.  That’s why I don’t cook for myself.

This looks natural to me. Also, faster.

A few days ago in the car, Angie asked if I heard a buzzing noise coming from the stereo.  We thought there might be a problem with the auxiliary cable running from the iPod to the outlet in the console between the front seats.  See, my dog constantly steps on the AUX input jack in her attempt to climb up front with us (I’ve tried explaining the rules of “shotgun” to her, but she doesn’t get it; the concept, I think, isn’t socialist enough for her).  Anyway, I listened for the buzz but didn’t hear it.  More than that, the music coming out of the speakers seemed weak, like certain instruments weren’t being picked up.  I took this as evidence that the AUX jack was busted, maybe the whole outlet.  Angie took this as evidence of another problem.

I tried plugging the AUX cable in my ear canal but the only song that sounded better was “Alejandro”.

Last night, as I listened to some of my favorite rock songs of the ’90s, I noticed the sound was awfully quiet.  I have a pretty diverse appreciation for music and my library ranges from the Afghan Whigs to Warren Zevon; from Elton John and Radiohead to Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj; Simon & Garfunkle to Hall & Oates; Lou Reed and Iggy Pop to Common and Kanye West; from the Chi-Lites to Tony! Toni! Tone! to the Roots; the trumpet stylings of Chris Botti to the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid; the Godfather of Soul to the King of Pop to the artist-once-again-known-as-Prince.  You name it, I’ve heard it, and if I don’t have it, it’s because I hate it.

The point is I love music and I’ll tolerate pretty much any form of it short of a Toby Keith freedom rock anthem.  But when the music starts to sound bad–not Ke$ha bad, but like the DJ died on the turntable bad–when it sounds off, incomplete, like parts are missing, then something is very wrong.

It occurred to me that I was hearing Kurt Cobain scream “Rape Me!” but wasn’t hearing much of the guitar accompanying it.  This realization supported three possible conclusions.  Either 1) I was about to start the next phase of my life as a Son-of-Sam-style serial killer, 2) I was losing my hearing, or 3) my computer’s sound settings were off.  I prayed for the third option, but I’d settle for the first.

As I stood outside on that crisp Christmas morning, I first became aware that I could no longer hear the cries of the Salvation Army Santa as he bled to death at my feet.

When I was a kid my parents sent me to a speech pathologist because I had trouble vocalizing certain words and sounds.  I remember rolling sounds like R’s and L’s and W’s gave me trouble, so any time I had to say the word world, for example, I would substitute it with planet, because I knew they meant the same thing and planet was easier.   Also, I would replace word itself with letter-thing-that-means-stuff.  Somehow my parents and teachers saw through this ploy.

The speech therapist played word games with me, had me hum and sing songs, and most likely fondled my genitals because that’s what they do.  She told my parents the reason I wasn’t making good talky sounds was because I couldn’t hear what I sounded like.  As my brother put it at the time, “I couldn’t know that I didn’t know that I was retarded.”

I was often sick as a baby.  I had more ear infections in the ’80s than the Lakers had championships.  They put tubes in my ears when I was three–”they” being a cabal of short old men in brown cloaks.  All of this accounted for my hearing problems when I started school, like why I asked, “What?” after anything anyone said to me.  This in turn explained my speech problems, like how during the spelling bee, when I was asked to spell rural I said, “Bum-fuck-nowhere. R-U-R-A-L. Bum-fuck-nowhere.”

The idea of losing my hearing to any significant degree terrifies me.  First, I don’t want to learn sign language.  I never took Spanish in high school; I took Latin in college specifically because I wouldn’t have to ever use it later in life.  ASL looks hard–turning words and thoughts into hand gestures?  I already said I’m horrible at multi-tasking!

Why can’t you just hold up seven fingers for the number seven? Does being deaf mean one of your hands falls off, too?

The other reason I fear going deaf is my aforementioned love of music.  So, for as long as I can still hear them, I’m going to spend the summer re-listening to my favorite songs and albums.  And I’m going to share them here with you.

