Ice Cream Sundaes, Mini-Golf, and Ski Lessons

My niece and nephew have grown since this gem, but my duty as their uncle remains the same.

Step 1: Imagine an ice cream sundae. Actually, just in case you’re a jaded grown-up, imagine you’re a kid imagining an ice cream sundae on a hot summer day. No kid worth their weight in, umm, kid matter would need an explanation of the difference between a dish of ice cream and an ice cream sundae. If you need this spelled out for you, find the nearest kid under the age of 6 and interview them – I am confident they’ll be clear and exacting in their description, especially on a hot summer day.

Step 2: Imagine that you’ve gotten some little kid you know excited for an ice cream sundae on a hot summer day. Then, rather than taking them to the Palace of Gigantic Technicolor Fantasmagoric Ice Cream Awesomeness they’ve imagined, you take them to a temple of gastronomy for a little dish of hyper-clever, immaculately presented, technically masterful, Michelin-starred, deconstructed ice-cream concept molecular gastronomy. Words fail me in attempting to articulate their likely reaction, but I can see their confused and disappointed tear-filled faces in my minds’ eye. It breaks my heart and makes me want to seek them out, buy them an ice cream, and trade bad uncle jokes while strolling along the nearest boardwalk in order to rescue their childhood.

I feel the same way about mini-golf. And skiing. For adults as well as kids.

Now that you’ve dusted off your child-like imagination, try this: imagine yet another hot summer evening where, after a suitably summery smorgasbord of splendifolous ice cream sundaes, you and your friends of all ages decide to walk on over to the mini-golf course for some down-home healthy fun. You pay for the rounds from the high-schooler in the hut, find the right sized beat up old putter with the least sticky grip, identify the strangest fluoro pink golf ball with orange flames on it just because, and proceed to the famous first hole with the windmill. Please work with me here, I have a point to make about teaching snow sports.

Finally, as you and your friends, young and old, are giggling on your way to the famous first hole with the windmill, a very good-looking stranger with a bright toothy grin and wearing impressive golf clothing stops you and directs you to the practice hole that has no windmill, and then tells you that first you need to learn proper mechanics in order to have more success on the mini-golf course. Rest assured, he or she tells you, they are an outstanding golfer and a certified pro, and they are uniquely capable of teaching you the latest, greatest techniques for guaranteeing your success on that particular mini-golf course. You may have to buy an expensive new putter but that comes later. Suddenly, the windmill seems very far away on the horizon.

The disappointment of being on the practice hole at a mini-golf course would be the same as with the kid in the fancy schmancy restaurant. We imagine total awesomeness and have whiplash as we’re yanked into something that is somehow rational, well-conceived and ultimately effective but is totally decoupled from why we’re there in the first place.

Sliding around on snow is not merely fun. It’s healthy for body mind and spirit in ways big and small, and it’s super duper fun. It’s so much fun that adults and kids spend lots of money, travel very far, wear other people’s clothes, and occasionally sacrifice otherwise promising careers to do it all the time. Somehow, however, our snow sports schools and instructor organizations are still inexplicably fighting the reflex to codify, regulate, and otherwise sap the fun out of beginner experiences in the name of technical proficiency. When I see these ‘perfectly executed beginner progressions’, it fills me with the same reflex of wanting to save the guests – in winter that may still include bad uncle jokes but the ice cream may be replaced with hot chocolate and lots of sliding around on terrain that doesn’t scare the snot out of them. The Italian and Swiss ski schools have some really inventive ‘snow gardens’ for kids and, notably, Smugglers Notch Resort in Vermont has done an excellent job making their kids’ beginner area oodles of fun. Still, capturing the imagination of adults and kids and making sure that their learning experiences align with their expectations of awesomeness is a mission for all of us. Truthfully, this also is equally true for experts and beginners alike.

Ultimately, unlike mini-golf, the greatest advantage we have in our sports is that the mere act of sliding on snow is fun in and of itself – this is true whether the backdrop is Maroon Bells in Aspen, the Green Mountains of Vermont, frozen Lake Superior, wherever, no windmill needed. The real risk is that the instructor with the big grin, the fancy gear, and big words will just screw that up for the guests. I have yet to see a beginner area with a windmill or an ice cream stand serving ginormous sundaes, but maybe that’s something to consider.

In the interim, when the heat wave in California is done cooking people, the forest fires in the Rockies are done burning everything up, and it stops raining in New England, I’ll look forward to doing my duty as an uncle and buying my niece and nephew an  ice cream sundae and enjoying it together in the sunshine. After all, it’s my job. Hey kiddo, chocolate sauce or caramel? Ooh, let’s have both!