Dixie goes skiing

David Kann checked in from Carlisle, PA, with the following letter. For those of you who don’t know, DK is a lifelong friend, who is more like a brother, not withstanding the inconvenient fact that my actual brother’s name is also David. There is no Jewish person ebtween the ages of 30-50 who does not have a whole family tree of davids within three degrees of separation. My dad was Buddy before he became Dixie. That refers to an old Sesame Street routine called Buddy and Jim, two friends who did repairs and destroyed everything they came in contact with.

Our own Buddy and Jim had an endless series of capers, most notably building a rope tow from junkyard parts so that we could have our own ski hill as kids. But that’s another story, and a good one.

DK could also have added that Dixie has delayed his surgery two weeks, to April 4, in order to go skiing again.

Somewhere in the annals of Paul history the following story needs to be archived and the blog is as good a place as any.

Last week on the spur of the moment, shortly after finishing chemotherapy Buddy and Susie took off for Aspen.

I spoke with Buddy and he told me how much fun he was having.

I asked how he felt and he said ,”Great”.

“What I do is I ski the tough stuff…the hanging valley wall, some bump runs….I ski until I am short of breath…then I lay down in the snow until I catch my breath and then I get up and ski some more until I can’t breath again…then I lay down again until I can breath and I start over.”

I foolishly tried to tell him to take it easy…that I was worried about him….that he had to be in a somewhat debilitated state; that his blood count was undoubtedly low…

So I said, “Just ski the groomed runs…be happy to be outdoors in the snow and sun”.
Well I got the same answer I have been getting for years…”Don’t be silly David Kann.”

I closed my eyes, shook my head back and forth slowly and thought…can you teach a dog to sit at a table and use a knife and fork?…can you teach a rooster calculus?….

There just ain’t no way to slow that (old) man, that we all love, down.
Eli may have inherited his chutzpa directly from you (here I quote from the blog……… Eli, in a bid to impress the older kids, stood up on his chair mid-pizza and yanked his pants down.) But I know where you got your chutzpah…….pure and simple and original.