One of the benefits of going to law school in New England is the accessibility to ski resorts. As a result, the law school weekend ski trip is a common event organized by student governments in the area. My first trip was certainly memorable, or not-so-memorable based on how it actually unfolded.
On the Friday morning of the beginning of the trip, a significant portion of the law school converged out by the parked buses with the duffel bags and equipment in tow, ready for the several hour long ride up to Maine. Forgetting how field trips worked back in middle school days, I didn’t think to actively seek out a bus ride mate, and as a result I was left like the awkward middle schooler holding his tray of food with nowhere to sit in the cafeteria. I ended up sitting next to the trash bag instead of someone I didn’t know. Sidenote: For my great return to the ski trip during my third year I insisted on driving up in my own car with others as to avoid a repeat of the trash bag being my best friend.
One of the odd traditions that needs to be mentioned is the absurd stocking up a month’s worth of food before boarding the bus and the bus’s official stop at the New Hampshire border liquor store. Honestly, everyone buys enough (crappy) food to last the rest of the semester and enough alcohol to satiate every starving child on the planet without any regard that we are only there for two nights. I’m talking JUGS of alcohol. Call me crazy, but I like to eat out for dinner while on a ~vacation~, and a little bottle of alcohol is more than enough to carry me through the weekend.
Anyways, we always end up getting up to Maine after nightfall, and the debauchery
immediately begins. Now during the first year, I vaguely remember people attempting to swallow a mouthful of cinnamon or something else ridiculous as some challenge, and there being no regard for beer, wine and alcohol all being mixed in the community cup during a game of “Kings.”
The reason these memories are so vague leads us to the next chapter of this trip. The next morning it was time to embark on my rented snowboard! It had been two… maybe three years since I snowboarded, mind you. I was fairly confident in my skills to handle the green slopes at the very least, but between the icy conditions and my rustiness… TRAGEDY STRUCK. I was snowboarding down the mountain, jamming out to my meticulously mixed snowboarding playlist on my iPod when all of a sudden I start sliding on ice, fly forward, and fall face first into the snow with the snowboard hitting the back of my head. Yeah… I wasn’t wearing a helmet. From what I could remember, I laid there for a few minutes, just listening as the music continued to play. I eventually got up, and boarded down the rest of the mountain on my own.
Now the a majority of this story becomes a combination of my own blurry memory and what people told me happened: At the bottom of the mountain I find my friends Chris and Jenna and start asking things such as: “Where are we?” – The bottom of the mountain. “No… I mean WHERE” – Ummm… Sugarloaf. “Oh… what are we doing here?” – We’re on a ski trip… what happened to you? “I don’t know” – Do you think you fell? “Yes” – You have a concussion. “Oh… where are we?”
Eventually, they brought me to Jake who wasn’t skiing, and I was taken to the medical facilities. Whoever checked me out there decided that I didn’t need to go to a hospital (Umm… ok), and said that I could just wait until I got back to Boston, but that I would not be able to fall into a deep sleep that night and that I clearly couldn’t drink.
For the next few hours, I harassed those friends who weren’t skiing with questions such as:
“What year is it?” – 2006 – “Oh.”
“How long have I known you guys?” – About five months – “WOW, IT FEELS LIKE WE’VE BEEN FRIENDS FOREVER.”
“What did we do last night?” – Went to a party – “OH, YEAH, SARAH CAME IN WITH HER HAIR ALL WET AND PORTABLE IPOD SPEAKERS AND PLAYED SOME HOT MUSIC!”
“How much more school do we have left?” – Two and a half years – “NOOOOO, I FEEL LIKE I’VE BEEN IN LAW SCHOOL FOREVER!”
“YOU KNOW, THIS REMINDS ME OF THAT FINAL EPISODE OF FULL HOUSE WHERE MICHELLE LOSES HER MEMORY AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO HELP HER GET IT BACK… WITH LOVE!” – You said this about five times already.
“What year is it? – 2006.
And then they decided to write some things down on my hand and eventually a piece of paper, and if I had any questions to direct my attention to those two sources of information.
During dinner, my brain became a little less cloudy and I attended the Saturday night official party at the lodge in my own semi-drunken state without having a single drink. With that, I was known school-wide as the guy who got the concussion and lost his memory on the ski trip. Later that week, one of the deans approached me in the elevator to discuss it.
Musically, the interesting part of this trip is that the playlist I was listening to is essentially branded into my brain for life. Anytime one of those songs comes on, I remember snowboarding down the mountain to it in a hazy state. One of these songs includes Will Young’s “Switch It On.” It’s a very George Michael-esque fun jam with a cute Top Gun-themed video to go along with it. He is the original winner of the UK show that inspired American Idol, and besides this one song and a cover of “Love the One You’re With” I don’t know much about him…sorry!
