A Post About How Being In Love Can Sometimes Break Your Face

Sounds like a country love song, doesn't it? 

Being in love can break your heart

Can make you run, make you lose the race

And sometimes love can even break your face

Waaa Waaa Waaa Wooooooo

K and I had a bit of a whirlwind romance.  We met on a pseudo-blind date, the kind where your best friend wants to set you up, but you're not in the mood so you make her come along so you can have an easy get-away.  Having been on some real blind-date duds, I felt much better having a backup plan.  Turns out I didn't need it.

K and I hit it off instantly... within like 1 half of a milli-second.  There are even reports that we were sucking face within an hour, but those haven't been substantiated.  Within 2 days, I had introduced him to my entire family.  It happened to be around Christmas time and he wasn't intimidated in the least when I said, "Hey, wanna go meet my entire family and extended family and play the D Flat in the Family Christmas Chiming Choir?"  When he said, with enthusiasm, YES, I knew right then that I wanted to marry him.  Being a fighter pilot didn't really impress me, but striking that D Flat along side my 7 year old cousins had me all sorts of impressed.

A week or so into our whirlwind romance and it got even more exciting.  K had only been in Salt Lake a couple of months and was dying to go skiing.  He saw that my parents lived within ten minutes of about 4 ski resorts and assumed that I must be a world class skier.  That was the last time he ever made assumptions about me, by the way.  I so badly wanted to impress him and make him love me, that I didn't exactly tell him that I didn't ski.  And I totally left out the minor detail that I had never skied before in my life.  It wasn't a lie, just an omittance of the truth.  And that totally is not lying, just like having an addiction to Diet Coke isn't the same as having an addiction to coffee.  I learned that in church.

The morning of the ski trip, K took me to get fitted for some rental skis.  He also had two fellow fighter pilot friends in town that were coming with us, so, I had three people to look stupid in front of to impress.  On our way out, I remember my mom yelling "Don't let her fall on her teeth!  Those suckers cost us eight thousand dollars!"  K was seeing only a glimpse at the craziness that is my mother.  And he still wanted to date me! 

We got to the slopes and I imparted to K that I needed a bit of a refresher.... like, how to go, stop, and turn.  I said this after I had fallen off of the ski lift and was flopping around on the ground like a drunken seal.  He was so sweet to me, picked me up, and said "We'll start on the bunny hill, OK?"  I enthusiastically agreed.  And we held hands and maybe kissed for a while.  He looked SO HOT in his skis.

He helped me to the top of the hill and gave me a "refresher" on turning, stopping, etc.  I distinctly remember feeling a sense of foreboding as I looked down the snowy hill, but my urge to grab his butt and stick my tongue in his mouth was slightly stronger, causing somewhat of a dulling sensation in my frontal lobe.  This psycho-somatic-love-numbness was about to come in very handy.

I started down the slope.  I was actually keeping my balance and picking up a substantial amount of speed.  For a brief moment I thought, "Wow, this is cake."  But that was a very brief moment because suddenly I realized that I was about to enter the gates of hell.  And that was not going to go very well.  I think my exact thought at that moment I saw my first turn was "Oh, Crap."  (I don't swear in my head, just out loud.)  And "Oh Crap" was exactly right because instead of negotiating the turn, my body, sensing that it was about to be be destroyed, went into some sort of instinctive tuck and roll.  The unfortunate thing is that it is very hard to do an effective tuck and roll when you are wearing skis.  They kind of get in the way.  Instead, I was careening head over heel down the hill, littering bits of my ski gear every few yards all the while trying not to make a spectacle out of myself.  I was trying to fall gracefully but I'm sure it ended up looking about as graceful as a dozen monkeys trying to hump a doorknob.  And truth be told, I was more worried about what K would think of me than whether or not I lived.   

When I finally came to a halt, I was sprawled directly underneath the ski lift.  Not quite the inconspicuous location I was hoping for.  While I was waiting for the twinkly stars to disappear, I heard voices coming from the heavens.  "Dude!  You're BLEEDING from your HEAD!"  And indeed, the snow was turning red.  Right then, K was at my side.  He'd seen the whole thing and was very concerned that all of my teeth were still connected.  Much to my embarrassment, he too noticed the large amount of blood leaking from my head and became very concerned that I was mortally wounded.  I, on the other hand, felt just fine.  I even thought that I could probably get back up on the skis and continue down the slope.  I just needed someone to wipe all that annoying blood out of my eyes. 

Then came the sound of the toboggan-mobile.  Someone from the ski lift had obviously sent word that a poor girl was bleeding from the head.  Determined to be tough, I pleaded with them not to strap me into the toboggan like a wounded retard.  I stood up and jumped around to show the paramedic that I was fine, although he didn't appreciate my blood flinging all over him.  I'm just guessing about that.  I eventually talked him into letting me ride behind him on his snowmobile.  K was left to pick up all of my gear that was splattered all over the mountain, ski to the bottom, then make his way to the emergency clinic.

I was mortified.  No head wound could ever hurt as bad as the sting of embarrassment, especially in front of the hottest guy you'd ever seen.  He'll never want to kiss my deformed face again!

It took only minutes for the paramedic to drop me off at the clinic.  And I swear it was only a few minutes more before K flung the clinic doors asunder and came rushing to my side.  The nurse who was swabbing my forehead looked to K and said, "She'll need stitches.  Oh yeah, definitely some stitches."  I just sat there trying to look really cool, you know, all blood spattered and stuff.

K ended up driving me to another clinic to get my stitches.  The stitches went two layers deep and were over my left eye.  I remember really having no concern about scarring and K didn't seem put out in the least that he bought a lift ticket only to ski down half a hill.  And if I remember correctly we went back up to the slopes and ate chili while waiting for the other guys to finish skiing.  And normally I would never eat chili on a date, but I figured hey, he's already seen me break my face and still seems to like me.

I did have one minor concern and that was what my mother's reaction to all this was going to be.  I was imagining something along the lines of "This is why I never took you skiing!" or "Your Face!  Your Face!  What did you do to my daughter's face?!"  So in preparation, we gave her a call before K dropped me off.  I started the call with this infamous line:  "Mom, there's been an incident."  Her reply, "Your teeth??"  Me, "No, just my face."  Her, "Tell K that if he breaks it, he buys it."  She was always trying to get rid of me like that.

So ended the first week of our courtship.  My little breaking of the face incident did nothing to dampen our love.  Maybe it's what cemented it.  And if there ever was a country song written about us, I'm sure it would go something like this:

Don't break her face

Her achy breaky face

Even though the skull is really hard

And even though she's maimed

She's hotter than computer games

Even though she skies like a tard

             

   

Comments

[Lins]

Nice songwriting skills. You should turn pro. better than skiing anyway. And nice info on kissing Keith. Thanks for sharing!!!

[Lins]

Oh, and England not being renowned for its skiing, I happened to have a date with a guy on dry slopes.... yeah, as soon as I put my boot on my foot cramped. I took it out, massaged it away, put the boot back on and back came the cramp. That was the sum total of the hour of dry slope skiing!

[Mom]

HEY, "TARD"! IT'S NOT ABOUT THE CAFFEINE!!!!!!!!

[Mom]

IT'S LIKE ABOUT OBEDIENCE AND STUFF!

[Barbara]

I like the new banner! I can vouch that you will keep your promise. We are all happy that if wasn't your heart that was broken!