The Time I Went Skydiving

At age 19 I moved to the University of Oregon during my sophomore year of college.  When I began school I had no intention of ever leaving the state of Illinois, but things changed. 

My high school boyfriend, a year younger than me, decided he wanted to experience other chicks.  I was relatively devastated.  He was a good guy, I had finally decided to be a good girl, but suddenly my future dreams of serving Jeff mashed potatoes for the rest of my life were over.

My friend Frank, who I met at the sub shoppe where I was employed, convinced me there was a big wide world out there and I ought to check it out.  So that’s how I ended up in the student exchange office.

During the interview process they showed me all the different places I could go.  I had only one question, “Where are there the most hippies?”  I think I’d always been disappointed that I was born in 1960 instead of a decade earlier.  Peace rallies, pot, free love & hippie chicks seemed too cool for words.  It didn’t matter that the war was over.  Actually, I think we did invade Grenada for 24 hours that year.

Strangely enough, I had narrowed my choices down to Oregon and New Jersey; they told me Oregon was definitely the hippie spot.  I find it fascinating that the other place I considered going all those years ago is the same place my son eventually graduated from.  Kismet. 

So my mother drove me to Oregon.  All I remember about that trip is she drove so fast on the perilous mountain roads that I sat in the passenger seat with tears rolling down my cheeks from time to time, fearing for my life.  She laughed uproariously.  Obviously, I was not a thrill-seeker.

I remember dropping her off at the airport and driving back to the dorms, pulling over every few blocks to check the street names, confirming them on the map.  I really couldn’t believe I had done this to myself, gone somewhere I knew no one.  I am not outgoing with strangers.  What was I thinking?

The other students were not hippies, they were kids my age.  They weren’t particularly friendly.  Neither was I.

The best part of my year there was volunteering in a juvenile detention center for course credit.  I began a relationship with another staff member, Mark, 20 years older than me, and a resident, also Mark, 2 years younger.  I smoked a lot of pot in the dorm bathroom.  And I dropped or failed most of my classes, except one.

The two-credit course I passed was “Intro to Skydiving.”  I took the class in the hope that I would meet boys.  The instructor informed us on the very first day that jumping was not required; I had no intention of doing so.  Practicing “drop & roll” was plenty exciting from a 3-foot platform. 

Nothing worked out as planned.  

I went out to the airfield one Saturday to watch other students jump.  It seemed like the perfect way to spend an afternoon.  I still hadn’t met any normal college guys.  It seemed like a great opportunity to watch some pretty parachutes fall from the sky and proactively get to know other students in the class.

The instant I stepped into that airplane hangar the instructor set his sights on me and said, “Great!  We’ll get you a jumpsuit!”  I stuttered, muttered and declined.  He apparently didn’t hear me.  He didn’t care what my intentions were.  He never considered the possibility that I wouldn’t jump; I was such a mush ball that I couldn’t even stand up for myself when it came to falling from the sky.

He asked me, “How much do you weigh?” and then said ”And don’t lie to me because it really matters in this situation.”  How did he know me so well? 

Amidst a quick flurry of activity, I suddenly found myself with six other people in a tiny plane, sitting on one another’s legs with parachutes strapped to our backs.  I kept saying no, probably with my usual nervous laughter, and they just ignored me.  

Once inside the plane, we were told that if we refused to jump it would screw everyone else up, no one would be allowed to jump out of order.  In other words, if I didn’t go then the guys behind me couldn’t go either. 

Even today, I don’t like to make people mad at me.  Twenty-nine years ago I was willing to jump out of a plane, rather than annoy complete & total strangers.  I consider it my penultimate moment of people-pleasing, codependent insanity.

The analytical & reasonable part of my brain still wasn’t planning on jumping.  I hadn’t even really been paying attention in class when they gave out instructions. 

The guy I was sitting on, his legs were trembling so much I could feel it over the engine’s vibrations.  The plane was climbing higher and higher, buildings looked like Lego’s.

The pilot threw some kind of wind indicator out the open door of the plane and told us it was “time.”  The first student had to go stand outside, while hanging onto the frame of the plane.  The instructor said, “Jump when I hit the back of your legs!”  And he did it.

Then it was my turn.  I was holding the frame of an airplane in my hands, standing outside of the plane, thousands of feet above the ground with the wind rushing past my face.  My brain had completely stopped functioning.  It was freaking insane.  I jumped.

We were attached to automatic rip cords, so there was no concern about remembering to pull anything.  What I was desperately trying to do was “fall like a leaf.”  If you tuck into a ball or do anything else wrong, you can start falling like a rock, which is bad.  The idea is to extend your arms and legs as wide as possible, making your body as big as possible, creating resistance against gravity, falling with your face looking directly at the ground.  You don’t want to get tangled in the parachute when it deploys.

I guess I did okay.  At least I didn’t pee or anything.  It was a bit of a rush and terrifying.

When the chute opened I was suddenly whipped upward at a fast rate of speed and everything changed.  Instead of falling, I was floating.  No more fear.  Floating was great, it just didn’t last long enough. 

The only problem was I didn’t know how to steer the parachute.  I never learned that technical detail.  So instead of falling on my mark, I fell into a mud field.  I got stuck in a mud field.  People had to come and pull me out, I was so stuck.  My feet were so deep in the mud that the borrowed boots I was wearing were ruined, filled to the brim.

In other words, even though I jumped from a plane just so no one would be annoyed with me, I still managed to piss off my girlfriend Joyce whose boots were now unwearable.  It’s completely impossible to please everyone.

The whole event was quite a memorable experience, falling from the sky with the mountains of Oregon in the background.  I received a “Pass” for the class, since it was a “Pass/Fail” kind of deal, no grades.  I never did meet any guys.

I only learned to assert myself & speak up after I had children, several years later.  Some lessons take longer than others.

I don’t anticipate jumping from any more airplanes during this lifetime.