The Lake Placid Olympics is the very first one I can ever remember in Thibodaux, Louisiana. It was 1980, I was eight years old. That’s the year the collegiate US hockey team defied all odds and won the gold medal against professionals the Russians sent to the games, not that I realized the significance then. That fall I was busy doing duck-and-cover drills in fourth grade just in case the Soviets nuked us.

It was also the first time I remember seeing someone ski on snow. I didn’t understand it then, but the guys in skin-tight suits carried rifles, and during the race they stopped to shoot targets — the announcers didn’t seem surprised, so I assumed it wasn’t really the James Bond movie plot I imagined.

I remember thinking, “what in the WORLD are these guys doing, flailing around with really long poles, looking like some version of human scissors?” They seemed to be struggling pretty hard compared to the downhill skiers or the ski jumpers literally flying down the mountain, so obviously they weren’t as good at it. Maybe that’s why they carried rifles? I didn’t know.

Eight years later, and the Olympics were in Calgary. By then on TV I’d probably seen someone in the act of skiing three times, but I’d never actually seen real snow. Or even a mountain. I’m not even sure I understood the word “Nordic” referred to European countries, and I definitely didn’t know it was a style of skiing. That tidbit didn’t lodge into my cerebellum until the commercials started for those funny looking home-skiing machines with the ropes and long wooden slats — man those things looked complicated!

Although that year it did snow where we lived in Baton Rouge, twenty more passed before I was even in the vicinity of an actual mountain — and also the Internet became a thing — so eventually I got educated. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I decided cross-country skiing was something I would like to do, but I carried the goal forward, and proceeded to do nothing meaningful with it. Until this month when the boy gave us lessons.

And we fell. A. Lot.

Until recently I was not really the kind of person who followed through with decisions, especially old foolish ones. But thank goodness we grow and change: I don’t care if I break my goddamn leg, I’ll stand up there on top of the hill and ski down until I get it right.