Detailed Study of My Crash

A dozen of my fraternity brothers and I drove 29 hours to the northwest corner of Montana to ski for Spring Break. My car was named "Starscream." We watched the entire first season of Greek driving across South Dakota. It's like the land that Cain was banished to - nothing grows there.

I'm terrible with peer pressure. I'm peer pressure resistant up to about twenty feet - if anything is lower than than, I'll probably jump off it. I want to run you through my thought process on what happened today on the slopes of Whitefish.

I'm in the blue. It looks simple, doesn't it?

Taking off. Gymnasts call my arm position "The Iron Cross." Skiiers don't have a name for it.

I'm enlarging the size here for better perception. Still holding the Iron Cross, which is extremely difficult for gymnasts. I'm also crossing my skis to try to communicate the message of Xtreme.

This is where it started to go wrong, if you define good days by avoiding injury. I think truth is relevant. I say this is where it started to go right. I define my days by the number of ninja kicks I pull off.

If I'm thinking at all, I'm thinking, how can I land on my feet. That's just conjecture. In all probability, I'm not thinking. In fact, I've probably erased this moment from my memory. Years from now my therapist will be searching for the basic event that triggered my schizophrenia, and even under hypnosis I won't be able to tell, because I've thrown this memory away.

Right here I've given up on trying to land correctly. I know I have no chance of keeping my skis on. I'm just trying to avoid my face.

Failure. Here's a quick summary of the next two seconds.

It went on like this for twenty feet. No one laughed until I raised a hand up and said, "I'm okay." Then they laughed at me. It was like third grade all over again, except with snow instead of the rocks underneath the playground jungle gym and fraternity brothers instead of Lewis Chase. I can't believe Stephanie Broderick picked him over me after the second grade graduation ceremony.

It finally ended like this.

That's brotherhood.