Rookies need room

I'm not the best skier in the world (or even in my small town, heck probalby not even on my street) but it's something that I really enjoy.
So, the other day I go skiing with a friend of mine that I've known for a good 16 years or so. Most of the runs were fairly uneventful, the snow was kind of crusty and icy (no fresh powder in several days and it had been sunny for at least 3 days) so it was a little choppy and hard to stop sometimes.
But on one particular run, my friend was ahead of me, cutting back and forth across the hill and I was doing the same behind him. Well, I cut one way to go behind him (kind of make a figure-8 pattern which we do from time to time going down the hill), however, he didn't know where I was and just then turned and started to come to a stop so he could look up the hill and see where I was (he's a better skier than I am). So, basically we both turned towards each other. He was practically at a stop, so couldn't really move, while I was moving at a pretty good clip. But, I could tell I didn't have enough time to go around him as fast as I was going and didn't want to fall down and clip his legs out from under him, so I just dropped my poles and crashed into him standing up.
Now, if you've ever played pool, I'm sure you've noticed that when you hit the cue ball into another ball, the other ball goes flying while the cue just sort of sits there and doesn't move nearly as much once contact is made.
That's what happened here. I fell down and lost one of my skis and then slid probably 15 or 20 feet from where my lost ski had landed. But my friend went tumbling down the hill like a rag doll fired from a potato cannon. He had to dig his heel into the snow as hard as he could before he could finally stop, a fair amount further down the hill and both of his skis and poles where up above me. We both asked the other if we were alright and both of us were and then started the walk back up the hill to reclaim our equipment, where I found that one of my poles, I'm not sure exactly how, was severly bent. It literally looked like a large letter "J", which is not a desirable shape for a ski pole.
After getting our skis back on, we went on down the hill and back to the lift for another run, where I discoved that although skiing with a bent pole isn't a big deal, trying to propel yourself on level ground using one is quite tricky.
But, all is well that ends well. After one more run we managed to bend my pole back into a relatively straight shape (it's at least usable again) and were able to enjoy the rest of the evening without any more collisions.
It was funny more than anything else, neither of us had ever done anything like that before and neither of us really got hurt.
Although, I sent email to him this morning asking how he was feeling and he hasn't responded yet...

Good times.