The Ski Journal • Volume 15, Issue 2 • PLEASE THINK ME COOL

Leslie Hittmeier, Ben Hoiness and Tom Flynn hitch a ride back to the car after a long ski tour in Alaska’s Talkeetna Mountains chasing morning powder and afternoon corn. Photo: Emily Sullivan

Your eldest brother’s homecoming dance is not typically a major event for a 10-year-old, but what can I say? It was 1995 and it was my time to shine. Or so I wished. My brother Sean, his buddies and their dates were posing for photos in my childhood home. Blazers and khakis, sparkly dresses, boutonnieres and corsages, center part butt cuts—man, did I think they looked cool. And I desperately wanted them to think I was too. But my attempt to prove said coolness was, well, decidedly anything but.

I went upstairs to my bedroom, grabbed my peewee hockey photo, a picture in which I am bowl-cut and bucktoothed, standing in skates in front of a crushed velvet background, wearing my father’s bar league flag football jersey. It was, in my opinion, the coolest photo ever. So I hid it in the waistband of my stonewashed jeans, smuggled it downstairs, and, when no one was looking, placed it on a table near Sean and his crew. I tried my hardest to get them to notice it. But no one did. No one acknowledged my coolness. Alas, I stayed a dweeb.

I wish that was the last time I ever did something outrageously dumb and embarrassing to get some “atta-boy” attention, but it most definitely was not. I want people to think I am the man far too often. It also tends to happen every time I walk into a ski shop.

Just a step in the door, I give a glance or five to the ski shop crew—folks I’ve unwittingly dubbed the bouncers of the Cool Kids Club. Maybe it’s because they smell like P-Tex. Or maybe it’s because they rock the hell out of that aging TGR T-shirt. Whatever it is, they’re intimidatingly, well, cool. I saunter at a gate that edges between aloofness and affability, wanting them to know I hold confident ski assertiveness, but not to know I am eyeballing them eyeballing me. I look for my in—a break in our gear chitchat when I can mention something obscure about a boot or a binding or a ski that only someone who skis 100-plus days a year would know. “Is the AFD on this binder early rise off camber double rockered gnar pupped or nah?” I’ll also make sure to mention how the skiing was today. And if it was great skiing, I make sure not to be overly excited because showing enthusiasm for the mountain passion you’ve built your entire life around is totally uncool—or so I am told.

“Um, excuse me, ski shop rat. I want you to know that I’m not like those other customers. I really know my stuff. You and me, see, we are the same. I have a goggle tan, too. I’m cool just like you.” Jesus, I’m an idiot.

Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “No way, man! I don’t care what any bro or brah thinks of me.” I cry foul. The mountain is overfilled with hey-look-at-me’s. How many times do we adjust the tilt of our shades, the sag in our beanie? How often do we cater to the goggle-helmet alignment? Heaven forbid we have a gap between them, ever. The runway for all this tomfoolery is somewhere between the bulky ski shop register and the stacks of skis along the carpeted back wall. It’s a dizzying balancing act, to say the least.

The ski shop crew knows it well—heck they may have invented the game. But behind every cool cat shop rat is the same ski nerd that fell in love with the sport in the first place. Sure, he might have one more regrettable “Schuss Life” tattoo than you, but the fact remains: He’s here to geek out on sliding downhill like the rest of us. So, remember, next time you catch the vibes on your way into Smitty’s Ski Chalet, take a breath and tip your toque to the shop shamans. You’re all here to ski, and that’s pretty darn cool after all.

The Ski Journal - Volume 15, Issue 2

PLEASE THINK ME COOL

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