About the time I went skydiving? I was thinking about that the other day when I was in the office of the senior secretary at work. I have a weird habit of popping my ankles by squatting down just a few inches until they pop. The secretary calls it “oiling my knees”. She was explaining this to another lady in the office that day and I had to remind her that I’m not popping my knees, it’s my ankles. Though I admitted that my knees do make a weird tearing noise when I go up the stairs. They gave me a funny look, to which I replied, “It’s an old skydiving injury”. That led into me telling them how I injured my knees skydiving. To be fair, I don’t think my knees make noise because of that injury. I’m just getting old and apparently bodies start making funny noises when they reach a certain age.
My skydiving story is one that always delighted my students. They always begged to watch the 10 minute video of the experience that I have. I always gave in and let them watch it. It’s set to music and everything. “Free Falling” by Tom Petty being a natural choice for one of the background songs.
The story is really a story because it wasn’t a normal skydiving adventure. It started out normal. A tandem skydive from the local parachute center was auctioned off at a PTO fundraiser at my school back when I first started teaching there. As a rollercoaster junkie, I made it my mission to win the bid. And I did! It also came with 50% off for a friend to go with me. The only person I could convince was my husband’s cousin. Her experience was much better than mine.
I have to pause here and preface the rest of the story by explaining a couple of things. In my younger days, I really was a rollercoaster fanatic. And I had an accompanying iron stomach. I could go to Six Flags and ride the crazy coasters all morning, eat a big lunch, and immediately resume riding without thinking twice about my full belly. Fast forward several years to the first date with my husband. When we walked around a neighborhood park after our dinner and a movie, we sat on a bench swing for a moment. A quick moment. Because not long after we sat down and started swaying, I got extremely motion sick. I had become a motion lightweight.
On the morning of my skydive, I failed to realize that I was closer in time to that first date with my husband than I was to the last time I spent a day riding rollercoasters with a full belly. Because of this memory lapse, I ate a big breakfast that morning. When I got to the jump field, I didn’t connect any dots when the owner told me that we might have to postpone the jump because the wind was too strong. Do you see where I’m going with this?
The wind eventually calmed enough for us to get the green light for jumping. I had invited my third graders to come watch and two of them had actually come. Along with my mother-in-law, husband’s cousin and her mom. There was a whole group of spectators just waiting for me to jump.
There was training and preparation before we got on the plane. Most of it revolved around how to exit the plane mid-air. When the moment came, it was surreal. At a certain altitude, the back door opened and several other passengers exited. I think they were practicing jumps from lower altitude. When we got to 10,000 feet, it was our turn. My tandem instructor and I were the last ones out. At the edge of the door, we rocked back and forth twice and on the third lean forward, we were out the door.
I distinctly remember falling out of the plane and watching the plane get farther and farther away as we fell. I screamed like any thrill ride enthusiast, because, well, I was falling through the air at God knows what speed. But the instructor had been correct when he told me before hand that your body will get used to the free fall sensation very quickly. So while we were still free falling, I stopped feeling the sensation and actually enjoyed the rush.
And then the parachute opened…
We slowed down and began to sway in the wind as we floated down. The instructor was turning us in different directions so he could point out and label what we were seeing in all directions. After the scenic tour, he went over the instructions for landing. There were only two things I needed to remember. Two! One was that when he yelled the word ‘flair’, I was to pull down on the handles of the chute. That would slow us down so we could coast in gently. Second, after he yelled the word ‘flair’, I needed to also pull my knees up into a sitting position so that I could glide to the ground, again, gently.
Good instructions. Simple, made sense. Only two of them. But then my big breakfast entered the chat. The iron stomach of my youth was nowhere to be found. There was nothing to stop my partially digested food from reappearing thanks to the sissy, lightweight stomach I now posessed.
When I realized that I was about to throw up, I was horrified! My mind tried to figure out how to get to the ground faster so I could rush to a bathroom and throw up in private with some dignity. But then I realized that I was a few thousand feet above the ground, strapped to a man who was strapped to a fully extended parachute. There was no getting down faster. I don’t think I even told him I was about to be sick, but when I started heaving, he knew. That’s when he pushed my head forward and down so that what came out of me went down and not back at him. Now when I say ‘down’, I don’t mean all the way down to the people who were staring up at the sky waiting for us to land. The windy day made it so that my breakfast splattered all over the front of my flight suit. I may have peed a little too, I’m just being honest.
If vomiting mid-air wasn’t bad enough, the humiliation of that event caused me to forget the two (only two!) things I was told to do when he yelled ‘flair’ just before reaching the ground. So imagine, if you will, my confusion at hearing the word ‘flair’ being screamed at me as the ground came rushing towards us faster and faster. The word ‘flair’ meant nothing to me and I became increasingly concerned about how we were going to land. After all, the ground was coming really fast. Was that what was supposed to happen?
So, being oblivious to everything I was told pre-mid-air vomit fest, I did NOT pull down on the handles of the parachute to slow us down. I did NOT pull my knees up into a sitting position. In fact, the video very clearly shows that my legs were locked out just as straight as I could make them.
Needless to say, the landing was not gentle. We crashed. We hit that ground and tumbled around for a few yards. Both of my knees were sprained on impact, an x-ray at the urgent care later that day confirmed it. And my dignity? Yeah, it was still up in the air somewhere.
The instructor assured me that I was not the first one to throw up like that. Whether that’s true or not, it made me feel better. The videographer who I paid extra to jump with me so I could get the video souvenir was kind enough to edit out my air sickness embarrasment. As old Rose in “Titanic” said, “it exists now only in my memory”. (I know she said “he” and was talking about Jack, but still). After I got out of my stained flight suit, the videographer asked me about my favorite part and also would I ever do it again. My immediate answer was “no, never again”. I mean that too! For some, especially my husband’s cousin, skydiving is an almost spiritual experience. For me, it was an experience that I’m glad I had because now I can say I did it. That’s all it was.
By the way, I live in a military town and had lots of military families at the school where I worked. While this story impresses and shocks some of my other friends, it did not impress a single military person who I told it to. These are 82nd Airborne soldiers with probably 100s of jumps under their belts. My one little tandem experience ain’t impressing any of them!
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