Chris Satullo: Wintry days a time of humility if one can't sing and can't ski

This time of year turns my life into one big S.H.A.M. (Strategic Humiliation Avoidance Maneuver).

You see, as Yuletide turns into frigid January, chances increase that some well-meaning soul will suggest either of two activities that many consider to be fun, but are for me excruciatingly impossible:

Singing.

Skiing.

To avoid either humiliation, I will go to any length: Hiding in a broom closet through the dessert course, feigning a kidney stone in mid-conversation.

To say I can't carry a tune is like saying the eruption of Mount St. Helens was an earth burp. Imagine the worst warbler ever to be eviscerated by Simon Cowell on

American Idol

. Now, imagine that sound 10 times worse. That's me, the sound of spoons being mangled in the garbage disposer. I make William Hung seem like Pavarotti in his prime.

The thing is, I adore Christmas carols; "Adeste Fideles" unleashes my tear ducts. In fact, I love carols so much I would never despoil them by lending my voice to the chorus.

American public schools have many flaws - forcing children to sing chief among them. My fifth grade teacher, Evelyn "Attila The" Haughn, was a chronic offender. She liked to make students stand by their seats and sing a cappella. The first time she tried that on me (the tune, I recall, was "Peter White, Who Never Goes Right"), I stayed planted in my chair.

By fifth grade, my mates knew my infirmity. Some girls (oh, tender hearts!) took pity, crying out, "No, Mrs. Haughn, you don't understand. Chris doesn't sing. He can't."

Attila was unmoved. To the principal I went.

That might have been the year the music teacher asked me to lip-synch the songs during a school concert. I've been doing it ever since; I'm better at it than Ashlee Simpson. At church, I position myself next to a fellow parishioner with a booming baritone, so no one can tell I'm faking it. (U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell is particularly useful in this regard; thanks, Your Honor.)

To be so inept at something most people can do passably, some gorgeously, used to humiliate me. With time and God's grace, though, comes wisdom. I no longer flay myself for a quirk of anatomy. God grants some gifts, withholds others. His will be done.

But the skiing thing . . . that's more of a character flaw. I'm passably coordinated. And I've had my chances to learn.

I went to college in the ski-crazy Berkshires, at a school where Winter Carnival was a signature event. One day in the cafeteria, a fellow freshman asked me, "Hey, Chris, we're going up to Jiminy Peak this afternoon. Wanna come?" She was quite attractive, which must have scrambled my wits, for I answered candidly, "Thanks, but I don't ski."

Her face expressed equal parts wonder, pity and disdain: "If you don't ski, why'd you come to school here?" Excellent question.

The reason I don't ski is, bluntly, I'm chicken. The thought of standing at the top of a bunny slope with two lengths of thin, curved wood strapped to my feet - well, that just strikes me as a fractured femur waiting to happen.

After getting my degree, still a snowplow virgin, I got a teaching gig in France. A fellow teacher had a condo at Chamrousse, a skiing venue for the Grenoble Olympics. Visiting, I succumbed to urgings to do something wintry. Wimp that I was, I insisted on cross-country skiing; that seemed safer.

Off I went, striding alone into the Alpine woods, reveling in the dashing figure I imagined myself cutting. These were the Alps, though; even the cross-country course had considerable slopes. Down one well-wooded incline I careered, one leg waving frantically in the air, then the other, heading with a growing sense of doom toward a robust pine tree. I embraced the pine at speed, my legs splaying on either side, the meat of the trunk hitting me . . . right . . .

there

.

By the time I contrived, after much thrashing, to regain my feet, the life cycles of several furry woodland creatures had passed. Had YouTube existed then, a video record of that debacle would have been a worldwide hit by nightfall.

That was my last time skiing but one. I was careful to marry a woman whose only trip to Camelback produced three falls by minute five of her first lesson, whereupon she slid down the bunny slope on her bum to the lodge, then drank toddies the rest of the day. What a woman!

Once we visited relatives at a lovely farm in the Berkshires. Our host rented cross-country skis, thinking we'd enjoy a go in the snow. Dutifully, my bride and I went out to spend a few miserable minutes falling down. But before we chucked the skis, someone nailed a photo of us standing amid flurries, skis at hand, knit hats tilted rakishly, wearing the cocky grins of Olympic medalists.

We put that one up on the mantel. At parties, guests would say, "Oh, so you ski."

"We used to," we'd purr modestly. "Hard to get out as much as we'd like, what with work and the kids. More wine?"