I was a children’s ski coach. For the group lessons, each child would be assigned a team, indicated by a colored vest, for their age and ability.

While I was teaching a group of reds (three- and four-year-old beginners), a woman approached me.

Woman: “My kids are in a lesson. Where are they so I can watch them?”

Me: “What color are they?”

Woman: “Excuse me?!”

It turned out that her kids were in a private lesson and were not part of our colorful classification. (This also meant that it was hard to guess where they would be!) I tried to be more careful about using coach shorthand with the public after that.

When I was eight, my family moved from a large city to one of its suburbs. It really wasn’t that far away, but we lost contact with our former neighbors. My family had been particularly close to one of our next-door neighbors. They were the first adults I ever called by their first names — I don’t know why, but they were always [Neighbor #1] and [Neighbor #2] instead of Mr. and Mrs. [Neighbors’ Last Name] — and they had four kids who were around the same age as my siblings and me.

A few years later, when I was a teenager, I was up skiing at what was then a medium-sized ski resort. I was skiing on my own, so when I rode the chair lift, I had to find another single to share the chair. I was always the friendly get-to-know-you sort, no matter how brief the acquaintance was going to be, so I asked the boy riding with me where he was from.

Boy: “I’m from [City].”

Me: “Oh, I used to live there! On [Street].”

Boy: “I used to live on [Street], too!”

The streets in that city pretty much keep the same names from the farthest north suburb to the farthest south suburb, so there seemed little chance that we had been neighbors, but still, you never know.

Me: “I lived at [number] South [Street].”

Boy: “That was my family’s number, and we lived on South [Street]!”

Me: *Puzzled* “What’s your name?”

Boy: “[Boy] [Neighbors’ Last Name].”

Amazed, I told him who I was and reminded him that we used to live next door to each other. (I realized that the address I’d remembered was off by a number.)

We skied down together and met up with my dad. This led to our families getting back in touch. We have stayed in touch since, and it’s been about fifty years.

My parents and the neighbors’ dad are gone, and their mom has dementia, but my sister and I still keep in touch with some of the kids.

In elementary school, we had a field trip to the local ski resort near the end of the school year to do a quick nature hike and see the local flora, fauna, and rock types we’d spent all year learning about. We’d hike up about half a mile under the ski lift and then ride the lift down to a bagged school lunch. The school and the resort had worked together to schedule it so that two employees could help out with the lift controls on the same day as one of their off-season inspections.

Our teacher was only a few years from retirement and stayed at the starting line with the bus driver, so the only adult actually at the top of the slope was one resort employee who didn’t know any of us and rode up rather than hike it with us. My friend and I took extra time at the top, looking at interesting rocks and plants around the upper control shack, until we saw the lift attendant on a lift bench going down. We hurried over and got on several seats behind her.

Unfortunately, she didn’t see us, and nobody did any head counts when handing out lunches. My friend and I watched our classmates eat and the two resort employees were given what we later figured were our lunches, assumed to be extras. We were at least fifty feet above the ground below us and far enough away that we couldn’t hear them, and they couldn’t hear us shouting. We didn’t panic as we laughed and joked between shouts, sure that nothing bad could happen to us children and someone would look up any minute.

We were hoarse and finally realizing that this was a serious situation as we watched our classmates get herded in the direction of the bus. We would have started crying, but we were already dehydrated before the lift stopped; we weren’t allowed to bring water to the hike because there wouldn’t be bathrooms. Thankfully, the wind was pretty light and there were no clouds, so we weren’t getting too cold, but we were getting sunburned.

Several minutes later, our teacher and bus driver came hustling around the building and looked around, still not looking up. We waved as much as we could without shaking the lift too much. We were saved! Well, we would be in a couple more minutes after the bus driver tracked down one of the employees to help look and that adult finally looked up.

We got down, and the adults were apologizing to each other frantically and occasionally asking if we were okay. We said we were hungry, thirsty, and tired. We were taken to a water spigot for landscaping nearby to get a few sips before getting ushered onto the bus so everyone wasn’t late getting back.

On the bus, there were some watermelon slices for the trip back, enough for everyone to have one with some left over. We got the bags with all the leftovers after the other thirty kids got their slices. (A couple of our classmates did kindly give up their slices so we could have more.) I could only choke down one slice because watermelon tastes like wet dust to me, but at least it helped my friend.

I don’t remember much from the rest of the day due to the exhaustion. The bus must have gotten back in time for the school day to end, and I went to my usual after-school care where I probably napped. I assumed my parents were called by the school at some point and the situation was explained, and if they weren’t mad about it, I wouldn’t kick up a fuss since I was safe in the end. They were livid with the adults in the situation when they first heard this story twenty years after the fact.

It’s not even the worst field trip negligence story I earned in that school district. It was also not the only time my parents were belatedly angry on my behalf about things I thought they knew about that happened at that school.

I am guiding some tourists around the base of our ski resort, and one of them points to a utility shed by where I am standing. Our slopes are known to have lots of moguls, which are naturally occurring bumps and mini slopes.

Tourist: “Is that where they store the moguls in the summer?”

Still not as bad as the tourist that thought we made the snow ourselves.

I was thirty-two when I first started learning how to snowboard. I bought my own helmet. Being an adult student at that time, I bought the cheapest I could get, so it was white and pink with cute drawings on the side.

People often think I am younger than I am due to my Asian genes and height. My suit was also oversized because it was my mother-in-law’s. My husband said he felt like he was taking a niece to her snowboard lesson. He was not the only one thinking that.

Me: “Hi. My class is going up this hill now. Can I use my points ticket?”

Lift Operator: “No. You need to buy the day pass.”

Me: “Oh. I would like to have the two-day pass, then.”

Lift Operator: “Okay, but…” *Stares intently at me*

Me: “But?”

Lift Operator: “I need to ask. Are you a child or an adult?”

I did contemplate for a short while whether I should have said that I was a child. However, I thought it wouldn’t bring good Karma. In the end, I did get the adult ticket, and I didn’t break any bones while learning to snowboard.