Wear your helmets kiddos...(this is a long one)

Ok so I'm sitting here at my computer because I can't concentrate well on my math homework, so I figured I'd type out a little story about why you should wear a helmet.

Up until a week ago, I had 5 concussions. Some of them were preventable (I could've been wearing a helmet hitting urban), some were not (I got blasted in the head with a metal baseball bat in little league because some kid started warming up his swing next to the bench). Then on Wednesday, I got number 6.
This time I was wearing a helmet, it was my roommate's single impact helmet, which already had it's single impact, but I figured it was better than nothing since I left mine at Stratton during the VT Open. Last run of the day...cork 5...overrotate to knee...slammed my head really hard.
For the first time ever, I didn't lose consciousness, I just skied over to the side and started icing my head. I was pretty out of it until Friday, when I started feeling a little better. Last weekend I rode at Killington and hit rails and boxes and shit, still kind of out of it, and looking back, it was a dumb idea.
Monday my headache returned with full force, and I started feeling out of it again. Now today I still feel like I just woke up...all the time...with a pounding headache. It sucks, I've had plenty of injuries in the past, and they've all healed. This one is different, because in my mind right now it doesn't seem like it will ever get better...
But I went into the doctor today and he said that I should come out of it by next week sometime, and every concussion I get after this one will probably result in a longer time until I feel back to normal...or I might just knock myself retarded.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), I don't want to be retarded, so today I had to make the decision to stop skiing as hard as I used to. It sucks. I am getting teary eyed right now just thinking about it.
Pretty much the moral of my story is don't be dumb, and always wear a helmet when in the park. If I didn't have one on last Wednesday, who knows what would have happened. Looking cool is not worth feeling like this for a week, believe me.
As for me I'm going to keep skiing, maybe without a helmet since I'm just going to be cruising around. Hopefully I'll get back into hitting little rails or something, but mostly I'm just going to stay obsessed with skiing, but just taking pictures or something like that.
That being said, I'd like to thank Tim Maher, Jason Levinthal, and Jake Anderson, who either work at Line Skis now or did in the past, for making my childhood dream of riding on their team possible. Also Mike Nick for giving me the chance to shoot some photos for the Siver Cartel website, Geoff MacDonald and Chris James at Meathead Films for letting me tag along and ski with them the past two years (watch out for their movie next year, it should be crazy), and John Kirby at Ski Fanatics in Pittsfield, MA for always helping me be able to afford the equipment I wanted.
If you made it all the way through this, thanks for reading, I hope that my stupid mistakes in life can help you out. And if you see me on the hill wearing all Line and Siver stuff, but I can't do shit in the park, please don't call me a poser because I suck now. I just want to keep supporting good companies.

And watch out for Will Wesson and Tyler Seacrest, as they will continue to kill shit in the park. Take it easy.

- John Wiechecki