Button I Went Skydiving
Skydiving: My Story Of Impressing A Boy
Everyone thinks that skydiving is some fun and exhilarating experience. Well, I'm here to tell you it was one of the worst moments of my life.
I had just turned 18 and my then boyfriend really wanted to go skydiving, and for some ridiculous reason he thought we should do it together as some type of bonding experience. Right there, I should have known that this dude wasn't a keeper. However, I was young and he was hot, so I agreed.
He did some "research" on where we would go, but I'm pretty sure that just consisted of typing it into Google and click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. And so, just a couple of days later, we were off to Fargo, ND to go skydiving.
We get to the facility and of course the person running everything has just the most ridiculous name...Turbo. Yes, he went by the name Turbo. Yet another sign that skydiving really isn't something I should be doing. However, one quick glance at the guy I was with, and I was all in for the experience.
Now, I'm not sure if you've every been skydiving before, but in general there are two different ways you can do it. There is tandem skydiving, which is where an instructor is strapped to your back and they pretty much do everything for you. The other way is called AFF, which stands for accelerated free fall. Logically, a normal person going on their first jump would chose the tandem jumping, but let's face it, there was nothing logical about this entire experience. Alas, we chose to go with the AFF which meant we would be jumping out on our own, however an instructor would follow us out and watch us to make sure everything was going as it should.
Little did we know, AFF required some extra work. We had to watch these stupid videos and learn different hand signals to communicate with the instructor while we were plummeting back towards the Earth. All in all, I was far too nervous to listen to anything that was going on.
Finally, the time came to strap on our parachutes and head to the plane. I remember walking to this old rickety looking plane and seeing all of the people packing into it to go jumping. Know, again, I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but their aren't many limitations on who can and can't go skydiving. Needless to say, you do not have to be in great shape to jump out of a plane. So I'm walking up to the plane and most immediate concern isn't about jumping out of the plane, at this point, I'm just hoping the plane gets off the ground. The parachute strapped to my back won't do me any good if we don't get off the ground and end up in a fireball at the end of the runway.
But, alas, we get off the ground and start climbing to our jumping altitude. Turbo is standing next to me and he's counting out the elevation, "5, 000 feet...6, 000 feet, 7, 0000 feet...", all the way up to 15, 000 feet. We get to our altitude and people are just jumping out of the plane like it's no ones business. Then it comes up to my boyfriend and my turn. He looks at me with this stupid grin on his face and I could just tell this would probably be one of the best things that ever happened to him...which really should have been another sign that I could do better than him. He steps up to the ledge and his instructor counts back from three and he just goes for it.
By Nancy Parker -
The Drop Zone - Sky Diving @Perth
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