But I learned early on, in my hometown isolated at the bottom of New Zealand, that I was not cool and never would be.

The first sign that there might be more to life than being the last picked to join the team, or that rugby is not God and cricket the Son, came in my 13th year, when I first began high school. This revelation came about as most do through trial and failure.

I actually thought I’d be good at basketball, simply because of my stature. I had no passion for it, but I figured as I was the tallest 13yr old in my year, it would somehow translate to being at least competent at the sport. Everyone wants to be good at something.

‘I’m in the clear’ I called, figuring that since basketball has no such thing as an ‘off-side’ I should stand at the opposite end of the court while the rest of the team defended our home basket at the other end.

Even though I suspected as much, it still stung when I was the only one of eleven boys not picked for either the A or B team. But I’m not uncoordinated; I’ve just never played team sports in an organized manner.

When you come from a small country school with 30 kids, you’re a bit limited when it comes to team sports and we had to resort to having girls on our team. It’s easy to believe you’re rather good when you can kick further, throw more accurately, run faster and score more goals than everyone else. But that’s what happens when the ages range from five to twelve, and you’re the oldest. It’s really quite unfair.

High school is no fairer. It’s acutely worse because not everyone is a winner; participation counts for nothing, and everyone a smart-ass.

‘Unco’ they called. Unco aka uncoordinated is one of the nicer remarks, although it’s not quite true. I can catch as good, run faster, but just can’t get my head around playing in a team. I had to show them I’m not completely useless, but how?

Cricket… every Kiwi has played backyard cricket, but these guys take no mercy. A cricket ball is so much more than a softball or baseball; it’s truly quite vicious – a rock hard sphere heading straight for your soft parts. It only takes one cricket ball to the nuts to put you out for the game, and it was no surprise when I didn’t make the first XI, although I did persevere and play every Wednesday afternoon for weekly sports.

I don’t care if I’m not the best; I just want to at least be ‘okay’ at something.

Rugby could have been an option, especially due to my size – tall and lanky - but due to prior sporting failures I was infamous.

‘You’re dead’ so many said when I hinted that I’d like to play for the upcoming winter season. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so intimidated if high school hadn’t been so violent so far. It’s amazing how your perspective changes once you’ve been in several scraps, especially on the receiving end. But that’s a story for another time.

Suffice to say I wanted to live.

It was during my first winter of high school that I discovered skiing.

Skiing was and will always be for the rich, but our school ran a day trip every Sunday to the The Remarkables for $30 – still that’s $30 more than my parents could spare, but what parent won’t go out their way to have the peace and quiet that can only be appreciated with an absent teenager.

The bus climbed to the top of the world - my life was about to change…

How can you describe what’s it’s like to stand at such a great height when all you’ve known are the flat plains of the drained swamp that is my hometown? How can someone from two planes of existence describe what it’s like discovering there is a third dimension? I could see the world beneath me; specks of life, glistening lakes, a patchwork of farms – and above everything, towering snow-capped peaks.

The nervous excitement as we crunched our way across such parched snow was heightened by the presence of so much beauty – the prettiest I’d ever seen.

I’m talking about the women. Dad always said they get prettier the further north you go, and it was true. No fuller figured women in tights here, and we’d only gone a couple of hundred kilometers at most. What must the women look like at the top of the country?

They say you never forget your first, and I think they’re right. My first was Alessia from Switzerland – blonde and beautiful, petite and coordinated, and it turns out surprisingly strong. She not only caught me as I hurtled towards her at what felt like breakneck speed, but softened my landing with her body. Maybe it’s not the best way to greet your first ski instructor, but I’ll never forget her, or she I.

My eyes had been opened. There was another world out there, something beyond grey sunless winters, beyond rugby, beyond team sports, beyond a city the Rolling Stones once described as ‘the asshole of the world.’ It was a world of sunshine in winter, of beauty, of exotic looking and sounding people from the far reaches of the earth, but most of all here was something I could get could at, or fail, all on my own, with no one else to blame.

How did I do that first day? Did I have any talent? It turns out I had none, but that doesn’t stop any 13yr old boy from slipping away from the beginner bowl and heading to the top of the mountain.

Who needs to be able to stop anyway– it’s overrated, and as for turning… that’s admitting defeat. I even mastered the ‘drop-stop’ where I’d hit the ground if I was heading towards an immovable object. The sense of speed and freedom was addictive.

No matter how long it took, how many falls, or how much money (actually, that would be a major problem, but I’d figure a way around it) I was going to get good at this.

By the time my senior year of high school came around, I had twelve days under my belt and could stop and turn generally when I wanted and thought myself pretty good. But ignorance serves a purpose – it keeps you happy. 

I wish I could tell you something exciting, rebellious even, and describe how I dropped out of high school and chased my dream of becoming a ski instructor; forgoing higher education and substituting it with pot, mushrooms and wild exotic women addicted to cock, but damn it, my parents did a great job of raising me and I did the sensible thing, the right thing and got an education. I became a nurse. The ski instructing would have to wait for now.

Why did I become a nurse? I could lie and say it was because I had a deep urge to help people, and while signing up for nursing school wasn’t for altruistic reasons, fate works in strange ways because I would discover that I really do enjoy helping others, and you don’t end up staying a nurse for 20 plus years if you don’t care. Besides it was virtually free, and I could stay at home, almost guaranteed work upon graduation, and the odds were great; there were 20 women per guy. I’m not sure what you call the opposite of a sausage fest, but whatever it is, it was that.

Thanks to my nursing school I’d become involved in skiing the only way I could afford it – free labor working for the local disabled skiing club and how I eventually met one-legged Brian and Dr. Love.

After three years of school and three winters with Brian and Dr Love, I was ready to begin the journey to earn my own jacket. Watch out Dr. Love.