Let me tell you about one winter in Massachusetts decades ago, when I first tried to ski. Mt. Watatic was a little, and I mean little, ski area in northern Massachusetts. I and a couple of college friends signed up to take our first lessons.

Watatic advertised cheap ski lessons, and when we went into the shack to rent boots, skis and bindings, we saw why. The instructor, perhaps in her mid-teens and glammed up in her sharp skiing outfit, showed us the skis we were to use that first day.

“What are these?” I asked.

“Your skis,” she said.

Imagine taking a pair of full-length skis, cut down to about the height of a toddler, and then reshape the tips so they look like skis found in a toy store.

Here, my memory is being tested a little, but those short skis, fitted to a binding with my size 13 boot, were called the Graduated Length Method (GLM) of skiing.

My college friends and I looked ridiculous as we waddled behind our instructor, out to our first lesson on the bunny slope.

During the afternoon I kept falling down trying to schuss across the slope. I think my buddies were doing better because they and the instructor took off and were using a lift to ski down the next trail up from the bunny slope, leaving me to wonder why I ever took this sport up.

But if asked, I could now say: “Heck yes, I’ve been skiing!”

Later that same winter, I began to date a woman who was tall and leggy and looked every inch an athlete. We searched for things we could do together.

She eventually asked “Can you ski?”

“Heck yes,” I said. “Of course, I can ski!” This from the man with no skis, boots or bindings.

She said “My dad has an old pair of skis and bindings he hasn’t used in years. I’m sure he will let you borrow them,” she said.

Oh, great.

We went to Mt. Watatic for some night skiing. But rather than the GLM elf-skis, I now had her dad’s skis, which went up to my chin. I rented boots, but she had to show me how to clamp them into the bindings. “These must be really old bindings,” I said. “Seen nothing like it.”

“Really?” she said. Was that a roll of her eyes?

I waddled over to the ski lift line.

Getting on the lift was no problem, but I fell off trying to disembark, my legs and skis all tangled around each other in the snow. She held out her hands to help me up.

“It’s been a while since I’ve skied,” I said.

My next humiliation was when I tried to turn with those long skis. I promptly fell, the right ski popped off my boot and began to hurtle down the hill, catching air as it hit small moguls.

My girlfriend dashed down the hill, schussing expertly. She caught the errant ski before it could slice though somebody.

She was an expert skier. Her status in my mind now elevated to hero; mine fell to doofus.

Lucky for me trying to pull a fast one — that I knew how to ski — didn’t end our relationship. We were married later, me still not knowing how to ski.

After we moved to the Upper Valley, she thought of skiing again.

“Now, don’t break out in a sweat. I have a plan,” she said.

That plan called for a day of skiing at Quechee Ski Hill. (I thought at first it was a too sissy-flattened little hill for me to ski on but, based on the number of falls I took, it challenged me plenty.)

Then she brought me to Whaleback for a couple of days, where I overcame the trickiest of green trails and the slingshot snowboarders and finally made it back to the chalet without falling once.

“What’s next?” I asked, now Mr. Confidence. “I think I’m getting the hang of it!”

The following weekend she drove us to Pomfret, where we crossed the entrance to a large parking lot with a sign welcoming us to “Suicide Six” (now known as Saskadena Six Ski Area).

The thinking that I could ski Suicide Six was overcome by the first trail I saw in front of the chalet; sheer, straight down, deadly. If the other trails were considered Suicide One through Five, this trail was Suicide Six.

My confidence was completely shot, and I asked my wife if we could stop by Quechee Ski Hill on the way home and I could practice a little more first.

I skied Quechee and Whaleback most of the winter, and I finally mastered their easiest trails. My confidence came back, and I vowed to ski Suicide Six the following winter or the winter after, or whatever winter I felt up to it.

I’ll let you know when that happens.

Mike Skinner can be reached at mikeandpams@comcast.net.