Profile: Vanessa Pierce

SHEJUMPS CO-FOUNDER VANESSA PIERCE

WHO AM I? I used to be a collegiate soccer player and a sorority girl. I used to be a political columnist and reporter for two major metropolitan newspapers, and an arts and entertainment editor in Aspen. I used to jump around trying to discover what I really wanted. Though, the real jump was when I became satisfied with just being me. We're always looking to identify ourselves with something, looking for that "thing" that makes us feel good about ourselves. We're always shopping. Do I need to find God, a boyfriend, a friend? What is it? For me, it used to be about what I did versus who I am.

Skiing in Termas de Chillan, Chile. Photo by Gabe Rogel Rogelphoto.com

But it's really about being Vanessa, a quirky girl who likes to laugh and spend time with her friends and family (when she isn't cranky of course). I now spend my days livin' the dream as the features editor for Ski Racing magazine. I'm paid to write about a sport I love. Life is good. I'm smiling, laughing, playing, and experiencing life like a 13 year old. We should never lose track of that. I'm Vanessa, that's who I am.

To me, SheJumps is about helping others be happy through a little story, a picture, a joke. We are all "Jumpers"; it just takes some prodding and a little help to find that Rainbow Bright within.

Climbing the Grand Teton summer 2006 Below is an e-mail sent to friends from my travels to South America fall 2006. Enjoy … So, thought you kids would like a laugh this wonderful Wednesday (ignore misspelled words, no spell check here, and in a hurry) … I’m certain to live the rest of my life as a toothless, scary lady where people on the street will cringe at my sight. “What is she doing to that hamburger?” they will say in amazement, as I gum it to an eatable pulp in McDonald’s. That’s how I will be forced to eat, relegated to gumming hamburger meat as a way to ingest my daily calories (and, if I hadn’t exercised that day, as a new form of working out). So as I sat in the dentist’s chair today in Mendoza, Argentina, expecting a minor fixer upper, the fear of turning into Gum Lady emerged like the pinging pain of a cavity. Well, readers, literally it appeared just like that. Oh, the dread … My fear of spending life as Gum Lady can be traced to a re-occurring vision I have of one day – while walking down the street happily humming “Jingle Bell Rock” – I will hit the deck right on my teeth, slipping on a wet sidewalk sewer cover and lawn-darting teeth first into a curb. I haven’t been too far off actually. When I was 9, my babysitter was chasing me in our house and I (in a rare moment of athletic ineptitude) fell teeth first into an armoire, and my tooth nearly went straight up into my brain. I recall that needed some sort of surgery.

Dr. Anita, left, and friends who I helped teach English to (another story)

Then, at age 12, while again getting chased (this time by my sister), I stopped to rest and was mildly surprised when Voo Voo shoved the bowling ball I was holding straight up into my teeth. The humiliation of going to school the next day with a hole in my smile, that, mind you, a small rodent could climb through, was a mere example of the often embarrassing, and long string of, tooth incidences in my life. Cavities (I think I’m 26 for 26 years here, guaranteed I had one from the minute I popped out. Mom, double-check my tooth file). Braces. Headgear. Wisdom teeth yanked, all four, face turning into that of Alvin the Chipmunk just in time for my baptism in front of an entire church congregation. And did I mention this? Constant fear of walking on the sidewalk. And finally, a root canal.

From dad’s stories about his root canals, the procedure sounded like warfare between your tooth and an ancient torture device. Luckily, for me, it was fairly painless. But I was told that after the $1,000 I had paid for the procedure, there was more. I needed a crown, for get this, an additional $1,000. The horror. So back in the dentist’s seat here, I fear the worst. I fear Gum Lady. Already, that one measly tooth cost me $1,500 (definitely an unnecessary $500) because Dr. “Wreck My Mouth” Richter in Jackson had basically caused the whole fiasco in the first place (but that’s a “I’m going to sue her ass when I get back” tale for another day). To give you an idea of her “muy malo” dentist practice, Dr. Wreck My Mouth told me to get the crown or else my tooth would fracture and fall straight out of my mouth within a year. The teeth-falling-out-fear thing – enough said – so being that I was in Argentina I booked an appointment. It, after all, costs only $200 for a crown here. “Well, it would – how do you say? – be a pity to crown your tooth,” my translator friend Anita said to me in broken English. “It’s not needed.” Dr. Wreck My Mouth, you’re going down! Anita, an orthodontist, got me into see her dentist friend Cintia about the crown business. Anita, repeating what Cintia said in Spanish, said my tooth was strong and could last years without getting a crown if I refill the hole that Dr. Wreck My Mouth filled with shitty silver (surely full of Mercury that would kill me before all my teeth fell out), and imagine this, fill it with state-of-the-art elastic-esque, aesthetic, white filling. Ah, Gum Lady be gone. Both of them agree that’s the way to go being that my tooth walls are still strong and would have to be filed away to place a crown on it (the “pity” part). So I oblige, and then Anita starts poking about in my mouth (here it comes, readers). So both of their heads are peering into my poor, sad set of teeth, and Anita puts a pick into a hole and said, “Look in the mirror.” My cavity was holding the mini pick in place. “That’s a cavity,” she said. Oh God, more was coming … “uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis,” Cintia said. What?! No, six cavities that Dr. Wreck My Mouth had fully missed, but they were definitely cavities as the mini pick was catching in everyone of those blasted holes. So, Cintia started the first of the three-day project to prevent me from living the torturous life of Gum Lady. It might not be that bad, a good way to loose weight even, being that I will be a mouth full of numbness for the next few days. Today was round one: drill-out-the-silver-that-I-paid-Dr.-Wreck-My-Mouth-$500-to-fill-and-put-in-a-normal-filling day. Anita, my dear translator friend, stayed the entire time chatting about her and Cintia’s babies, singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” showing me Cintia’s crochet projects, and occasionally putting some sort of goo onto Cintia’s tools. It was surprisingly the most enjoyable dentist visit I’ve ever had (minus the news that my teeth are damned). Meeting fun, and extremely funny women, trying to explain in broken English why my teeth weren’t going to fall out into my hand, well, that was just hilarious. Gum Lady be gone … for now. Chau! VP

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Profile: Vanessa Pierce

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