Skiing hazards

When I was eight I went skiing for the first time. We were living in Colorado and my dad loaded us oldest three kids up and took us skiing for the day. This was back in 1993 so I wore a sweet purple and hot pink one piece ski suit. We were put in ski school until about two o'clock before being let loose to ski on our own. Jess and I kept to the bunny hill and practiced our pizza wedge positions, but we really had no fear of falling or going too fast. All day my dad had been stopping to spray us with snow and around 3:45 or so that day, I came through some trees into a slow area. So I in my admiring eight-year-old head decided to stop fast like my dad to spray snow. It didn't work and I fell. Like I mentioned before, I didn't care about falling, but what I did care about was not being able to get up and that's exactly what happened. I couldn't move. I looked through the sparse tree line to see my dad skiing slowly down the hill with Cami tucked between his legs and thought, people have always told me I'm loud, I bet I can yell loud enough for my dad to see me. And by yelling as loud as I could I learned very quickly that snow absorbs sound. Not only did my worried yells not reach my dad, they didn't even make it to the trees. I looked up and realized I was directly below the ski lift. The problem was, I had just gone up for the last run of the day. The lift was no longer running. I don't remember if I started crying or if I said a sweet innocent prayer, but next thing I knew, a mother and her son happened upon me. The son went to find ski patrol while the mom waited with me until someone could help. My leg was in an awkward position but I knew my dad could make it better when I saw him. Ski patrol came up on a snowmobile to take me down the hill where my dad worriedly waited. I slept the entire way home in the car. When we got back my leg still hurt really bad. We decided to take me to the hospital where x-rays showed I had broken both my tibia and fibula, and a full leg cast was put on. (The cast was later changed to a half cast that I could walk on.)

Why is this story even relavant? Because today is the 16 year anniversary of that cast being removed for good.