Well hello and welcome to 2007. This will be my first blog post of the new year (hooray! bust out the party hats and confetti). In light of the fact that it is now winter, I haven't had as many opportunities to write about my zany adventures. In fact I haven't done much else but snowboard of late. In the last 17 days, I've been snowboarding 15 times. I missed one day because it was raining and skipped yesterday to help a friend buy boots (now she knows how much I care based on the fact that I skipped out on snowboarding to give her a hand). Getting back to the point however; I'd like to share a little story about events that happened last weekend.
I'm a part time snowboarding instructor and was up at the local hill giving private lessons on Sunday. At the end of the day, after a full day of teaching and a bit of riding for myself, I was hanging out in client services to chat with my friend Isabelle, who was managing the private lessons that day, and her sister Julie. While I was sitting there, a woman on the verge of tears walks over to the private lesson counter and says: “I have a problem, it's 3:45 and my son is taking snowboarding lessons which were supposed to end at 3:30 and he hasn't yet arrived at the designated meeting point.” After determining which group he was in, Isabelle got on the radio to figure out where the group was (they were still on the hill). “Sometimes the last run can take a little longer than expected so they're probably still on the hill” I said, I figured she'd be relieved to know that we knew where her child was. Instead she snaps and says “That's unacceptable! He's supposed to be back at 3:30 and you should display better time management skills.” OK, so now not only is it MY fault, but I'm being told by someone who's clearly never gone snowboarding, much less taken a group of 15 children, beginner snowboarders at that, for a run that I should display better time management!? She went on with this for a few minutes and I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something like “when YOU take a group of 15 kids on snowboards for a run, THEN you can come back to me and talk about time management!”
The thing that struck me the most in all of this is that this lady seemed completely unconcerned about the actual whereabouts of her child and completely concerned with the fact that he was 15 minutes late; like she was late for an appointment or something... time management skills indeed. As it turns out, she had already notified ski patrol that her son was “lost” before coming to ask the ski school. So the ski patrol was already scouring the mountain looking for him (despite the fact that we knew where he was). What's worse is that the ski patrol supervisor got involved and so now the ski school is in shi*t with the ski patrol for not notifying them first. To which of course we responded “that's because he's not lost, he's still with his group.” That didn't seem to matter.
Finally the group made it to the meeting point and as it turns out, they got stuck on the hill because one of the kids got hurt on the last run and, as per protocol, you have to keep the group together when you're dealing with kids so they had to wait around until ski patrol picked up the injured child. Now I wonder how this lady would have felt if it had been her kid that had gotten hurt on the last run and the group decided to ditch him on the hill for time management purposes.
With this fire now somewhat under control (now we have to smooth things over with ski patrol), Isabelle made her way back to client services to fill myself and Julie in on what was going on. Apparently this lady complains every week; nothing is EVER acceptable with her it seems. I feel bad for the child; especially when you consider that the other 14 parents seemed completely unconcerned about the fact that the group was 15 minutes late as long as they were safe and accounted for. Here's hoping that some of that might rub off on our crazy lady.
Here's what I learned (or reinforced) as a result of this incident:
-
Crazy people make for bad parents.
-
Don't preach about time management unless you exemplify it.
-
Life doesn't go like clockwork; if you plan around clockwork,
expect to be disappointed.
-
Governments should consider requiring a license to have kids;
this would certainly benefit the gene pool.
Anyway, I'm off snowboarding again in a few hours. Hopefully my
further adventures will be a little bit more amusing and a little
less crazy/shocking. Happy riding and until next time...
Keep Shreddin' the GNAR!
J.
Add/View Comments (3)
