Geronimo

I once jumped out of a plane. I had a parachute on ( I guess I don’t really need to say that). I had signed up for a full day of skydiving lessons, which would culminate in a type of beginner’s jump, called Accelerated Free Fall. I know you must be thinking, how or why would one accelerate a free fall. Isn’t terminal velocity fast enough? Do you strap Wiley Coyote rockets to your feet, point yourself downward and zoom toward a collision with the planet resulting in a small puff of dust? (If you are a fan of Roadrunner cartoons you know what I am talking about. If you are not such a fan, you are seriously missing out on an important life experience.) No, accelerated free fall means that you will experience free fall on your first jump. Of course you will do this while being held in correct position by not one, but two experienced instructors, who will be falling with you. You have certain skills to perform in the thirty seconds you will be falling, then you pull your own rip cord and you are snatched away from their firm grasp, to glide down to a soft landing.

After several hours of ground training, as we walked toward the plane with a crowd of serious sky divers, I started to have second thoughts. The plane looked like something you wouldn’t want to board even wearing a parachute. The other jumpers were all young and fit in their brightly colored jumpsuits, all pretty much into themselves. The men were hard and the women were just as hard, and here I was, middle aged and very soft, walking toward the plane with two nefarious guardians who would take me up and drag me out of the plane with them. The day was bright, and very warm, and I was sweating but not from the heat. The plane’s engines were on, noisy suckers, and my instructors were making idle chatter. I kept walking because the alternative, running away screaming, “Take this fucking thing off me,” would have been just too embarrassing. How’s that for self awareness? I would rather actually die than die from embarrassment. I understand I’m not alone on this.

So I climbed aboard, squeezed in with the others, and off we went. Almost everything after that on the plane is kind of a blur. I know I was feeling nauseous as we climbed, and that my instructors kept talking to me, probably because they could see my green skin and wanted to keep their very expensive gear vomit free. I do clearly remember that there was an old geezer on the plane. I had noticed him on the ground because he looked as out of place as I did. I call him a geezer because he fit the qualifications. He was short, with a scruffy beard, old jump suit with visible repairs, and he walked with a distinct bow legged gait. But I could tell from watching him that he had a gazillion jumps, and probably had made his first jump from out of necessity from a burning bi-plane that had just been shot from the sky by the Red Baron. Shit, he probably was the Red Baron. Now, as I sat across from him on the plane I noticed he had a hole in his left ear. I’m not talking about a hole for an earring but a hole you could slide a pencil through in the top part of his ear. Probably a bullet wound. I found myself staring at the hole, noticing that I could see out of the other side of the plane right through it. For the rest of the flight to altitude that’s all I remember, I could not stop looking at the hole. I kept looking at it even as he yelled something as he leapt from the plane. It wasn’t “Geronimo,” as I had half expected, but a cry of inarticulate joy like “Yee Hah!” or something like that as he fell away toward the ground, tumbling wildly, seemingly oblivious to the need for a controlled free fall.

Then it was my turn. My instructors guided me to the door where I held on to the frame just as I had been taught. I looked down, and noticed that being high up is so very much more compelling when there is not so much as a rope between you and 13,000 feet of nothing. At that moment my nervousness crossed over into anxiety and was rapidly approaching the land of fear and terror. But there comes a point in any dangerous endeavor that you cannot stop yourself from continuing, even if death seems a very real possibility. My instructors were hanging outside the plane grinning like they were about to play an enormous joke on me, and it was my time to count to three as I rocked forward, back and then just stepped into the void. The void in this case was not soft, or hazy. Time did not stand still, nor did I see any dead relatives. This void was chock full of things I did not like. I must not have leaned forward enough because I was falling backward looking at the plane shrink at an incredible rate. I was flailing to turn over, and I think my two attached guardians were doing the same. As we finally turned to face the ground and get stable, I noticed what had been bothering me even more than the prospect of death. It was the noise, incredible, terrible wind noise everywhere, crushing my mind and freezing my body. Sky diving is not silent. It’s as if every air molecule rushing past you at 120 MPH has something to tell you and they scream it in your ear all at the same time and all you can make out is this loud roar that drives everything else out of your head. Well, not everything exactly. I think I did my required maneuvers. I have no actual memory of all that, but I do remember that my instructor signaled to me to check my watch, which told me IT WAS TIME TO PULL THE CORD NOW, NOW, NOW!!! I did just that, and was very rudely yanked up and out of their grasp. And now everything moved in slow motion. I don’t mean some kind of cliché mental perception of time standing still, I mean actual slow motion. I’m floating toward the ground, very quiet, very peaceful. I check my chute, looks good. I calmly put away my rip cord in it’s special pocket and I’m at one with the sky. I do all my turns like I’ve been taught. I’m in complete control. I even try to make a fast 360 turn by pulling hard on the left control line. Bad idea, as I go into a very fast spin that has “here comes lunch” written all over it. Hokay, enough of that.

Setting up now for my landing. My instructor comes on the radio with final instructions. He’s already on the ground, probably sipping a beer, while I am setting up to land about a quarter of a mile away from the drop zone. I guess they don’t want to take the chance of a newbie crashing into the classrooms, or into the propeller of the jump plane ready to take off with another load. Bad for business. So I glide in, flare for landing (that’s skydiver lingo), and go in for an easy stand up landing. Perfect. Except that my knees, bathed in adrenaline as they were, have turned to Jello, so they buckle and I go kerplunk on my ass. Oh, I forgot to mention that my skydiving experience, from beginning to end, is preserved on video tape by the flying video guy who, for a significant fee, jumps along with you and shoots the whole experience from a camera mounted to this incredible camera helmet. For really cool gadgets and gear, I’ll put skydiving up against any other sport/activity, including scuba diving and rock climbing. To get more gear and gadgets, you have to become a fireman.

So I’m sitting there in this field on a very warm Summer day in Lake Elsinore, California. I’m not yet sure I can stand up so I decide to lie down and reflect on the experience I just had, and all I can think of is the old geezer with the hole in his ear, screaming with the pure joy of being alive and tempting death, while I, felt no exhilaration whatsoever. Such different life experiences brought us together for a brief moment in time in that plane, and I think that maybe he has had the more exhilarating journey. I have played life safe and secure without taking risks and never once have I braved true jeopardy -- no war, no swimming with sharks, no mountain climbing. And no duel, pistols at 20 paces, with a jealous husband, where we stand back to back then pace, turn, and fire. My aim is true and he falls mortally wounded, while I believe I am without injury. But the blood flowing down my neck says otherwise. Miraculously, his bullet has passed clean through my ear without even nicking any other part of my head, but it leaves me with a bullet hole in that ear, proof of my courage and bravery. Yes. From that point forward every day would be a glorious adventure on borrowed time. One “yee hah” moment after another, and now, I would be sharing a beer with those others who live life on the edge, instead of laying in a field wondering why no one has come to rescue me from my boredom, and saved me from dying. Well, not from dying, but certainly from a long, parachute laden hike back to the jump site.

Maybe I can call a cab.