Why I Cry, for the foreseeable future, is changing focus (if it ever had one) to the soundtrack of my life.  The songs I love.  The songs that influenced me.  The songs that encapsulated momentous times in my life, like first loves, first losses, growing pains, independence, losing my virginity, and getting it back again years later.

Keep barking, bitch, I can barely hear you anymore.

So check in regularly to find out which Springsteen song reminds me of driving through the night in a stolen car.  (HINT: they all do!)

Oh, by the way, the sound settings were off on my computer the other night.  Somehow the output was set so only the left speakers were playing.  Blame the dog.

“I never knew her in life.  She exists for me through others, in evidence of the way her death drove them.” – James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia

I’ve been trying to post an update here for days and I can’t do it.  I have this grand plan to re-view and review the five Marvel Studios superhero movies that lead up to The Avengers which comes out on May 4th.  I want to be writing about how terrific Robert Downey, Jr. is in Iron Man, but I can’t do it.  Something huge is preventing me.

Usually this is where I segue into a rant about KFC’s Double-Down-Cuz-Who-Needs-a-Colon sandwich, but no, this time something serious is distracting me and the only way I can get beyond it to write about Captain America is to write through it.  It’s not easy for me, though, because, well, because sincerity isn’t easy for me, to the chagrin of my family and the confusion of my students.  So bear with me.

Yesterday, during a campaign stop in Burlington, Vermont, President Barack Obama gave a shout-out to my friends and coworkers.  It was, of course, for the most awful of reasons.

Melissa Jenkins was a science teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy in the town of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.  On Sunday night, March 25th, she went to help somebody, and twenty-four hours later, in a televised press conference, the State Police confirmed her death.

St. Johnsbury Academy has been my home and on-again/off-again employer for the nearly three years since my wife took a teaching position here.  In the spring of that first year, the Academy brought me in in an adjunct capacity for a couple classes: English and College Writing, or, what I referred to in my lesson plans as Bread and Butter.  Every other semester they hire me to teach a class of… something, from ESL to History to Public Speaking, and in between I work at the Field House and proctor SATs and sub for damn near every class and every teacher.

I say the Academy is my home, not the town, because we live on campus, in a dormitory with thirty-seven students.  The girls (or boys, depending on the year) we’re charged with shepherding into adulthood are the same children who have to check in with us at dinner.  The kids whose research papers I grade are the same kids I have to remind to turn their music down after ten.  We wake them up in the morning, and we tell them to go bed at night; we check on their classroom performance, and we make sure they don’t get in cars with strangers; we humor them when they feel overwhelmed by the melodrama of high school, and we reassure them when their problems are perhaps more legitimate.  We are their “dorm parents” and they are very much our kids.

Living on campus with two-hundred-sixty boarding students, three dozen of whom sleep mere feet from me and my wife, is one reason the Academy has such a familial air, but it’s not the only one.  Throw a stone at a group of Academy faculty (seriously, do it!) and your odds of hitting an alum are pretty good.  Throw a couple stones and your chances of hitting two staff members who are spouses, offspring, siblings or cousins are practically one-in-three.  It’s a strange and insular family that I married into, which in bad times, can feel nepotistic, borderline cultish.  But, as I’ve come to realize this past week, like any family, the Academy can be fiercely protective of its own.  And when one of its own is threatened, or worse, its members come together and bond tighter than the molecules at the heart of a neutron star.

This past Monday morning, we got an email that Melissa Jenkins was missing.  My wife was stopped on her way across campus by a couple of detectives asking for directions to the science department building.  At some point, and I don’t remember if this came from an official news source or the rumor mill, but at some point we heard that Melissa’s car had been found late Sunday night.  Her car was alone on an empty road.  It was still running.  And in the back seat was Melissa’s two-year-old son, alive and supposedly unharmed.

When I heard that detail, I did a strange thing.  I went on the Academy’s website and searched for Melissa’s picture in the faculty directory.  You see, coming here under my circumstances, working frequently but irregularly, it’s taken me a while to figure out who everyone is.  I know names and I know faces, but I can’t always match one to the other.  I had never been formally introduced to Melissa Jenkins but I was pretty sure, like ninety percent sure, I knew who it was they were talking about.  When I saw her picture on the website, I knew a) she was who I thought she was, and b) she was dead.

