Well, that was fun. Yay.

by Posted on

I think it’s true. Every time I have some sort of expec­ta­tion that some­thing will be good, it’s bound to dis­ap­point. This for­mu­la was put to the test today when I got pushed out of an air­plane at 18,000 feet.

Yeah, nice ride and all. But after all the build-up, come on. Bet­ter than sex? Get real. It changes your life? Um. Well, so does a cup of cof­fee. You leave all your fears behind? Not hardly.

First of all, I was nev­er afraid. Or more to the point, I was nev­er afraid of the jump. I trust­ed the instruc­tor and I trust­ed the equip­ment. I enter­tained some fan­tasies about dying on the way down, but I nev­er actu­al­ly thought it was even in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty. I was more afraid of not doing some­thing right and being revealed as fool­ish or stu­pid. I actu­al­ly thought that dying because the chute would­n’t open or because the har­ness broke would be not a bad way to go: free-fall the whole way down and have it over with quick­ly and pain­less­ly? Sounds like a great way to go.

Maybe it’s that most peo­ple don’t go through any sort of life-threat­en­ing expe­ri­ences to find out that they can face fear? Maybe I don’t have the kind of fear that one gets from falling out of an airplane?

When I was 20 a room­mate who was not tak­ing her Lithi­um attacked me with a butch­er knife. That day I learned some­thing about myself. I flinch at loud nois­es; I’d always assumed that I’d freeze like a deer in the head­lights if some kind of threat pre­sent­ed. Instead, I dis­armed her with­out think­ing about it. My own abil­i­ty to act took me more by sur­prise than the assault did.

When a 13-year-old jumped me as I was rid­ing my bicy­cle, which knocked me down and broke my thumb, I did­n’t run. I got up and faced him, more bewil­dered than any­thing. When he punched me and shout­ed obscen­i­ties, I knew he could­n’t pick up my bike and take it away with­out leav­ing him­self open to an attack. I stood him off until he backed away, then took my bike and left him there.

So I guess I already knew that I could over­come fear­ful sit­u­a­tions and I did­n’t need to spend $330 hav­ing myself video­taped look­ing goofy being asked dumb ques­tion like “how do you feel?”

I guess what I’m dis­ap­point­ed in most­ly is that I was expect­ing a fix. I want­ed a rush, a drug, some­thing to make be whole and make me bet­ter. Instead I fell from the air­plane, looked around at the beau­ti­ful scenery, had a nice lit­tle roller-coast­er ride, and land­ed. The thing is, I want my fear tak­en away from me. I’m still a con­stant­ly fear­ful indi­vid­ual. I’m afraid of peo­ple and afraid of fail­ure and even more afraid of suc­cess. Every­one has told me that after jump­ing from an air­plane, you have noth­ing to be afraid of. Well, it did­n’t work. There aren’t any short­cuts. Or at least sky­div­ing isn’t one of them. I want­ed to be drunk on adren­a­line, to lose myself in fear, to have some sort of trans­for­ma­tive experience.

I wish I had­n’t ordered the pho­tos and the video­tape. I guess I’ll have them to send to rel­a­tives or what­ev­er, but it seems like a waste. I was embar­rassed to have the cam­era near me and I don’t think I said any­thing even remote­ly worthwhile.

Oh, I did find a bro­ken cog on the ground that looks real­ly cool. Made me won­der how it broke and what it was used for.

Some Weird Sin—Iggy Pop

Published by splicer

13 Replies to “Well, that was fun. Yay.”

  1. I went sky­div­ing a num­ber of
    I went sky­div­ing a num­ber of years ago. It was OK. I’m glad I did it, just cause it felt like I was con­quer­ing my fear of heights (sor­ta). Unfor­tu­nate­ly the straps that ran through my legs were too tight and by the time we got to the ground I was about to pass out because my cir­cu­la­tion had been cut off. I looked stu­pid on my video tape as well. 

    I have a friend who’s in NA — used to do a lot of coke — then switched to speed. Then final­ly start­ed going to meet­ings again when he felt like he was going crazy. In between his coke and speed days he would go sky­div­ing. He was work­ing hard towards solo­ing, but they would­n’t let him because he always looked so ragged and he’d always for­get some­thing. They were hap­py to take his mon­ey and fly him down tan­dem, but even­tu­al­ly he tired of spend­ing all that cash to go jump out of a plane when it was obvi­ous that they weren’t going to let him go solo.

    Any­way, he got some kind of rush out of it, but was even­tu­al­ly pret­ty dis­ap­point­ed. I thought it was a good thing to do, but I don’t want to do it again.

    Who did you go with?

  2. Well..
    I’m glad you’re ok.
    Well..

    I’m glad you’re ok. 

