We like to think we know what is best for us, but sometimes we let other people talk us into doing “fun” things.

They think they know what our kind of fun is better than we do. Most of the time, these people have no clue.

One week short of 23 years, I became a victim of other people’s idea of fun.

After seriously considering the danger I was about to put myself into, I decided to give skiing a try. I now know it is overrated.

At this point, I figured I would be ashamed to return to the States without trying skiing here in the “Alpine Dominion.” When in Switzerland, do as the Swiss do.

The first day at Nendaz ski station I was enthusiastic. I was also thinking, “How am I supposed to walk in these boots when they are cutting off the circulation and bruising my shins?!”

I rode up the lift cabin with the other inexperienced skiers.

Excitement and fear filled my body, my coat, three shirts, a sweatshirt, running pants and ski pants.

I finished the day without any injuries and having learned to snowplow.

Not every day can be merriment and injury-free.

On the second day, we went up the mountain on these little plate-like items attached to a rope.

This seems scary, and it was.

It got even scarier when halfway up the mountain my left ski developed a suicide wish and flung itself from my boot.

I went after it. I could not abandon my rental skis.

I sat in the nine-foot snow bank thinking about the nightmare I was living while giving myself a pep talk about how “it IS going to get fun, and people love this.”

I was already kind of put out because I had to go up the mountain on a plate. The situation became even more frightening when I asked a monitor who was on the way up what to do.

He told me I would have to locate the ski and then go down the hill and go back up via these stupid plates. Then he left.

Go down the slope? I only had one lesson. I waited for a more sympathetic monitor who helped me reattach my ski.

He left me when my assigned monitor Denny came to my rescue and told me I really did have to go down the piste (French word for run which sounds much scarier than hill).

Slowly we descended the piste and ascended on the plates. That time, I lost the $40 sunglasses I bought the day before instead of a ski.

I spotted John, an Irishman and fellow-first timer, sitting in snow bank. He also had trouble with the plates.

At the top, we headed down to retrieve John.

This part seemed keen until we crashed, and I got a ski in the face and started bleeding.

I knew something hideous or repulsive had happened, but it was just the immediate swelling that occurs after you get smacked in the face with a ski. I wanted to get some color during my ski holiday, but purple wasn’t the one I was going for.

I got up, regrouped and met up with John, who was horrified by my face. “Oooo,” he said. I knew this wasn’t good.

We skied down to a cafe to take a break. I brought snow in with me to tend to my ever-growing face malformation. Gross.

I finished out the morning and headed home. I took a nap and got up even uglier. I was a freak.

I decided I was going back out the next day because I was going to keep trying. Besides, I already had my accident.

I woke up and my eye was partially open. I put on my gear and headed out. I borrowed sunglasses.

Once at the top, we practiced turning and doing whatever it is the people who look cool do, but none of us looked cool.

Before long, a good skier got carelessly close to me, which forced me to get too close to someone else, and then I was forced into doing the splits and flipping onto my face, my skis criss-crossed in the air behind me so I couldn’t move.

Just like in the cartoons.

But since I am real, this really hurt. My instructor was shocked and glad I was not broken. I may not have been broken, but I felt like it and, man, I was frustrated.

When was this going to get fun? I finished out the two and half-hour lesson and went home for lunch around 1 p.m.

I couldn’t bring myself to go back out again that afternoon.

I rang my mom and described my face and my circus acts on the slopes. She laughed, I did too, and she urged me to stop trying because she didn’t want the severity of my injuries to increase. I agreed I was not made to ski.

The next day I went back out and tried again because my eye was almost all the way open. I didn’t get hurt, but I had enough and my body was sore.

When I fell, I couldn’t easily get up. I lost my will to ski, and I accepted that it was not my destiny to fly down a steep mountainside gracefully.

I tried skiing, and although it wasn’t horrible, something on my face tells me I won’t be trying it again soon. It was kind of amusing, and it was especially entertaining for all the others because it happened to me and not them.

Now when some American asks me if I tried skiing in Switzerland and tries to tell me how “fun” it is, I can ask them if a bleeding face, black eye, doing the splits mid-slope and getting sick is what he means by fun.

Because, hey, maybe I missed something.

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Amanda Fier is a senior in journalism and mass communication and French from Davenport.