Even though we’d never shaken hands and exchanged names, I had seen her often in school, at dinner, in staff meetings, at dorm-staff meetings, at staff parties.  And every time I saw her, her son was there.  At her hip, bouncing on her lap, whatever, he was always there.  I couldn’t mentally separate them any more than she could, apparently, physically separate herself from him.

So when I heard that he was left alone in the still-running car, I knew that something unspeakable had happened and that no one who loved Melissa would ever see her alive again.  This was confirmed Monday night around dinner time.  At seven o’clock, the State Police held a press conference at St. Johnsbury Academy where at first they would only confirm that they’d found a body they believed to be hers.  All of the ugly details would trickle out over the next few days, but I remember that first night and that first press conference.  Monday night is our on-duty night for the wife and I, the night of the week when we check on the girls’ grades and cheer them up when they get rejected by their safety school.  The night we’re primarily responsible for their safety and well-being.

Monday night, Angie and I and some of the other proctors and a cluster of our kids watched the press conference.  I don’t think I said anything until the press conference was over and the cameras turned around so the news channels’ representatives could do their stand up reports.  Then I muttered, “That’s the Black Box,” and somebody, maybe Angie or maybe one of our girls, said, “Yeah, didn’t you know that’s where they were doing it?”

She didn’t understand what I meant.  Perhaps she couldn’t.  The Black Box theater in the Morse Center for the Arts is one of my favorite places at the Academy for the simple fact that it played home to the most fun class I’ve taught here.  Two weeks into the spring semester of my first year, I was asked to teach Public Speaking.  It happened very quickly back then and all I knew was that the curriculum had been created by the current headmaster and that I was replacing a very popular teacher who’d been very abruptly fired.  So, y’know, no pressure or anything.

My first day in front of the class, I told them a story about seeing my grandmother naked so they’d love me forever.  For the rest of the semester, Eimile, Olivia, Kelly, Chris, Kendall, Jordan, Josh, Travis, Taiese, Jennifer, Trevor and Caleb were my reason for getting up in the morning.  I mean, literally, yes, it was the first class of the day, but they made it worth it.  The Black Box was where we could be silly and stupid and honest and fearless.

And that room, of all rooms, was where the State Police chose to announce that one of the St. Johnsbury Academy family had been murdered.  So when I said, “That’s the Black Box,” I wasn’t being Captain Obvious, I was saying, “GET THE FUCK OUT of my Black Box!  You don’t belong there!  You don’t get to pervert that place!”

Maybe I should have said it just like that but it’s probably better I didn’t.  After all, I was still working; I was “dorm dad” that night.

Tuesday morning, the St. Johnsbury Academy Family gathered in the gym for what we called an assembly but treated like a funeral (the first of several).  Students packed the bleachers and faculty filled in chairs that had been set up on the court.  I was content to stand at the door, but the headmaster wanted everyone seated.  A lot of people didn’t come to school that morning and there were a lot of empty chairs.  I sat beside a crying stranger, another teacher whom I recognized, and whose name I would know if I heard it.  She grabbed my hand and squeezed.

No one sat to my left.  I was three rows deep and thirty chairs in and nobody sat in front of or to the left of me.  Rows of empty chairs on one side, crying woman clutching my hand on the other.  (What the hell was going on?  Why was I at a funeral at the work place?  That’s a thing that happened on TV shows that didn’t have the budget to build a new set.)  The headmaster and student body president each gave speeches.  All I remember about the headmaster’s speech is the word rage.  All I remember of the student president’s is the word unreality.

During the next few days, it seemed like every time an awful detail of her death came to light, an act of love emerged to outshine it.  Immediately after that initial press conference, a hundred students ran back to school to make posters and signs declaring their love and hope for Ms. Jenkins and her son.  As soon as the headmaster cancelled classes on Tuesday after the assembly, kids began decorating luminaries for a candlelight vigil that night.

