Learning How to Snowboard

By Nico Mazzie

When I was four years old I used to ski a lot with my family; I enjoyed it but I knew snowboarding would be more enjoyable, I didn’t switch though; I didn’t have any reason too. Well, that's until I met Dylan; Dylan snowboarded a lot. I was so jealous because he was so good at it. One day, Dylan told me that I should try snowboarding; I was excited but also scared; I had never tried anything new before. 

I started taking lessons when I was around 5 years old. Dylan would always go with me even though he already knew how to snowboard. I would mess up, fall and want to quit, but he would motivate me to keep going. He was like a brother to me; he would never let me quit on anything I wanted to do. I kept practicing every day with him. I would fall, and he would pick me up. That happened again and again; I remember what he would say, “Practice makes perfect.” After many lessons I felt like I could call myself a “snowboarder.” 

There was one run that we used to go on called Lumberjack; it was our favorite. It would start with the most boring chairlift, then we would have to buckle our snowboard clips to our boots, then we would start going down, but then we would realize that we left everyone behind, so then we would wait, and wait, and wait. After a long time waiting, they would finally catch up, after that we would blast down the mountain in a race. At the end of the run, it splits up into two runs; Dylan and I would go to the left and the rest of our families would go to the right. It would take around 10 minutes to find our families.

Then, winter came to an end. I had to wait for 9 months to go snowboarding again. The 9 months were boring without snowboarding. I had some fun moments with my friends, but overall it wasn’t nearly as fun as snowboarding with Dylan during the winter. Finally, when winter came around, I was really happy and excited. I would get to go out in the snow and spend time with my best friend. The next year me and Dylan joined the snowboarding team, we really enjoyed it. 

But one day, something I could have never dreamed about happened. Dylan had gotten diagnosed with leukemia. At the time I didn’t think much of it because I had no clue what leukemia was. When winter came around I thought he would be out on the mountain with me but I couldn’t find him, so I asked my mom if she knew anything about it. 

My mom said, “Dylan won’t be able to snowboard this year with you.” I responded with, “Why, I was really excited to snowboard with him.” I was really sad because I couldn’t spend time with him. Every time I would go out on the mountain, I would remember him. Dylan fought leukemia for 3 years, but he healed from it. Although he wasn’t 100 percent healed, because if he got sick it could be really dangerous. 

Finally, when it was winter, I was excited to go with him for the first time in 3 years. Unfortunately, I heard he got diagnosed again, but 10 times worse. I stopped going snowboarding until Dylan came back. Now to this day, I still refuse to snowboard without Dylan. I have so much guilt inside me for all the times I took snowboarding with Dylan for granted. When winter comes along for years and years to come, I will always remember the fun times I had with Dylan snowboarding and messing around in the snow, having snowball fights, eating snow and many more.