The Ski Hill

Every springtime I tell my freshmen a story about testosterone poisoning. It’s a true tale, told in first person. It happened to me. 

It was springtime in Sweden, year 1995, and the countryside was alive with color and long, resplendent days. My New Yorker friend, Linda, and I had been traveling together throughout the semester, having taken trips to Stockholm, Gøteborg, an overnight cruise to Helsinki, and later, all the way up to Kiruna in the Arctic Circle. We were low-maintenance traveling buddies and being young and broke, we delighted in the everyday wonders of travel.

On this particular day, we were cycling. My 21st birthday was coming up and Linda surprised me with a picnic and a bottle of wine (I leave this part out when I tell my students.) We pedaled to the Lake Ekoln and had a delightful time eating cheese and bread and drinking the wine from a tree gently overhanging the water.

Linda and I were strictly friends. She was a serious person then and I’m guessing she still is. Our relationship remained collegial all semester, but the thought had definitely crossed both of our minds that there may be romantic potential. Whatever the case, on the ride home, I started to sense the pings of testosterone poisoning coming on. 

The town of Uppsala has a small ski hill. It is truly a short hill. It is, though, steep enough to warrant a chair lift. So, steep enough. And even more, there is a ramp at the top of the hill that a person (a skier, perhaps,) could summit so as to gain potential energy and achieve greater speed...the perfect trigger for a testosterone poisoning episode. 

As if fate had intervened, our route home took us along a ridge that passed right across the ski hill! The one with the ramp!

I should stop a moment and add some important detail: detail about the bike I was riding. My roommate from the Czech Republic had loaned me his bike for the day, though I can’t say why I wasn’t riding my own bike. This was a World War II issue steel bike with an dull, army green paint job, very heavy, single speed, and with no hand brakes. 

We arrived at the top of the hill. “Watch this.” 

Linda looked skeptical and concerned. She was short, with a bob haircut and a runner’s physique. She also was, as mentioned above, really responsible and smart. “..... are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

“I literally do this all the time back home,” I said, somewhat accurately, although back home, I would be on a mountain bike and I’d be wearing some protective gear such as a helmet, and a …t-shirt. 

I heaved the big bike onto my shoulder and headed up to the top of the ramp. Once up there, everything looked… very small. I had a moment, just an instant, where I thought about canceling the plan. 

Too late.

I was off. Down that hill. I could not believe how quickly I was moving. I tried the brakes. The wheel locked up but that mattered not; I was completely at the mercy of gravity. Also, the thing about ski hills that you can’t tell when they’re covered with snow, but in the summer is plain as day, is that they are often very rutted out. It did not take long until I found one of those ruts. I would estimate I made it 20% of the way down the hill, and that does not imply whatsoever that I had an iota of control while covering that ground. I hit the rut and everything just went. I tumbled down the hill, three times, with that army issue bike landing on me for the big crescendo. 

I finally came to rest on the side of the hill. I gazed, astonished, up the hill towards Linda, who returned the look with an incredulous, amused and slightly slack jawed expression. I took inventory. Sunglasses: gone; brain; somehow not crushed; arms and legs: pain in ankle; vital organs: seemingly not punctured. 

“I’m ok,” I declared, though I was probably asking. 

Suffice it to say, Linda was so incredibly impressed by my chivalrous demonstration. After the requisite questions like, “are you sure?” and “what were you thinking?”, she looked at her watch and declared that she needed to get to class. 

“Yeah, yeah. Of course! I'm ok, all good.” Mostly a true statement. The bike, on the other hand, was not all good. The front wheel got torqued hard and had a big bend. That bike was not rolling anywhere. So, I limped home, dragging along the bike that wouldn’t roll. It was still a couple miles away. I had a journey ahead of me. 

I made it after a good long time, returning to our house, parched and swollen. My roommate was alarmed at my appearance, limping hard as I was, a bit scraped up and just generally disheveled. Graciously, he wasn’t the least bit upset about his bike. He handed me a glass of water and listened with incredulity as I recounted the events of the afternoon. His face could not mask his astonishment at the sheer audacity and stupidity of my decision to run that hill. He said nothing, and did not laugh, however. I appreciated his grace.

As a now seasoned educator, I think I have the vocabulary to explain what happened. I would call it failed transference. Standing atop that hill, I had ample context for what I was about to attempt. I had ridden down big hills many times without incident. What I failed to account for in that circumstance, though, were the variables that this new situation presented. My prior knowledge did not adequately transfer to this new context.

I did not have the proper safety equipment; more accurately, I had NO safety equipment. My vehicle, while undeniably a bicycle, was more like a Model T than the Jeep that one might want to attempt a descent on uneven terrain such as the Uppsala ski hill. And I most definitely did not take any time whatsoever to assess the many ruts down the slope so that I might try to avoid them. It would be the classroom equivalent of trying to lead a debate team on the merits of a loose dress code because you once wore a hat to class and it did wonders for protecting your head from the glare of the lights. 

The other and more salient moral of this sad tale, and one that I reflect upon regularly, is that poor decision making is a hallmark of the adolescent, as biologically normal as puberty itself. I was nearly 21 when I experienced this acute testosterone toxicity event. Had I been 24, would have I made the same decision? No. Had I been 16, would I have made the same decision? Absolutely, and I would have probably thrown in an attempt to ramp something. I have taught for 25 years. I have taught 9th grade for 25 years. When I remark with wonder at how some can teach middle school for their whole career, I should really be musing at my own staggering accomplishment; 9th grade is closer to 7th grade than 12th grade than far more than days lived.

When I tell this story in class I do so with a visual aide drawn in real time (see Figure 1.) I have decided that this visual aide will become a permanent fixture on the wall in room C116 so that I might maintain that perspective the next time (perhaps tomorrow morning) that a 9th grade boy embarks on some tomfoolery that makes me see red. Kids these days are different in certain ways over which they have little control. Testosterone poisoning can be as deadly as technology addiction. I can only wonder what the next bit of chicanery will be and when and where it will surface, but when it does, I’ll glance over at Figure 1 before I react.