Photo by Denise Scavitto

The luminaries lined both sides of the sidewalk for a hundred feet in either direction and up and down the steps of Fuller Hall.  So did members of Melissa’s family, her friends, and students past and present.  News vans and reporters camped out on our campus, but so did grief counselors.  We spent Thursday hating the two people charged with Melissa’s murder, but on Friday, the Academy hosted a memorial service for her that brought in more than two thousand attendees including the governor of Vermont, who left the Obama fundraiser early to attend the service on time.

A dozen local businesses are joining an effort started by schools all over Northern Vermont to raise funds for Melissa’s orphaned son, Ty.  As I write this, our dorm is waiting for pizza from a local joint that is donating all of its proceeds to Ty’s college fund.  It’s taking three hours to stand in line, place an order, and pick up the food.  Three damn hours for pizza in Vermont!

I didn’t know Melissa Jenkins very well until she died.  Now I know something extraordinary about her.  In my life, I have never known anyone for whom the word beloved is a more apt description, but from everything I’ve seen and heard this week, everything the Academy has shared this week, I know that Melissa was very much a beloved member of the family.

Next week, we’ll try to move on.  The students will resume classes and homework and tests and the melodrama of high school.  The teachers and dorm proctors will cultivate an atmosphere of scholarship and security.  I will watch Thor and blog about it.

When I first married into St. Johnsbury Academy I thought it was a little cult-like.  (I’m not judging, by the way; I think all of my extended families are cult-like.)  But during this absolute worst of times, I’ve seen the best in people.  I am nothing short of astonished by the amount of love and compassion and charity that St. Johnsbury Academy has shown its family members this week.  I am proud to consider myself one of them, and I’m not even going to make a joke about drinking the kool-aid.

Thanks, Denise!

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday.  Even after I turned too old for trick-or-treating (25) I’ve maintained my adoration for the spirit and the Spirit of Halloween.  The comforting tropes of pumpkin carving and haunted house decorating, as well as the acceptably outlandish costuming.  Even nature’s commitment to the theme colors, orange and black, my high school colors.  You can see it in everything from the glow of autumnal leaves lit by streetlights to the harsh cast of fire in the eyes of Jack O’ Lantern at night.  The crisp night air and the crackle of dead leaves.  The utter sureness that ghosts and goblins really are lurking in the shadows of your neighborhood.  I’ll take the atmosphere and ambiance of Halloween over Christmas any day (except, you know, Christmas Day).

I don't celebrate Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day. I treat EVERY day like Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day, arrrh!

But Halloween is over and as the days darken and cool, we turn our attention to the next extravagant holiday on the horizon: next Halloween.

It offers a lot of promise, considering how lackluster and unmemorable this past Halloween turned out for me (No offense, Denise; your pumpkins kick all kinds of ass!).  Sure, I got to carve a couple pumpkins to keep the wandering shade of Stingy Jack at bay, but no haunted houses for me this year, not even a haunted corn maze.  I didn’t even get dressed up–I mean in a costume; I did get dressed that day.  I had to put pants on because I was working around kids all day, and I don’t think I could explain my way out of that to Judge Delacroix a second time.

So I was hoping that next Halloween would be a lot more memorable.  I say I “was” hoping, because who the hell knows what kind of state I’ll be in a year from now.  See, last night, nearly a week after All Hallows’ Eve, as I was carrying the trash and rotting pumpkins to the dumpster, something very Halloween-like happened to me.

A black cat crossed my path.

Pictured: Not the black cat I saw.

All I could think as the cat skulked off into the shadows was this doesn’t bode well for my fantasy football team this week.

I’m not superstitious by nature, or nurture; I don’t believe in curses, hexes or omens, that is, unless cats are involved.  I’ve never been a cat guy.  I’m allergic to cats for one thing, and for another they scared me as a child.  That’s an embarrassing story for another day, but the fact is cats are mysterious, alien and unnatural creatures not to be trusted and history backs up this claim.  They’ve long been associated with bad portents and portrayed as witches’ familiars.  Even the ancient Egyptians believed cats had special ties to the gods and treated cats with a fearful kind of respect.  You’ve heard of the Sphinx, right?  The goddess Bast wasn’t part hamster.

