Skydiving sucks

This post is triggered by a conversation with the honey and the bro the other day. 

I went skydiving once.  It wasn't exactly for me.  To be perfectly honest, I've never understood why someone would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.  In fact, I've never understood why someone would want to climb open stairs, or stand on the edge of a cliff and feel the wind in their hair.  Actually, I don't like jumping feet first off the high dive at the pool. 

So I might not exactly have been the best candidate for sky diving. 

Regardless, once when I was in college, I roomed with this gal who was a dare devil.  She might not actually have been a dare devil, she might just have not been afraid of heights.  But whatever.  We lived in a themed dorm, which meant that we got more money to spend on events, and when we all got together to vote on things, it turned out that the majority wanted to sky dive.  I happened to be an elected officer of the dorm (treasurer!).  This meant I had the power...  Actually, it meant I could add the title to my resume.  Actually...  It kinda meant nothing, other than they had to elect someone to count money.  Anyway, I arranged for them to go sky diving, and the room mate convinced me I had to at least go along and watch in case someone plummeted to their doom.  I was after all responsible. 

Away to the sky diving world go us!  (please google pirates of penzance lyrics for that sentence to make sense.)  We arrived at the drop zone, and the skydiving instructors made it sound so easy!  We would be attached by several O rings that we could inspect.  We could see the world, and feel the wind in our hair, and feel alive, and all that jazz.  So I signed the waiver with the goading of the daredevil room mates words in my ears. 

I got myself attached to a burly fella with a mustache.  Not a beard, just a mustache.  The O rings were solid, and up, up, up went the tiny little, perfectly adequate little airplane. 

About halfway up, the panic struck.  What if the airplane crashed?  I guess it was ok, I had a parachute.  But what if my instructor hit his head on the way out of the doorway, and was unconscious, and I didn't realize, and crash landed? 

Just as I was hyperventilating, the instructor that was attached to the daredevil room mate (who was grinning from ear to ear mind you), started pretending to pick lice from her hair and eat them.  I'm pretty sure it was because I looked like I was about to pass out.  Nervous laughter ensued.  I was still halfway away from pleading the burly man to just let me stay on the perfectly adequate airplane, when he asked me if I wanted to do a front flip on the way out. 

I'm pretty sure my incredulous stare was adequate response, because he didn't say anything else, and just grabbed the door frame, and threw us both out of the plane before I could plead for my life. 

I'm proud to say I didn't scream.  I actually didn't think it would matter.  I was busily watching the world rush toward me at 32 feet per second.  Actually, my main concern at this point, was that the wind was causing my sinuses to rapidly empty.  I was convinced that the snot that was rushing out of my nose, and streaming across my cheeks was flying upwards and hitting the burly man in the face.  I was inconceivably concerned about hygiene at 30,000 feet. 

But then I suddenly became aware that the burly man hadn't spoken since we jumped.  What if he passed out and couldn't grab the cord?  My goodness!  Why hadn't we grabbed the cord yet!  Where was the cord anyway?  What if we both died, because he passed out and didn't grab the cord? 

I still didn't scream, but calmly shouted, "Burly man!  Are you alive?"  I'm not proud of that, nor did I actually call him burly man.  His response of "Yeah, I'm still here" was a welcome sound, as was the faint whoosh of the parachute deploying.

Once the parachute deployed, all I could do was hang there limply, thinking about what would happen if a bird collided with our chute, and cropped a hole in it, or what about a freak windstorm that might spring up, and blow us to Kentucky.  Not that I have anything against Kentucky, it just wasn't where my car was.

Long story short...  too late...  we landed.  I didn't get  dragged 400 feet by the parachute, or break my leg on landing,  I also didn't land in Kentucky.

But I don't think skydiving is for me.