I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned before why I write. It’s less of an exercise in vanity and more of one of humility, as well as memory. The fact that it serves my id is a great by-product but not my primary reason.
My end goal, if you will, is that one day, when I’m dead and gone, my daughter will have something to remember me by. Granted, this may be more of a high-brow ideal than the contents of my stories can provide.
All the same, it’s my voice, and to the best of my recollection, it is the truth as I have experienced it.
I can’t say it started out this way. Initially, I started <quote>writing<unquote> aka blogging when Google bought Blogger and offered the free “Blog This” link on the Google Toolbar. I thought I’d give Blogger a second go-around. The first time was in the late ’90s, when Blogger was just starting out. I signed up for an account just after I read an article about how blogging was supposed to be “IT” on the ’net. I posted three paragraphs and ditched it. Being verbally handicapped — writing, especially when I didn’t have to, rated up there with anal warts and tick removal with a pair of wire snips.
But here I am, digging up stuff I thought I’d long forgotten. Stories, secrets, recipes, dirty laundry, and anything else that wakes up in my head and says, “Hey Mark, did you ever tell SoML about...?”
All of this being said, I offer up the latest memory du jour.
This is about one of those times I actually set out to make a memory. I was in my early twenties, I had ZERO responsibilities, and I was gleefully stupid. I wanted to do something I could impress women, and eventually my great-great-grandkids, with. After much forethought and careful consideration, I decided to take up skydiving.
Nowadays, that’s not such a monumental thing. You simply decide you want to jump, then strap somebody on your back who knows how and what to do with a parachute, and you hop in a plane. It’s little more than The Great Gasp at Six Flags.
When I learned to jump — this is when you roll your eyes and say something about walking to school barefoot in the snow, over broken glass — there was no such thing as tandem. No, I had to go through freakin’ Jump School. Hours of bust-ass training, parachute landing falls, and the ominous “...if your chute fails to open...” protocol being drilled into my skull.
After all of that training, I was better prepared to be a Special Ops combat soldier than at any other point in my life.
Anyway, after several hours of ground training, it was time for us — “us” being my brothers in fearless pursuit of our manhood — to “suit up.” Suiting up entailed dressing in a nylon suit and a ridiculous helmet. The suit, I figured, was to contain the contents of your colon if anxiety got the best of you. The helmet must’ve been a scoop for the guy who would have to go out and retrieve what was left of you “...if your chute fails to open...” and you hit the ground at 126 miles per hour and forget to bounce. The helmet was useless.
So I was suited up. I was in a nylon “bag” that was seven sizes too large for me and had a good-for-nothing bowl on my head. I looked like one of those idiot clowns from Cirque du Soleil. What I haven’t mentioned so far is that it was August. In Georgia. It was hell-hot. It was particularly, brutally hot that day.
Anyway... there was me, four other guys, and the Jump Master — the guy who trained us — waiting in the 104-degree heat, in our nylon outfit-bag uniforms and our brain scoops, waiting for the plane to land.
The plane finally touched down and pulled around for us to load up.
This is where the warning lights finally started flashing in my head. Mentally, I noted them and, through proper ground training, ignored them.
The plane was a little Cessna 172 that had been gutted of its interior, save for the bucket — literally — that the pilot was sitting on. The door to the plane had been reconditioned so that the hinge was on top and, at altitude, was supposed to get out of the way of the jumpers.
We ALL loaded into the plane. Then the plane powered up to full throttle, and it bumped and sputtered its way across the pasture. Finally, as we were closing in on the oaks at the end of the field, we left the ground, barely clearing the trees.
In what I recall as being the worst, most terror-filled twenty-five minutes of my life, we finally got to altitude: 13,500 feet. I guess it took forever because of the weight in the plane and the density, or lack thereof, of the hot summer air.
The pilot nodded to the Jump Master, signaling that we were over the drop zone. He unhitched the door, and it flung up and open. Seventy-five- to eighty-five-mile-an-hour winds blew in. I held on for dear life, fearing that my chute might open at any second and drag my upper torso — only — out of the plane. It was like what I imagine a hurricane to be like: extreme wind, extreme noise, and panic. Frenzied panic.
The Jump Master signaled to the first jumper and yelled, “ON THE STRUT!”
That was the jumper’s command to crawl out onto the strut that supported the wing and hold on until you were instructed to let go and freefall.
“DROP!”
And with that one syllable, that guy vanished. That part was, and still is, disturbing, and I don’t know why. I digress.
Then the Jump Master looked at the second jumper and yelled, “ON THE STRUT!”
Number two crawled over me, then scurried out onto the wing.
“DROP!”
And blink, he was gone.
The Jump Master then turned his attention to me and yelled, “ON THE STRUT!”
This is where things started getting foggy.
“JUMPER! ON THE STRUT! NOW!”
I looked him square in the eyes as if to say, “Gee, Mommy, will you get me a cup of milk? My dog’s name is Missy.”
He looked at me as if he was saying, “Dude, are you all right? You don’t look too good.”
Then he said again, louder, “JUMPER NUMBER THREE! ON THE STRUT!”
And with that command, my right hand reached into the wind, out the open door, and led my body to the strut.
At this point, I was in total sensory overload. My brain had just kissed me on the cheek, waved goodbye, and said, “Fuck this. I’ll see you on the ground. Good luck.” I was running on a brain-stem level of cognizance.
So I was hanging on the underside of the wing. My whole body was limp except for the steel grip I had on the strut. I... well, my body anyway, was flailing in the gale-force breeze like a sheet in the wind. My head was bouncing around like bubbles in a drain.
“DROP!”
I did nothing.
“JUMPER, DROP!” he ordered.
Still, I offered no response. I was paralyzed with fear.
“JUMPER NUMBER THREE... DROP NOW!” he screamed.
Finally, it registered that I needed to let go, and I did.
I can’t remember anything until the parachute opened and the voice of the lady who was going to talk me down came over the radio in my helmet — an angelic voice, for sure.
I blanked out.
No freefall, no memories for the great-grandkids, all of that time, effort, sweat, and money for nothing. I did get to see Stone Mountain, 30 miles or so off in the distance. That and the landing are about the only things I DO recall.
By far, this is the most intense fear I have ever experienced.
After everyone had landed safely, we met with the Jump Master for him to critique our jumps and sign our logbooks.
“I thought you had broken your neck,” he said to me as he was summing up my performance. “I ain’t ever seen anybody’s head move like that... You au-ight?”
To which I said, “Did YOU SEE MY LANDING? ON MY FEET! MAN, WHAT AN INCREDIBLE RUSH! I AM ON TOP... I... I RULE THE WORLD!”
Of course, later I was lauded as a brave, courageous “man amongst men” to everyone I shared the not-so-true version of the jump with. An American hero, without question.
Truth is... I wet my pants. Thankfully, I was covered in so much sweat that nobody ever figured it out.