So when that black cat darted in front of me, I figured there was an all-too real chance that the next seven years would kind of suck.  (There’s a joke to be made about the last seven years not being any better since that’s how long I’ve known my wife, but I’m going to let it go; you get the idea.)  And the misfortune began right away when I was going back into the house and dropped my keys.  I had to bend all the way over to pick them up, a ridiculous inconvenience in our modern smart phone world, am I right?  Then the dog started freaking out, barking and hiding in the other room when Angie and I tried to give her her heart worm medication.  She’s never responded that strongly or strangely to taking her medication, and I have to believe that damn black cat was responsible, arrrh!

The bad luck continued this morning when I forgot about Daylight Savings and got out of bed an hour earlier than I needed to.  Hell, that’s when I started this blog entry.

You owe me an hour of sleep, Bast!

I have so many ideas for the next seven Halloweens, but they’re all more-or-less dependent on me not being cursed.  Imagine the black cat effect on my Don Johnson costume; my white suit could be ruined, the fake gun could break, the spray-on tan could give me a skin disease, or the costume could be too believable leading drug dealers to blow up my car.  (Oh, reminder: check tire pressure, dashboard light went on.)

What about the not-altogether-ludicrous idea that I could have kids in the next seven years.  What happens when I take my son or my gawky, tomboyish daughter trick-or-treating and the curse of the black cat rears its pointy-eared head up?  Is my son, Julian, in his dapper little Dwight Schrute costume going to get sick from a candy binge?  Is my daughter, Lolita, in her psycho clown costume going to terrorize the other kids at the kindergarten party?  And that’s not even getting into the really horrific possibilities like kidnapping, razor blade taffy apples, and whatever splatterporn franchise takes up the reins from Saw.

No, I cannot live with seven more disappointing Halloweens and potentially traumatized, blood-soaked children.  I must be free of this curse of the black cat.  A google search on lifting curses was too vague and Wicca-specific to be helpful, so I’m just going to assume that if I kill that black cat I’ll be scot free.

If you see me wandering around with a knife or a rock in my hand, don’t freak out, I’m not a danger to you.  And if you see a black cat, help a brother out; text me or something so I can get on with enjoying my favorite holiday.  I won’t have children until I sacrifice a cat.  THAT’s how into Halloween I am!

Happy Halloween, my dear devoted readers, arrrh!

My wife celebrated a milestone birthday this week.

Hmm.

Celebrated is perhaps the wrong word, since there was little to no frivolity or joy in the occasion.  Thursday was Parent-Teacher Conference night.  Angela is not a parent–I don’t think–but she is a teacher, while I–by the strictest definitions–am neither.  So Angie spent her birthday working late while I played Batman: Arkham City and read Aquaman comics.  So, really, Happy Birthday to me!

I like this picture because we're both wearing black.

In my experience, it’s untoward, borderline dangerous to ask or tell a woman’s age, so I’ll make something up, skew younger, and say my darling wife, Angela, just turned fifteen.

¡Happy Quinceanera!

I meant to write up a wonderful, romantic tribute to my engagement.  In honor of her [15th] birthday, the least I could do would be to devote a blog post to her (really, that’s the least I can do), but I was stymied by a disheartening Midas commercial and then by the aforementioned Arkham City, which has made me functionally useless for the last few days (unlike the other factors that make me functionally useless, such as my lack of goals or ambition, manual illiteracy, preoccupation with minutiae, and Arkham Asylum).

I promise I’ll get around to this sometime soon… as soon as I capture all of the Riddler trophies left around the Arkham City map.  In the mean time, if you see my wife, tell her the bread expired days ago, and also Happy 15th Birthday.  I love you, Angie, and, assuming I’m not still playing this video game then, I’ll do something really extra special next year for your 31st birthday!

Oh shit.

In 2009 I wore out my welcome in Illinois for the second time and moved to northern Vermont to live with my wife and her people.  I brought all my worldly possessions, which included the clothes on my back, some more clothes in a duffle bag, also on my back, and thirty boxes of books.  (Thanks to the e-book revolution, the next time I move I can simplify my load to thirty boxes of Kindles, Nooks and iPads.)  I also brought some other baggage, not the kind you check at the airport or load in the back of your Honda, but the kind you carry from childhood trauma into adulthood.

