We were flying down the hill. Wind whipping our bright red faces, spraying snow left and right, laughing the whole way. Racing down to our destination: the terrain park. Once we got there the arguing began. He declared Iron Cross, I stated Helicopter. He argued 180, I broadcasted Spread Eagle. Finally we agreed on me, 360 with a grab and him, Iron Cross. At the moment I started, I was feeling reasonably marvelous about myself. I was geared up to do this. I could feel my heartbeat in my chest, beating hard and fast.
10 feet;
5 feet;
2 feet;
1 foot;
UP!
I started my spin and then just as it started so well, it was going so wrong. I had stopped spinning! I tried to fix myself in mid air and did a pretty good job but it wasn’t enough.
I landed straight, but my knees were bent too much so my head came flying forward like whiplash and my face exploded into my knee with my mouth wide open. I blacked out right after that.
When I woke up (a very short time after) I found myself at the bottom of the landing area. One ski about ten feet away to the left, the other still hitched on. Blood was pouring out of my mouth. At first I was wondering why I was bleeding so much and quickly found out that my tooth had broken off and was sitting in my lap. That’s when the screaming began. My cousin landed his trick with a thump almost hitting me, and we didn’t stop screaming at each other until we reached ski patrol.


He was saying things like
“John, get off the landing pad!!! Do you want to get killed???!!!” and I was screaming things like,
“Jack, shut up I freaking broke my tooth!!!! And “Jack I blame you for all of this!!!!!!”
Now, looking back on it, we were quite funny but I was scared out of my wits.

After we got ourselves together a bit and I got my skis and poles together, we rushed down to ski patrol to get my mouth checked out. There wasn’t much the nice lady and her young helper could do so I sat there for a hour icing while my cousin was trying to get a hold of his dad. Meanwhile my parents were over 190 miles away at home in Fairfield.
I made the first contact with them. At that point I was more scared about what they were going to think about my broken tooth, then I was about my actual broken tooth. Would they flip? Would they not let me ski for the rest of the season?? But it turned out to be the complete opposite of that. They were perfect. My dad rushed up and just about 5 hours later I was in the car on way home.
I ended up getting a fake tooth and coming back up 2 days later and skiing. I even tried the same trick again, but this time I nailed it!



I never knew, (because it seemed like such a little thing) how much that tooth accident would affect me in later life. As of today, I have had the tooth replaced over 4 times and probably a lot more to come. I have had to replace the tooth because I bit into something too hard. One time I was elbowed in the mouth during a basketball game and it fell into another kids hand. That was a gross sight. Also it came off when I got my braces because the brace was pulling much to hard on the bonding of the tooth. It was a very painful thing to go through and took multiple dentist and orthodontist appointments to fix. So after all of this drama, would I say it was all worth it, probably not, but did I have fun while doing it? Definitely.