    And after read­ing this, I’m sor­ry it was­n’t what you thought. But maybe the find­ings aren’t in a jump or some­thing exter­nal.. per­haps the answer lies with­in your­self. Do an inter­nal sky dive!

    -smiles-

  3. Yeah, I think the les­son
    Yeah, I think the les­son here is that relief and peace comes from deal­ing wit life on life’s terms, not search­ing for anoth­er amuse­ment park distraction.

  4. Yeah, I’ve got some
    Yeah, I’ve got some uncom­fort­able chaf­ing from the experience.

    All in all, I’d say that sky­div­ing is way safer than speed or coke. Anoth­er rea­son I failed to “face my fears” today. I cer­tain­ly got a big­ger dose of that get­ting up to speak in front of 150 peo­ple on Saturday.

    I went with a woman from work and two of her friends from her oth­er job. So yeah, I also got a big­ger dose of fac­ing my fears by rid­ing in the car with three attrac­tive young women than jump­ing ever could have.

  5. I thought sky­div­ing was
    I thought sky­div­ing was calm, peace­ful, and relax­ing. Not the adren­a­line rush I thought it would be, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

    Fly­ing trapeze — now that’s some­thing that gave me a rush. I got so drunk on the adren­a­line that I could bare­ly walk or take the clips off the safe­ty har­ness. But I think that kind of rush only hap­pens when you’re scared. Going through the air isn’t scary, it was the antic­i­pa­tion that scared me. You have to hang out off the plat­form and trust that the per­son hold­ing you from behind has a good grip on your belt. I real­ly felt real­ly great when I per­formed the catch (swing for­ward, hang on you knees, stretch your arms out and let some­one catch you). I was so pleased.

    So I got more of a thrill out of that than sky­div­ing. But I think you have to be scared in the first place.

  7. HEY!!!!!!!!!
    So I told you
    HEY!!!!!!!!!

    So I told you it was­n’t bet­ter than sex. At least not sex with me. Maybe you should have gone sky­div­ing before…ok, stop RIGHT there. Just kidding.

    So my take on it was this:

    When I went skydiving…I was told it would be bet­ter than sex. Appar­ent­ly they had bad sex. In fact, I pur­pose­ly set up one of the hottest sex­u­al expe­ri­ences I had ever had the DAY before, so as to not dis­ap­point myself with sky­div­ing one day and sex the next. The sex was by far better. 

    The expe­ri­ence for me was fun. I’m total­ly gonna go again. I did do it to over­come a fear of heights, but also to prove to myself I was badass. I’m still afraid of heights and I’m still a big ol’ softy at heart. 

    And if you’ve seen the way I dri­ve, you’d know that my dri­ving is far more dan­ger­ous than sky­div­ing. I love my video though. I had fun. Any­way, sor­ry it let you down. My motto:

    Expect the best, but be pre­pared for the worst. Helps me not to be dis­ap­point­ed by much in life.

    It is one of those things to check of the list of things to do before I die…I did it. So did you.

  9. I’m try­ing to come up with a
    I’m try­ing to come up with a smar­tass com­ment about whether you’re try­ing to help his sales fig­ures, but it’s not com­ing together.

    Good tim­ing, though. I just fin­ished House of Sand and Fog and I need anoth­er book to read oth­er than the stack of “to-read” books I’ve been avoid­ing. I need to fig­ure out whether to go buy it today or wait until pay­day comes through some­time in the next week. Or maybe the Library has it.

  11. OK, I guess I’ll buy it. It
    OK, I guess I’ll buy it. It looks like all the copies have been stolen from the pub­lic library.

    Tell him to start pub­lish­ing his books dig­i­tal­ly. I send all my read­ing mon­ey to PalmDigitalMedia.com nowa­days. I know, that’s heresy for a typophile like myself, but most paper­backs and even hard­bound edi­tions these days have such crap­py typog­ra­phy it does­n’t matter.

    God, I’m a grump today.

  13. If I ever get around to
    If I ever get around to read­ing The DaVin­ci Code it’ll be dig­i­tal. I hate being seen on the bus read­ing the same book every­one else is reading. 

    I’ve been read­ing Gib­son and Stephen­son on the Palm, and just fin­ished House of Sand and Fog, which I thought refresh­ing­ly well-writ­ten. maybe refresh­ing only because the last thing I read before that was a hor­ren­dous­ly bad Star Trek nov­el. My copy of Cov­ey’s 7 Habits is dig­i­tal, as is my NRSV Bible and my only dic­tio­nary (Web­ster’s Third New Inter­na­tion­al Dic­tio­nary, Unabridged it’s no OED, but it’s nice to have in my pocket).

    The selec­tion is not good enough that I can assume that what­ev­er I want will be avail­able digitally—they’ve got a long way to go before we’re even close there—but it’s good enough that I can usu­al­ly find some­thing good to read and not kill trees in the process.

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