Imagine blank stares when you try to gossip with your friends about teachers from freshman year. Imagine not being able to look down the neighborhood street at lowlife, good-for-nothing jackanape scoundrels you’ve known since kindergarten. Imagine being senior Daniel Bassininski, who has has only known his friends at Legacy for less than a year and a half.
Imagine what your life would be like if transfers in your mother’s marketing job decided where you lived and when you moved to a different state. If you changed houses more than most people change schools.
Step into a strange high school in Waconia, Minn. on the first day of your sophomore year without knowing anybody in the school. After the first week or so, you can remember some of your classmates names. After the first month or so, there are several people you can call “friends.” Then imagine the last day of Danny Bassininski’s sophomore year, when he said goodbye to people he would never go to school with again.
Before Minnesota Bassininski lived in Nazareth, Penn. Since Pennsylvania winters are snowy and cold, he learned to ski well, and during his freshman year he began teaching children how to ski.
Bassininski can say, “I ski double black diamonds all of the time,” knowing only other skiing experts can claim the same.
Imagine Bassininski as a child when he lived in Salina. He still talks to his best friend from elementary school in Salina, and since he moved back to Texas he has seen his old best friend a couple of times.
Imagine Bassininski as a toddler in Galveston.
See him as a baby in Hackettstown, N. J.
Imagine flying down ski slopes on two thin sticks at the speed of a car. Feel the air buffeting your goggles as you launch into a jump. Then picture moving to Mansfield.
Imagine: there is no skiing in Texas.
