Helmet Convert?

I talk about it a lot, helmets, and my appreciation for them. I recently made a convert of a family as well. I had a lesson with a young boy, age 6, who had been up last year with me once. I remembered the face surprisingly well. It turns out since then he's done very little skiing, but the skiing he has done was well worth it. He could wedge stop, wedge turn, and kept in control the whole way down. His mom was interested in possibly seeing if he was ready to head up the chair lift and come down the longer runs. After two runs down the rope tow I thought so.

As we headed off for lift, we passed a booth with a Pryme rep demoing his wares, I asked my student if he ever thought of wearing a helmet. He hadn't. We stopped briefly to look, and the rep offered to let him try one for a run. The kid was excited, grabbing the helmet of his choice while the rep made sure it fit. Off we went up the chairlift.

About halfway down the run, he was doing great on the steeper parts and just flying high on the easy parts. We pulled off to the side to talk a little bit more about turn control and shaping, our backs to the trees behind us. As we were about to start, he noticed his younger brother coming down the hill with another instructor and asked if we could wait for his brother. We waited and watched his brother a bit, when he finally decided waiting wasn't working.

I slipped a little lower, allowing him to begin his first new traverse when I heard a crash above us. I was able to watch as an out of control snow boarder crashed into the tree, tumbled, and cracked my student on the head with the edge of his board. The demo helmet did it's job, splitting down the back side, leaving my student phased but unhurt.

I called for Patrol, who arrived and checked him out. They saw no damage but wanted to get him down the hill for a better inspection. He was going to get to ride on the snowmobile instead of the sled for this case. As he jumped on the back he was able to catch a glimpse of his younger brother skiing slowly down the hill. He immediately jumped off, put his skis to the ground and went to work putting them. I asked what was going on, and his response was simple.

"I can't let my brother beat me down the hill"

I talked with the Patroller who saw no reason to stop us, but would follow behind in case anything should arise.

We reached the bottom where Mom was waiting. I handed my student to the patrol team, and talked with mom. Mom promptly went over to the Pryme rep, bought two helmets, paid for the now destroyed demo, and gave the rep some extra cash. The student, only damage he had was a bruise on his knee from falling on his ski tip.