You know what northern New England has a lot of?  If you guessed infrastructure and reliable cable/internet providers, hahah, I hate you.  The correct answer is ski lodges and resorts.  Lots o’ mountains in this region.  Plus it starts snowing in early November and doesn’t stop until, like, October.

One of them is already half buried! Why does this look appealing?

So when I moved to Vermont, the question I heard constantly from new acquaintances was do I ski.  And when I said no every time, they gave me a knowing, slightly condescending look that said, “Not a lot of places to ski in Chicago, huh?” which was true but had nothing to do with my answer.

Now I work for am affiliated with a school that has two different ski teams (Alpine and Nordic, whatever those mean) during its winter sports season.  The school offers weekly ski trips to its boarding students in the winter.  I see teenagers in cold-weather gear with skis and snowboards every Saturday foregoing homework and college applications and, you know, things that aren’t skiing to race down a mountainside in defiance of gravity and nature.

So every once in a while, one of those kids asks me why I don’t ski.  I tell them I’ve done it before and it ended about as badly as a ski trip could end without an avalanche.

The great and powerful state of Illinois is not known for its hilly terrain (or law-abiding governors).  But right in the Northwest corner of the state is a quaint little town called Galena.  Known as “Montana’s Metropolis”, Galena boasts wonderful antiquing opportunities, a tourism-based economy, and a rich history of ore mining, haunted houses, and corrupt government.  It also hosts the only thing remotely close to a mountain for two hundred miles in any direction, whereupon sits Chestnut Mountain Resort.  In the winter, Chestnut becomes the premiere ski/snowboard destination for people in or near Galena.  Their selection of hills and trails is impressive… if you’re from Illinois.

Courtesy of Chestnut Mountain--what the trails looked like before "the incident".

Chestnut Mountain is where my future as an Olympic skier was born, and, two hours later, died.  Chestnut Mountain is why I don’t take advantage of the fact that the area in which I now live is known for recreational skiing.  Chestnut Mountain is why I cry a little bit when kids ask me this story…

Courtesy of Chestnut Mountain--what the trails looked like after "the incident".

I went to Chestnut Mountain while in the third or fourth grade so I must have been fifteen or sixteen years old (Edit: eleven).  It was a weekend adventure to exotic Galena with my mother, father, brother Neil and probably some extended family I don’t remember, the reason for which should be clear by the end of this tale.

Look at the map on top, the one not discolored by broken dreams.  See the green dot in the upper left representing the Bunny Hill, well, I owned that dot.  I mastered the Bunny Hill.  I rocked that seventeen degree vertical decline for a solid hour to the point where younger kids, older first-timers, and even actual bunnies were looking to me for instruction.  I could already envision clever nicknames for myself, like the Wizard or the Chestnutcracker or the Bunny King (Shut up! You think of a clever skier nickname! I was eleven!) and thought maybe there was a chance they could make a movie about my skiing awesomeness starring John Cusack.

Make way for His Awesomeness, the Bunny King!

That’s when my brother got involved.  He was, and is, older than me, maybe seventeen or eighteen at the time (Edit: I don’t know).  He hadn’t seen my impressive mastery of the beginner slope because he’d been coursing his way down one of the trails marked in black on the map above.  I have no idea where my father was during any of this; I only know he showed up around the same time as the paramedics.  My mother left Neil and me under Dad’s watch, so she is not totally without blame here.

Neil suggested I test myself by bringing my game to one of the more challenging trails.  Look at the upper map again.  See the trail on the right hand side in black that goes all the way down, the trail named Warpath–F***ING WARPATH?!?!  That was the challenge Neil put to me, and he convinced me with the magic word: girls.  If girls would be impressed that I completed the Warpath Trail, then that’s exactly what I was going to do.  Or else he was calling me a girl for only skiing the Bunny Hill.  Either would make sense.  Both would make sense.

