Of fresh snow, brotherly love, and eyeballs

This past Saturday we woke up to a fresh snowfall and Jon and I could not resist getting the boys out on their skies.  So we trundled off to the highland golf course.  Nothing was groomed yet, but there were quite a few real nice 'citizen tracks' going off in all directions.  We hopped into a few and enjoyed a real nice ski.  Until the end.  Eli fell going down this little incline and ended up in a position that was apparently real hard to get out of.  He was all tangled and got a little frustrated, but was still giggling at his plight.  Until his brother crashed into him.  Theo kept his balance and was standing behind him.  Eli lashed out with his pole and struck a glancing blow of of his brother's face. Eli couldn't see from his position what kind of damage he might have done, but was wise enough to realize (after the fact) that striking out with a ski pole and having the sharp end connect with your brother's face is serious and he better get contrite, fast.  He did, apologizing a blue streak.  And then he went to lower his pole so that he could continue his quest to get up.  But I yelled, "NO!  STOP!  Don't put your pole in the snow, your brother's eyeball is on the end of it!"  And for a second he believed me.  And then I didn't know who was in more trouble, me or his brother.  Good thing it took him another 5 minutes to actually get up, and by then he had blown off most of his steam so his attack on me was half-hearted.  But I do want to believe he learned a little lesson in that brief second where he believed he had shish-ka-bobbed his brother's eyeball.