Intense pain shot through my leg as I hit my right knee on the icy surface of the slope. I knew I should have stopped before I got too tired to maneuver the tough turns but I was channeling Chloe Kim.
It was Christmas day which also happens to be my husband, Eric’s birthday and we were at the Mont-Tremblant ski resort, a short bus ride from Montreal, Canada, to celebrate. My husband is a good snowboarder. But me? I have no business trying to do anything but stay on the green runs in icy conditions.
As a beginning intermediate snowboarder at best, trying to channel Chloe Kim the 17-year-old Olympian who’d won gold the winter before in Seoul, as a middle-aged subpar snowboarder was not a good idea. She was the fun yet fierce Asian American female athlete that I wish my teenage self would have seen back in the 1980s and early 90s. Yes, there was Kristi Yamaguchi who won gold in 1992, but ice skating wasn’t my thing. In my early 30s, I got into snowboarding because I liked the whole vibe and I’d skateboarded a little as a kid. It was difficult to learn as an adult but I managed to get good enough to ride the easier runs.
After I fell, I was able to slowly snowboard the short distance to the bottom and hobble my way to the ski rental shop where my husband and I agreed to meet at the end of our runs. I sat down on one of the wooden benches, waited and watched as my knee continued to swell to the size of a cantaloupe as skiers and snowboarders looking down at me with what I interpreted as pity. “Yes, I’m a shitty snowboarder!” I wanted to scream to them but instead just sat there feeling sorry for myself.
When Eric showed up he immediately went to find someone who radioed for the paramedics to take me to the on-site medical clinic. They placed me on a gurney and into the back of an ambulance, a small van that looked more like a dinky delivery truck. Luckily, the clinic was a short drive from the rental shop.
We drove past the bar where we had dinner and beers the night before and the condo complex where we were renting an Airbnb. When we arrived, two doctors surveyed my knee. One of them had the aura of a ski instructor on his lunch break. Tanned skin with a slight paleness around the eyes where ski googles may have been. I was charmed by him at first but then he stuck a needle in my knee to drain some of the blood that had pooled there.
He didn’t think it was broken and so let me go. I was relieved and a little wiser knowing that channeling a teenager while in your 40s was stupid but proved to me that you’re never too old to feel like a kid again.
INSTANT NOODLES 