You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Pushing your fear to the back of your throat and doing something you brain says you shouldn’t.
I remembered back to the day that I made my first bungee jump.
From the ground it didn’t look so high. As the sounds of the fair chimed all around me, and the swirl of cotton candy filled the air, I watched as a kaleidoscope of humanity stood on the platform and lept.
While I watched, not one person died. While I watched, not one gigantic rubber band snapped. While I watched, no one face planted into the dirt infield of the Pitt County N.C. Fairgrounds.
“Go for it Cordan,” Someone hollered from the periphery. I smiled. “What are you afraid.?”
Man you can say a lot of things to me, but please don’t accuse me of being afraid. Like a red cape to a bull, the words are fire in my ears. Something churns inside my brain like gumbo simmering on a slow burn.
I grimace a nasty sneer at the guy and push my self toward the ominous man made tower.
As I begin climbing the stairs, it hits me. This son of a bitch is a lot higher than it looks from the ground.
I am later told that this steel edifice is approximately150 feet high.
I am not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of a big ass rubber band, strapped to my legs, snapping and my face hitting the dirt at a thousand miles an hour. I have a pretty face, and dirt faced enemas are not what I signed up for.
I get to the top of the platform slightly winded. It’s there that I meet the ride operator, who is little more than a untrustworthy miscreant, a Carney with a criminal record. He has greasy hair, and a pony tail tied tightly behind his head. He has a tear drop tattoo on a stubbled cheek. His eyes are black and hollow. This is the man who begins telling me about safety.
I barely listen as I see that son of a bitch on the ground who waved the red cape, daring me to climb the tower.
“I’m up here now you sorry S.O.B.,” I think to myself. “And where are you? On the ground with the rest of the common people.”
He looked like an insignificant ant going buzzing around aimlessly from this height.
The convict is still talking to me about the strap and the safety of the bungee cord as he wraps my ankles and tugs on the device several times.
“Feels secure to me,” he says with a chuckle.
I look at his stupid convict face. I see flashes of evil and deception. Sadly, I can channel these images in people.
Is that the chuckle you used in the prison shower during the gang rapes, I think to myself.
I muster a grin and wonder to myself why I am letting a Carney who led a prison riot secure my bungee cord, the only tether to this world and the next.
What if it breaks?
That’s going to be a great interview at the end of the day when I’m laying in the dirt like peanut buttered chum.
“I don’t know what happened. It seemed fine at the top of the tower,” the misguided, befuddled carnival worker will tell reporters.
That’s the quote the news stations will use with the slow motion picture of a white sheet covering my pretzel ass body, bathed in swirling blue police lights.
Nice!
“Now on to weather.”
And just like that, I am yesterday’s news. Just another dumb ass who took a challenge and failed.
With the heavy, thick cord strapped around my ankles, I shuffle to the edge of the platform. The world is swimming like mucous frying in a hot pan. I can see the forests of North Carolina stretching on for miles. I can see a beautiful sunset fading into the ether of approaching night. I can hear the carnival chimes of a child’s ride below me. I scan the crowd for a familiar face.
As I make my peace with God I listen to the growing chants of JUMP JUMP JUMP.
“Ok boy,” the Carney says in a who gives a shit kind of voice. “Time to go!”
I feel like grabbing him by the arm, leaping off and see how bad ass he is then.
I fight this sudden urge of crazy and refocus on the ground below.
I summon up the courage of insanity that seems to pulse through my veins.
“Dear God. I know that I have a greater purpose on the third rock from the sun, than to die in a palpable goo in a carnival ride fraught with department of commerce violations. Please let the rubber band catch before the ground punches me in the face.”
I inhale deeply and let out a war whoop. WHOOOOOOOOO!
My voice seems to carry on an air current of crazy, blasting into birds at a nearby rock quarry. They scatter, not knowing what the hell just hit them.
And with that, I push off and let whatever is going to happen, happen.
It’s a moment I will never forget. For an instant, frozen in time, I am a flying stud of who gives a damn. I am once again pushing myself to do things I shouldn’t do. I am challenging conventional wisdom and normal impulses and jumping off a perfectly good platform.
If I’m going out in a body bag, let’s go out in style I think in my moment of crazy.
I push my arms outward in a death defying swan dive that makes citizens on the ground shudder.
It was an intense three second ride that pushed my colon up into my esophagus. It was scary and exciting.
I was racing through an envelope of intensity while pondering life’s silliest nuances. Wind and world were rushing at me at the speed of sound. My eyes filled with moisture and my jowls shook from the rush of air and adrenaline lathering my skin.
As I plummeted to earth like a stone through the sky, I thought about my family. I thought about my job. I thought about that girl I took the high school prom.
My mouth was forced open, swelling like a blow fish from the gravitational friction of the rushing wind.
I saw the ground rushing at me. It was crazy insane. The ants were becoming people. I could make out tiny bursts of carnival music through the rushing wind.
Then I felt it.
That moment when GRAVITY AND FRICTION kick each other in the scrotum.
Einstein theorized that any object in motion tends to stay in motion unless some other force acts upon it. In that moment I was a human physics experiment.
Gravity wanted to crush my head against the ground like a walnut being smashed on a blacksmith’s anvil.
But the elastic band wrapped around my ankles wanted to break that vector, and rapidly decelerate my death plunge.
I felt my ankles grow tight, as the battle between earth and bungee cord was waged. I had no voice in who would win. I could only pray.
My prayers were answered. The elastic properties of the band rapidly began absorbing my momentum. Suddenly I was not falling anymore. The pressure on my ankles was intense. I felt blood filling the capillaries in my eyes. Then…
WOOOSHHHH.
Like a champagne cork being blasted on New Year’s Eve, I was rocketing back to the platform.
The blood was rushing to my head in a monsoon of energized plasma. I was a cork on a turbulent sea of air, contorting like a molecule heated in a laboratory beaker. As gravity once again took control in this crazy science experiment, I came to a complete stop, in mid air.
I was about 20 feet below the platform from which I had just lept. In that frozen moment in time, contorted like a fetus in a tightly wound womb, I saw the Carney.
That son of a bitch was smoking a cigarette. He looked like the anti-Christ smiling demonically at me.
It was a frightening moment, when I think I met the devil, and for whatever reason, it was not my time to die.
Then Gravity grabbed me again and began pulling me back toward the ants.
This Bungee ride lasted only a few seconds, but the memories and sensations will last a life time.
When I returned to the ground, the guy who challenged me slapped me on the back.
“Great Swan Dive dude!”
His smile was sincere.
I smiled back. This time my smile was sincere as well.
I felt a sense of strange pride as I stood there bathed in the glow of bad carnival music and fluorescent lights.
My advice: if you have an opportunity to give life a kick in the balls, go for it. you never know if you’ll ever get that chance again.