It wasn't as if I wanted to do it; in fact I did protest. And got into trouble for it from my supervisor AND HIS AND HERS. And none of them particularly liked or trusted me from the get-go. Mostly, it was that he (I will call him "Harry") didn't want to do it himself. So he had no choice but to put me (at least on paper) in charge. I did notice early on that when Harry sent emails to parents, he signed them with his name. When I sent out emails, I signed both of our names. I also noticed that although the plan was to keep me "in the loop"? Old Harry only managed to do that about half of the time. The other times I just found out about things like cancellations and important matters like that the usual way---in the hallway or bathroom--or from a parent text with a question I couldn't answer because HARRY had sent the information without cc'ing me.
So when the first night of the ski program, a 12 year old girl got "clothes lined" (sent spread eagle, rope across her chest, arms outstretched like she was hanging FROM a clothes line) off the slopes and into the woods, it was actually good that someone (me) with some experience was actually there to deal with it...after having her put "in the basket" and checked out by Ski Patrol, written the accident report and followed up with her (not impressed) mother, I felt kind of as if my physical presence== although 12 Friday nights ping phew! going to the wind-- might be warranted.
A few weeks later, a boy broke an ankle snowboarding into or not into something (since there was nothing there) and I had the lovely job of hauling him in the back of my Subaru to the ER in a blinding snowstorm after an hour of Ski Patrol communications and decision-making phone calls, texts to Harry who was snug as a bug at home. The ride to the ER is normally 30 minutes and it took at least an hour. Not to mention the kid's parents didn't bother to show up for 1/2 hour although he shouted at them in Vietnamese quite a bit more than once to "get there." That night I got home at 10:45 and heard Harry's laughter in my sleep, "Better you than me, sucker. Better you than me.!"
The next time we went up, a third kid was snowboarding just before we were to pack them all on the busses, CRACK! Broken wrist.Three major issues in 9 nights. Even I could do that math: one third of all the times we went up? Something went down. At one point I thought, if the KIDS can't even survive this ski program, how the hell can I?
So our superintendent, whose name is not but I will call Marta, decided that we need to go back to our good old plan and get the little kids skiing again. Teach them young so when they are 'tweens and teens they might be more careful. And this was something I agreed to. Now, when she said this, none of us knew she was right about to retire. And her successor is none other than Harry.
Snow conditions in New England are iffy, at best, and are not improving as global warming seethes in our midst. These past two winters--ones during which yours truly spent EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT up on that mountain, were horrendous featuring 44 days in succession where the temperature did not go above freezing. This isn't that unusual in Vermont if you spend your whole life here. Every 20 years or so we get rain on Christmas or snow in June. So you never know. But what I do know is that if I am going to be "in charge" of this out of control ski program and survive it, there are going to be some changes. I want to make the decisions. At least then? if it all goes clothes lined? I will have nobody else to blame.
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