Skydiving Lessons

Decades ago I took skydiving lessons. I was the only female in the class. I had a friend who was an accomplished skydiver and he encouraged me to do the training. This was not high tech stuff — I practiced jumping off a wooden picnic table and landing squarely on both feet. I learned to barrel roll, I focused on maintaining situational awareness. I learned to pack my own chute, though I would have felt better if the instructor had done it for me.

“Are you out of your mind?” Friends would ask me. “You’re going to do what?”

My instructor wore a knee brace and had a bad back, but he skydived regularly. “I’m kind of nervous,” I told him.

“Name it,” he said.

Naming the fear was supposed to get it out in the open so you could deal with it.

“Uh, that would be my early death at nineteen.”

He nodded.

I had two more lessons before my first jump. I liked the word jump, rather than hurling myself out of a small plane completely alone and unprotected. Then the news came… a new skydiver had landed in a field where cows were grazing. Let’s just say the cow the diver fell on was not amused. All the training, all the This is what you do in an emergency if you need to deploy the reserve parachute, This is what you do if ____ (fill in the blank). None of my training, NONE OF IT, ever mentioned what you do if you land on livestock.

My friend said, “You’re not a quitter.” But I now had a question mark, a large cow-sized one hanging like cloud cover over my courage. My confidence had splintered, I didn’t want to wimp out, I didn’t want to let people down, I had to make a decision. I said, No. I never went back.

I wonder, of course, if I should have done it. What would I have become? You fall off the horse, you get back on, but let us not forget — the horse is on the ground. Nonetheless, the training has stayed with me. There are worse things than learning to land well on your feet 69% of the time. And thanks to my vivid imagination, I got an early lesson in risk management as I quickly defined extreme challenges, assessed dangers, and considered possible action steps:

> What if a gaggle of crabby geese flying in V formation suddenly appeared in the sky as I was floating down? How could I earn their trust while I was having a panic attack?

>What if a tornado suddenly appeared and I hung there helpless in the threatening sky? Of course, tornados usually show up when the sky looks grim, but we’re talking concepts here.

>Do I have the right personality for this sport? Be very very honest.

I’m content these days with taking most of my risks in print, though I do look at cows differently than most people, and when I see a picnic table, I resist the urge to show off — especially now that I’m much older. But the greatest gift was deciding it was okay to walk away. Not everything has to be finished. Sometimes a thing is over sooner than we expect. Courage isn’t always pushing through, but saying: Know what? This is as far as I care to go.

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