That’s how I found myself at the peak of a black diamond hill named after a slaughter of the most savage kind.  Neil said he would be right behind me.  He said girls would be waiting for me at the bottom.  He said I would never forget this moment.

And my parents?  They said nothing because who the hell knows where they were?

So I pushed off with the poles and began my descent of the Warpath.

Seen here.

I don’t know exactly when things went wrong.  My hardly reliable memory of what happened on the trail recalls falling immediately, unbalanced by gravity’s affect on the sheer decline, and toppling face first in the snow.

Seen here.

Witness reports, however, dispute this, claiming they heard “the Chestnutcracker scream for at least thirty seconds” before a deafening silence.  Neil, who was right behind me at the top and for the first part of the descent has also proven unreliable, admitting that he wasn’t watching me, or where he was going down the hill.  Looking at/for girls, I imagine.

Now, there are only two things I remember from high school physics, despite not taking it in high school.  One is that the Incredible Hulk could never happen in real life.  The other is that an object in motion tends to stay in motion until another object/force acts upon it.  Meaning I would have made it all the way down the trail if the ground hadn’t stopped me.  Also meaning my brother continued down the hill regardless of my state… well, briefly.

Whatever his motive for putting me on that hill, which I remind you was called the Warpath, Neil was sincere when he said he would be right behind me.  Too close behind me, it turns out, because when I stopped sliding down the snow, Neil kept on a-racing.

Right. Over. My. Face.

A typical snow ski curves slightly up at the front.  I don’t know the aerodynamic reason why and I don’t care.  All I know is this manufacturing decision saved my life.  Neil’s ski did not go through my head as inertia would suggest, but rather over my face, first striking the bridge of my nose and then riding over my forehead, packing my head deeper into the fresh snow with every pound-per-square-inch of pressure.

You know what the Warpath Trail still has a lot of to this day?  If you guessed my blood, hahah, I still hate you.  And you’re right.

They claim I would only answer when addressed as Bunny.

I don’t remember waking up until after I had been carried back to the lodge, but the paramedics who treated me claim I was semi-lucid and answering questions.

The story doesn’t end with my mother freaking out at my father for not keeping me safe, or my father responding, “Me? I thought you were watching him!”  It doesn’t end with Neil apologizing for nearly killing me or having some sort of cathartic realization about putting his own self interest and girls over the safety of his little brother, because so far as I know that never happened.  And it doesn’t end with Lindsey Vonn or any other girls waiting for me at the bottom of the hill, other than maybe some cousins whose names I’ve never been able to get right since that day.

I don't know what she's cheering about in this pic, but it's not me.

No, the story ends the following week when I returned to my elementary school in DeKalb, Illinois, a town severely bereft of any type of elevation.  A town as flat as my face when the EMTs dug it out of the snow.  My first day back from Chestnut Mountain, the nurse at Lincoln Elementary called me into her office.  She had seen the ruin that was my face, the fierce swelling and bruising around my eyes that looked like a domino mask.  She asked what happened.  I told her a skiing accident.

The nurse actually turned around in her chair to look out the window.  I told you, most of Illinois is absurdly flat.  Skiing is as common a recreational activity there as shark diving.  So it isn’t without merit that the nurse questioned the veracity of my statement.  Then she asked how things were going at home, and I told her things were mostly okay… except, you know, my dad had been working really late at UPS.  It was the holiday season and all; he came home late, he was always tired and grumpy.

That was all I had to say for the nurse to call the Department of Child and Family Services.

Though “the incident” was eventually explained and corroborated substantially enough to drop the charges, things with Dad didn’t get any better for a while.  Neil mostly stopped using me as chum to attract women, unless telling people I was his bastard son counts, and that was just dark.

I still get the question from time to time from people around Vermont.  Do you ski?  And every time they ask I try not to remember the pain.  I try not to remember this:

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

I have no interest in picking up the sport again.  I do not acknowledge the members of our Alpine and Nordic Skiing teams (seriously, what are those?).  I refuse to chaperone students on trips to the ski resorts they attend around Vermont and New Hampshire.  For the life of me, I cannot think of one single redeeming thing that would get me back on that mountain.

Oh.