Alex, Give Me ‘Missing Gloves’ for $100, Please

Here we are up in the mountains, seeking Snappy Answers to Silly Questions, which ought to be a game show but instead is our lives.

“Where are your ski gloves?” an adult asks.

“Oh, look, they’re on my hands,” the teenager says, holding up her hands.

“How’d they get there?” another kid asks.

“I don’t know,” the teenager says.

This is a good adult-to-teenager exchange. Note the silly question. Moments later, a snappy answer. Then another snappy answer. Two snappy answers in a row, which is good for 10 points and a trip to Hawaii. Next question.

“OK, at 1:30, we’ll all meet back here at the resort for lunch,” an adult says.

“Is that a question?” a kid asks.

“No, that’s an answer,” I say.

They are like participants in a hot-tub wedding, all giddy and underdressed, eager to get on with things--shivering a little here in the ski-resort parking lot.

“Can we have some money?” a kid asks.

“No,” I say.

“That’s another answer,” the other dad in the group says.

We were teenagers once, too, this other dad and I. It was a million years ago, before snowboards and Zip drives and Christina Aguilera. Before snow.

In fact, when we were teenagers, we helped pioneer Snappy Answers to Silly Questions. Used to drive our parents crazy.

As punishment, we now have children of our own.

“Dad, we really need money,” the little girl explains.

“Here,” I say, handing her 50 cents.

“Thanks, Dad,” she says, running off to rent a locker.

Because you can’t actually buy anything for 50 cents at a ski resort. You can only rent things. And only lockers at that.

*

To buy something at a ski resort costs $10 or more, usually $20. In the rest of the nation, inflation is growing at a modest 2%. At ski resorts, it’s 300% or better, the same rate of inflation we would’ve had if Jimmy Carter had stayed president for 20 years.

“Don’t forget your ski gloves!” I yell, as the little girl heads off to the locker. “Don’t forget your hat!”

We are up here fleeing the mundane discussions that come with the end of football season--talk of W2 forms and carpet sales. Berber or plush? Eighty-ounce pile or 100? That’s what we flee. Carpet talk. I drive the 10 Freeway like a dad out of hell.

And in two hours we are here, at the base of a giant mountain with its fake frosting. For this year, there is no snow except for what the machines can churn out overnight, blanketing the trails and nothing else. Odd as it looks, we are grateful to have it. Even at these prices.

“The snow is good,” the little girl says.

“You’re skiing great,” I say.

And she does pretty well, indeed, zipping down the slopes with her skis in the pizza position. She has been doing this for four years now, wearing her brother’s old ski pants and her mother’s hair, which shines like a new penny in the bright sun.

“I only fell twice,” she says after falling three times.

“Who’s counting?” I tell her.

“Thanks,” she says, licking the snow from her gloves.

In another year or two, she will abandon the skis. Just when she is good enough to really enjoy it, she will set her skis aside and grab a snowboard that is as skinny as she is, then sit with her fanny in the snow, wondering what to do next.

Because that’s what snowboarders mostly do, they sit in the snow till their butts are so cold that they must try to stand up. Then they fall again and wonder what they are doing here on the side of a mountain with their butts in fake snow. Last year, it was a $400-million industry.

*

Sure, a few will excel at snowboarding, flying down the slopes at 80 to 100 mph, barely touching the snow, virtually falling from the sky.

Occasionally, they will fall from the sky until they land on a skier. If they’re lucky, they’ll land on a skier like me, someone with lots of padding and a big down-filled jacket he kept from college. That’s me. A snowboarder mattress.

“Sorry, sir,” they sometimes say when they land on me, but usually not. Usually, they just grunt, wipe their noses with their sleeves and fly away.

Of course, they don’t always hit me. Sometimes they hit the boy, who is not as well padded as I am.

“It’s my head,” the boy says, describing his injuries from a snowboard collision. “And my shoulder.”

So we take him to the first-aid station, a little basement room where the people in red jackets work.

“How old are you?” the ski-patrol guy asks.

“What day is this?”

“What’s your mother’s name?”

The boy does well on this oral brain scan, giving snappy answers to these silly questions, passing all the tests.

“What was the last major holiday?” the paramedic asks, a question that finally stumps the boy.

“The last major holiday?” the paramedic asks again.

*

As his father, I know that the boy’s not hurt, he’s just confused by the question, wondering whether the answer is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is a fine holiday but may not yet qualify as a major one, or maybe his own birthday, which was a few weeks ago and certainly is a major holiday in his eyes.

“New Year’s?” I finally ask.

“Yeah, New Year’s,” the boy says.

“You’re both fine,” the ski-patrol guy finally decides.

“Shows what you know,” I say, my first snappy answer of the day.

“Let’s go, Dad,” says the boy.

“Shows what he knows,” I say, as we head out the door.

*

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.