Sam Venable  

Special Contributor

If God had meant for humans to traverse snow on skis, He would have given us boards instead of feet. Bigger buns, too, so we would bounce like tennis balls after crashing to the ground.

Also lots of broken bones. If skiing were part of the master plan, we’d come into this world with fractured fibulas, shattered skulls, and ankles mangled like rusty bed springs. What’s the use being born with a perfectly good skeleton when you’re going to trash it later on some stupid slope?

Ski people, however, refuse to accept the obvious. They put on their designer bib overalls and come swooshing down the mountain like they had good sense.

You’ll start seeing ski people any day now. They’re easy to spot. They wear colorful sweaters. They have ski racks on their cars. They drink wine and eat cheese—which is convenient, as many of them have no front teeth. Nonetheless, this is the time of year skiers are happy. Winter is here, and that means snow. 

Not real snow, of course—at least here in the South. That’s another aberration of the natural order skiers have wrought upon us. They don’t rely on clouds to bring snow. They push a button and a giant ice cream machine does the work.

Against my better judgment, I once attempted to learn to ski. I spent four weeks one afternoon under the guidance of a veteran instructor. We finally shook hands and agreed it would be safer for all concerned if I concentrated my efforts on tending the fire at the lodge.

If you could simply walk onto a slope and ski –like going to a gym with friends and shooting basketballs – perhaps this sport would make more sense. But nobody ever said skiing was simple. Or sensible. 

First, you have to suit up. This takes between six and eight hours, depending on your ability to use buttons, zippers, and straps while in bondage. Imagine the Michelin man in a suit of armor trying to scratch the back of his neck. The ski people have a name for this routine. They call it “layering.” You put on one layer of thin material to absorb sweat. Then a layer of heavier insulation. Then another. And another until you have gone through long-johns, sweaters, goose down, bibs, gloves, and wool hat.

Now that I think about it, the term “layering” is quite appropriate. You are stacked like a layer cake, and the guy who sold you all that junk is laying away big bucks for retirement.

But that ain’t the worst of it. Before you get to the skis, you must put on boots. Big, thick, heavy boots. Boots with all the comfort and flexibility of a seasoned oak log. 

Don’t worry if you have no boots. Most ski resorts have plenty of pairs for rent. You give them a fistful of dollars and they direct you to the woodpile to find two logs roughly the size of your feet. Then – clunk, clunk – you’re ready for action, assuming you aren’t white-eyed from heat stroke or crippled by a permanent foot disorder.

Skiing itself is impossible. It is a figment of the imagination fostered by resort moguls who strive to give the impression that balancing on a pair of barrel staves while going 50 miles per hour down a 65-degree slope is child’s play. This is an incredible lie, and I keep hoping some crusading newspaper will expose it. 

The fact of the matter is this: People do not ski. Not real people, anyway. Those things you see at ski resorts, or on TV during the winter Olympics, are high-tech robots. Real people, the ones who fall and scream and break legs, are hidden in remote valleys well away from the main event. 

How can robots be so lifelike? I don’t know exactly. Machinery has forever been a puzzle to me.

But I do know this: After you have mounded up truckloads of dirt and built a fake mountain and then covered it with 15 feet of fake snow, anything is possible.

Sam Venable is an author, stand-up comedian, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. He may be reached at mahv@outlook.com.