Years ago, I posted something on this site about how crazy ski parents are. Having recently discovered what it was like to be the parent of a kid on a ski team myself, I dropped what was supposed to be a humorous rebuke of our collective insanity. I titled it something like, “Crazier than Hockey Parents,” if I recall correctly.
Whatever I called it, the next day I was talking to my wife when my phone started blowing up with notifications. My new website, it seemed, which usually only had a couple hits per day, received 341 in the last hour. What the hell? “Um, Liz…”
Discovered!
Apparently, a fellow ski team parent found the post and was pissed. Rather than reading it with the self-deprecating humor that was intended, they were offended. And instead of ignoring it as something they didn’t find very funny, they decided to send it out to every parent they knew. Those recipients then shared it with everyone they knew, etc., and whamo! I was caught in the snide. I was put on blast.
But the funny thing was, nobody really knew me. I was an outsider, as were my kids, because it was our first or second season with the race team. If you’ve ever had a kid on a mountain ski team, you’ll know that the vibe can feel pretty exclusive to noobs. A lot of ski-race families have been all-in since the moment their kid could ski, so it takes some wiggling into if you’re a late-comer. Perhaps this is why they didn’t find what I wrote all that funny.
What It Was All About
Most of what I was poking fun at was the outrageous money the sport cost and the commitment I observed all of us parents were making to our kids. 12-year-old kids were getting their skis professionally sharpened every week, while also having parents do some extra sharpening in between races. Some kids not only had race skis, but also a backup “beater” pair for practice. They even had a third pair known as “slip skis.” These were used to snowplow the course so they wouldn’t dull the edges of their race skis before the start. So that’s three sets of skis, per kid—SO MUCH money.
I refused to get the two extra pairs of skis to start, so I looked like a very unsupportive father relative to my peers. Eventually, I acquiesced and we bought a used pair of skis to act as slip skis. I also learned how to tune skis myself because dropping $100 per week on professional tuning was an extravagance I thought should be reserved for the likes of Bode Miller. Maybe.
The kicker for me, though, and mostly why I posted, was because after spending heaps of money for a ski program where I got to stand out in the cold for six hours to watch my kid take two runs, us parents were required to “volunteer” for six separate race events. This could be in the form of monitoring gates, breaking down the course, setting race nets up, running race cards to the starters, selling concessions, and a host of other activities I can no longer remember. You are basically paying a shit-ton of money for the opportunity to work. It’s complete lunacy. Awesome intentions from all involved, but absolutely nuts. And I said so. With humor. Or so I thought.
Seeing Through Another’s Lens
The race coaches caught wind of what I wrote and asked me what I was about. “I didn’t even know people were reading this,” I said. The reaction blew me away. I had only just started posting stuff and never expected anything like this. “I was just poking fun at us—myself included.” Some didn’t care. Some were bothered and told me where I went wrong, but relaxed once they got the chance.
After that, I still needed to explain myself to several of the parent leaders (for lack of a better term), and once they heard my intentions, everything seemed to cool down. It was clear I wasn’t going to be very popular with anyone, but people were no longer calling for my head on a spike. After I took my licks, some dads I didn’t know approached me and told me they thought the post was hilarious—they were like, “yep, that’s me.” That helped a lot. It was good to see some people not taking themselves so seriously—I just wished they were the louder voices so I didn’t become persona non grata on the ski hill.
Same Words, Different Meanings
I don’t know why I thought of this today, other than the fact that everyone seems to take themselves so seriously these days online. And maybe with good reason. There is a lot to be concerned about. A wise man once told me that people always look at things through the lens of “how does this affect me,” and it felt like the reaction to that post was a good example of that. People thought I was criticizing them specifically, when I didn’t even know they existed. I was just observing a couple of funny days at the ski hill, trying to understand what it was we were all after.
I suppose why I’m thinking on it is because there is a lot of what I’ve seen and read online that gets twisted around to mean something different to different people. Reading the comment section of a news story, I’m always amazed how some people have a completely different interpretation of events. I know some of these comments are bots, “rage-baiting,” but a lot of people really read the same thing and come away with totally different reactions or interpretations. This can be good and bad.
It Was Ugly, but I learned Something
But that post about ski parents, misconstrued as it was, taught me some valuable lessons about what I share online, and how people interpret certain language. It also helped make me a better writer and learn more about the tone I wanted to express on paper. Knowing that some things I write might not be enjoyed as much as I enjoyed writing them, was humbling, but the reaction was also encouraging. I learned that as long as I’m honest, whatever I write will likely connect with readers—just maybe not always in the way I intended.
I wish I had a copy of the post to share. After the blow-up, I took it down from the site and removed any sign of it from the internet. I didn’t want it to affect my kids’ experience, or my wife’s, as they had to deal with being associated with “that guy who made fun of all of us.” I sure did make life uncomfortable for a couple of weeks with that one. But I do wish I still had it to share, because it was damn funny. I thought so, anyway.