When you need time, it hastily ticks away. When you want it to pass, it digs its heels in. The latter was my reality as a child in skis perched on a slope in Utah. I traversed the pine-laden Yellow Bear Trail with ease, leaving my parents and younger brother to eat my dust. The side trail spit me out onto a main slope, and I waited for my family to catch up. The joy of victory was slowly overtaken by nervousness each minute they failed to appear.
“Are you lost?”
“Do you need help?”
Well-meaning adults stopped their descent to offer a hand.
“I’m OK. Thank you!”
Social anxiety and stranger danger collided in my adolescent mind to make me adverse to generosity. But too much time had passed.
“If we get separated, meet at ski school,” my parents repeated endlessly. The building was situated at the bottom of the slope, and there was nowhere to go but down, so I fixed my skis forward and kept it moving.
The squatty brick ski school building was getting closer, and as I neared it I began to imagine what would come next. Little me, surrounded by adults with questions. “What’s your name?” “Where are your parents?” “Are you LOST?” This image scared me more than my reality. So I forfeited the plan and skied right past that ski school.
Plan B: Make it to the lodge. I took a rope tow, and a ski lift, and let myself into our hotel. Luckily, my grandmother had stayed behind in her room. Our reunion was a huge relief, but hardly the end of my stressors. I had defied my parent’s directions, and they had no clue where to find me. All there was to do was wait. I watched Disney movies, drank hot cocoa, and attempted to ignore the ball of guilt growing in my stomach.
Eventually, my parents made it back. The relief they felt in discovering I was alive blunted the trouble I was in. They filled me in. While I was waiting at the end of the trail, they had stopped in search of me. “We thought you’d lodged yourself into a snowbank.” The powder was particularly deep that day and could easily consume a child. “We even spoke to Ski Patrol. They were out looking for you.” Ski Patrol assured them that this wasn’t uncommon. “Kids get separated, but they show up.” “Not Hattie,” they insisted, “she wasn’t at our meeting spot, that’s not like her.” My anxiety-induced decision had sent my parents and mountain employees on a frantic wild goose chase.
We went to dinner at the lodge and put the incident behind us. After a filling meal, the waitress walked up and handed over a piece of paper. One glance and both of my parents went white in the face. It was an itemized bill for the missing persons search.
Ski patrol………………………….$500.00
Search and Rescue Dogs….$150.00
Snow Mobiles…………………..$345.00
The list went on, totaling almost $2,000. “I… can help,” I offered, knowing the money in my piggy bank wouldn’t make a dent. My mouth was dry and my conscience was heavy. I apologized excessively. I felt ill. I’d learned my lesson three times over.
The tense silence was broken when my parents burst into laughter. In between wheezes they managed to tell me it was all a gag.
My dad typed up a bill, had the hotel front desk print it out, and got the waitress in on the scheme. It was a master class in psychological warfare and a childhood lesson not soon forgotten.
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