Wedge!

Some people would consider me a loner. I started walking around the fair alone when I was nine. I went to my first movie alone when I was ten. Six flags when I was 13. Hell, I even did four days in Disney World alone when I was 18. It's not that I don't enjoy the company of others, I just don't put my life on hold while I wait for others to decide to do something. I wasn't always like this though...

It was 1990. I was eight years old and my school was hosting a ski trip. At the last minute something came up and my mother couldn't go. I asked my grandmother to take her place because I didn't want to go alone. I'd never been before and you never know when you'll need a relative to donate an organ or blood...or something. Back then I wasn't the independent fellow that I am now. No, back then I suffered from what my grandmother called, "sticking up under your mother too much."

Typically independence is taught to children over a lifetime of confidence building experiences. Ever the high achiever, my grandmother aimed to do it in a day. I'd like to say that we had a TGIF moment in the kitchen that day. She knelt down in front of me and. with her hands placed in a reassuring manner on my shoulders, she looked me in the eye and gave me a speech on how I was stronger than I knew while the 80s sitcom music played in the background. I'd like to say that I got a speech like that and emerged from my corner ready to battle all that life could throw at me. But we're not the Tanners, and my house was far from anything you'd see on a Friday night lineup on ABC.

With a Parliament cigarette in her hand she looked at me and said, "I don't know why you so damned fool! You can't keep sticking up under your mother all the damned time. She can't breathe without you asking where she going and when she coming back. You keep waiting around for people to do something and you gonna miss out on everything. The best way to be is by your self. People aint worth a damned and the sooner you figure that out and stop waiting for people to do stuff the better your life is gonna be. You going on that trip and NO, I ain't going with you!"

A few days later I was at Ski Liberty taking ski lessons with a bunch of other kids whose parents didn't love them. Bored out of my mind I asked the woman when we were gonna stop learning to "wedge" and actually learn to ski. She told me that we had about another hour to go and that's when my grandmother's words replayed in my head: "Don't wait for people." It's great how easily a kid can misconstrue what a parent says. I waited for her to turn her back, then pretended that I forgot how to wedge. "Wedge, Ordale! Wedge!" I knew she wouldn't leave 10 other kids to save me. I read something like that in church about a shepherd with 99 sheep and one kid on skis pretending he doesn't hear the instructor.

Suffice to say, I spent the rest of the day skiing on my own without a chaperone, ski instructor or friend. It was the best time I'd ever had in my life up to that point and it began a trend that persists to this day.