not-the-fall.txt

So I am      five thousand feet above Albany on just a perfect day  beautiful blue sky  not a cloud in the sky  I can see the horizon in every direction  when the  uh  girl who just pushed me out of the airplane screams   Wait  wait  your chute    It    And     and she  gone  with the plane     I  do not think the sentence ends  you know   functioning properly  have a great jump      I think it ends worse     I  do not know a lot about skydiving  but     I would think that  you know  a a working chute lends to a better  a better jump  especially towards the end  So  what happened was  I was in my forties  suddenly  surprisingly  and     I  did not want to be one of those kind of  uh  midlife crisis guys who runs out and gets a convertible  Besides  who needs two convertibles? And I     you know  I had already gotten divorced  so that was already checked off  Uh  but I needed to do something  so I went to  like  cliche n ber three  and I drive upstate to this skydiving academy  uh  near Albany for my meeting with     my meeting with     Annette  the school  bare bellied  khaki shorted  you know  tan shouldered  senior instructor  She was nineteen years old        she was like petite  I could have folded her up and put her in my pocket  She looked like a a lowercase i with a smiley face dot for a head  which made me feel like a capital O standing next to her     but she was a professional  so the first thing she did was shake my hand  but then she put her arm through mine and squeezed it a little bit  and said   This is going to be awesome   And then she led me into the office  which looked like it had been  kind of  delivered on the back of a flatbed truck  and     like they dropped it on its corner when they unloaded it  We go inside the office  and the first thing she says is that I have pretty eyes  and then she hands me the liability waiver     it was an extremely Darwinian moment for me  uh  because what I should have done was  you know  drive away and do something I was more well adapted to doing  like  you know  driving  But I        I signed it because  uh  she told me I had pretty eyes  But I wanted her to know that I was more than just a pair of pretty eyes  uh  that I  you know  had the right stuff  So  I sign it  and then  uh  she takes me back outside  and while the pilot and  I  do not know  his homeroom teacher  are playing hacky sack out on the runway  uh  she says we are  going to start with the landing because that  the important part  And then she pokes me in the ribs and she says   you know  it  not the fall that gets you  it  the sudden stop   And she giggles  because it  a joke  Not the funniest joke I have  ever heard  She kicks over a blue plastic milk crate about a  about a foot tall and she tells me to hop up  and she tells me  uh  to jump off of it  and I jump off of it  and my feet raise these two little  kind of  dust clouds like Neil Armstrong  And she gives me the th bs up like I have  got the right stuff  And then she says   we are  going to do a I am  going to teach you how to do a a drop and roll   which is this maneuver you do when you land  it  where you  basically it  what it sounds like  You drop  and you roll  same thing you would do if you were on fire  And she  she demonstrates it  uh  for me like  you know  a Romanian gymnast  and she says  you know  Okay  y you try it now   And  uh  she helps me back up onto the box  she says   Just hop on the bus  Gus   And I think  nice  we have something in common  you know: her parents or her grandparents were fans of  uh  Paul Simon  So I     get up on the box  hold onto her shoulder to steady myself  and because I just wanted to hold onto her shoulder  and     I say  I am a rock  and I drop like a stone  And she just giggles adorably and helps me up  and as she  picking the gravel out of the palms of my hands  she says   That  pretty much all there is to it   Which would be true if she were teaching me to jump off of a milk crate  I could have gotten my diploma and just gone home     for the next two hours  uh  we kind of gradually raised the diving platform  the  you know  the practice platform  from this milk crate  to a kitchen chair  to an al in   uh  kitchen dinette  uh  table  to a painter  ladder  to five thousand feet above sea level     up in the plane  uh  she shows me this canvas strap which is called a static line  it  attached to the plane and it  attached to my chute     it will open my chute automatically when I jump out so I will not  have to worry about anything     and she tugs on it a couple of times to demonstrate that it can withstand the full upper body strength of a teenage girl  And then she puts one hand on either of my cheeks  leans in close  stares in  through  you know  through the fog in my orange goggles that I am  wearing  and says  Listen  when I say go  you just go   do not think      she says   If you are getting cold feet  you know  if you need a little help   do not be embarrassed  everybody  you know  gets like that     I will  just give you a little shove      and then she says    do not worry  I will  be gentle   So between the altitude and  like  the pillow talk  I am in  basically in a lovesick  you know  trance  and I will  do anything for her  I will shoot myself if I think it makes me look brave  for her  But  uh  when I hop out on onto the wing and I look down at all those  like  pointy steeples and pine trees  I get a little cold feet  have some second thoughts  and when she yells  Go   uh  I say  Uh  uh  but she does not hear me  and she actually says  Geronimo   and she gives me a shove  and I am  gone     and I look up  and I just see her terrified eyes  and that  when I hear her say   Wait  wait  your chute   It    And really  like  the pathetic inadequacy of a two hour skydiving lesson hits home right then  I mean  it took me longer than that to learn how to knit  So I am  heading for the powerlines  uh  down below me  and  like reflex  you know  just reflexively kind of squeezing my legs  uh  together so that I will not  die  you know  sliced up the middle like a couple of flounder fillets  And I am  just  like  praying my life does not flash before my eyes and ruin the last couple of minutes I have  when suddenly I feel a jolt  and I am  yanked around  and this big white  fluffy  beautiful canopy opens above me  and I am  floating to earth in dead silence  It is really quiet  So I can really hear my heart pounding  When I get down  and I drag all my my gear  you know  the helmet and the straps and the chute  you know  through this  the onion field back over to the office  Annette is already there waiting for me and she  holding this plastic cup with the complimentary sparkling wine they talked about in the brochure  and she is just beaming  And I walk up to her and I say   What the fuck you know was that?  And she giggles  and she says   You know  you seemed like a cool guy  so I wanted you to have a really awesome jump  So the little parachute malfunction thing was to spike your adrenaline at the last minute   That  what I said  And so I am   like  staring at her  trying to think of some language this chick might  you know  understand     you know  do you have any idea how how dangerous  how terrifying  how illegal that probably was? And she says   Wait  wait  hey  you did it  right? Before it  too late   By which she meant  at your age  So I am  trying to think  you know  am I going to do this with a knife  or just strangle her  or beat her to death  when my heart starts kind of slowing down  And what I just did sort of starts sinking in  you know  I just  like  fell out  a mile out of the sky  on purpose  and without a chute for most of it as far as I am  concerned  And I  I dropped  and I rolled  and I survived     and I think about the little joke that she told me earlier  how it  not the fall that gets you  it  the sudden stop  And I think  you know  maybe she  right  I am  not going to stop  that  what kills you  And so I lock eyes with her  and I glare at her  and I hope I am  cute when I am  angry  and I sign up for another lesson  And I drive home with the top down  Thank you