Making a Mii of Your Childhood Ski School Teacher

Reporting by Grimes and Punishment

December 2006. I’ll never forget that winter. How my parents strapped and squished me into my little Pepto-Bismol-pink snowsuit and marched me to the icy glass doors of ski school. Stony, like an obelisk. Unyielding, also like an obelisk. How, sobbing out of my nose, I was taken away by the staff, and my parents skipped off, ready to enjoy eight consecutive hours free from poopy pants. How the ski school staff lashed my stubby skis to my stiff, ski-boot-bound feet and pushed me onto the harsh, rickety chairlift, just to anticlimactically pizza-ski down the bunny hill. I was directed to a class of kids, but also a teacher. You. Hello, you.

You, who guided me past the snowboarders who hocked a loogie on us. You, who came back for me after I fell down a double black-diamond slope and screamed until I threw up. You, who plied me with paper cups of hot chocolate and wiped away my snot with rough paper towels. You, who made them soft. You, who taught me that the years change.

“It’s 2007 now,” you said, on January 1, 2007. I didn’t know that that’s how time worked. Then my elementary school came back from winter break, and I never saw you again.

Now I am old (aka nine). I got a Wii for my birthday. It’s fun, and oddly powerful, the feeling of creating Miis. Listening to their goofy little song. Picking them up by their heads and watching them struggle, squirm, like a butterfly caught in a net. Who should I make next? And you cross my mind, as you often do. You, who gave me so much. So I will return the favor. I will honor you in the only way that I know how. And now you’ll always be with me. You’ll always be Mii.