Just say "No" — your body will thank you

Believe what your sixth grade D.A.R.E. instructor told you: don't give in to peer pressure. I'm not talking about illegal drugs, because if major league baseball has shown us anything, it's that giving in to that kind of pressure could win you an MVP honor. No, the peer pressure that got me last month was of an even more devious sort.

It was the start of Intersession, and I was at Loon Mountain, N.H., for a well-deserved vacation. The plan was to get in a few days of skiing and hot-tubbing, make the acquaintance of some local ski bunnies, and then head further North to meet up with some other friends in Montreal for legal boozing and funny accents.

The first day went well despite wind chills approaching zero. The frigid air kept the slopes clear and we had a great full day of skiing, all the while keeping our eyes peeled for those elusive bunnies.

I started out on the easier trails, but by the end of the day I had worked off the rust accumulated from a two-year absence from skiing and had made it down every trail on the mountain. Unfortunately, the bunny count still stood at zero at nightfall, since I was concentrating on not dying while I attempted to keep up with my far more experienced friends.

As the next day dawned, the aforementioned peer pressure began in earnest. Having decided to only hit the slopes for only half a day, my friends had all morning to work on me.

"Come on, Tyler, it'll be a good time."

"Don't worry man, it's safe. I've done it myself at least three times."

"It's a huge thrill, dude, and there's enough of that white stuff to make it awesome."

"The bunnies will love you."

And I was sold.

But what was it that I gave into? Only that most vile of winter sports: snowboarding.

The rebellious foster-brother of skiing, snowboarding was apparently invented by people who forgot that we have two independently moving legs. Casting a shadowy allure over those who have never tried it, snowboarding has a mystique like that of a painted lady offering a good time yet delivering nothing but an awkward visit to the doctor.

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Somehow, though, the prospect of finally finding some bunnies convinced me to give it a whirl, and the rest is history.

I went down my first run with no lesson, no safety lecture and definitely no idea how to stop, but my experience from wakeboarding gave me the balance to stay up long enough to build up enough speed to break most residential speed limits. This resulted in the same number of falls as anyone else snowboarding for the first time, but with each impact magnified far beyond the norm.

What made this even more fun was the fact that I was on the smallest slope on the mountain, surrounded by those kids who seem to sprout up at every mountain — monsters less than three feet tall and yet still capable of reaching supersonic speeds and leaping adolescent oak trees. So basically, I sucked and had a host of kids half my size cutting circles around me.

Therein lay the insult. It was just a matter of time before the other shoe dropped and I was hit with the injury.

Sure enough, toward the bottom of my second run, I had accelerated to a new top speed and decided a good idea would be to figure out this "stopping" thing. Turning first into the mountain on my toe-side, I immediately was seized by a force I vaguely remember from PHY 103 as p = m*v and threw all of my weight backwards onto my waiting wrist.

Ouch.

The best part about falling is that you get to lay down, and there's really no pressure to get up right away. I did this for a while, trying to decide which part of my body hurt the most before coming to the conclusion that my right wrist definitely won the contest.

Thinking it was merely sprained, but still wishing to get the hell away from any ice-covered elevated surfaces, I left my friends feigning concern and took the walk of shame down the rest of the slope to find the First Aid station, or at least a sympathetic bunny. Unfortunately, my trip to First Aid was marked by a doctor in ski boots who gave me the great news that my wrist was "probably" broken.

After paying an ungodly sum for a temporary splint and some aspirin, my only hope was to salvage the day by hanging with the Captain Morgan mascot who had been wandering around the lodge, but even that didn't pan out.

Arriving back at the house that night, I was not only bunny-less, but I also had my first introduction to my incapacity in performing any tasks involving the use of my right hand, including but not limited to writing, eating, shoe-tying and, my favorite of all, being in a hot tub.

Thus ended my fun. X-rays in hand, I bagged the Montreal trip, headed home on a train through the worst blizzard to hit New England in decades and wound up with a cast on my arm that won't come off until midterms.

So what did I learn? First, I will force all of my children to become ambidextrous at an early age because doing a 300-level math problem set with your left hand just isn't pretty.

More importantly, while peer pressure about designer steroids may be helpful, anytime you find yourself in subfreezing temperatures, traveling at excessive speeds with no independent leg movement, just say "No."