The Skydiving Surprise

There I was, sweating enough to replenish the world’s oceans twice over, sitting across the table from the most adventurous person I had ever met. Let’s call her Ava—because that was her name—and she’d just suggested we head for something “spontaneous” after dinner. Now, when someone says “spontaneous” on a date, I’m thinking coffee shop poetry reading, perhaps roller skating. But this was Ava, whose list of thrills practically included wrestling tornadoes for sport. “Skydiving,” she chirped, eyes sparkling like they’d just been polished with toothpaste.

My instinct was to bolt, preferably before dessert had a chance to arrive. Imagine my horror, though, as she interpreted my silence as frozen enthusiasm. “You’re gonna love it!” she promised, as if I hadn’t just moaned that my idea of an adrenaline rush was getting through airport security without being patted down.

But being a man of wit, charm, and what was rapidly escalating into desperation, I figured, why not? How hard could it be to duck out gracefully? After all, I had ducked out of plenty of uncomfortable situations before—like that time I volunteered to do a magic show at a children’s party without actually ever having practiced magic.

Cut to Act Two: I’m in the parking lot of the local skydiving center, which looks suspiciously like a haunted house dressed up as an industrial shed. Oh, the whimsy! “You only live once!” Ava exclaimed, pointing to a sign that might as well have been a health warning for the height-averse like myself.

My brain, busy calculating “die of embarrassment” vs. “die of height-induced trauma,” didn’t even catch the fact that I’d nodded in agreement. Next thing I knew, a burly instructor with arms like baked hams was ushering us both into the prep room, all while I ambled helplessly like a sunflower in a breeze. The harnesses mocked me from the corners of the room, untangled, unlike my nerves which were more looped than a toddler’s attempt at bowl-fold origami.

“First time?” the instructor asked, clearly relishing the fresh meat that’d sauntered in. My fervent “Never in a million years” was heard by precisely no one because Ava, ever the conversational steamroller, replied, “He’s excited!” Was I, now? I might have missed that memo somewhere beneath my mounting existential crisis.

All my internally rehearsed Dr. Phil pep talks abandoned ship as the instructor began a whirlwind of jingoistic gibberish about ripcords, parachutes, and the thrilling hollow of free-falling through the sky. I sat there much like a block of cheese—no thoughts, just existential nausea.

But Ava, oh Ava, was a picture of calm and encouragement, tapping away at the Instagram possibilities of our impending plummet. “It’ll be like flying,” she soothed, likely unaware that her words, while poetic, only amplified my fears of becoming a human pancake on the runway.

Finally, with a stoicism rivaling ice sculptures, I mumbled, “Let’s try it,” already compiling an index of future excuses. But as we approached the actual jumping-off point, and the altitude didn’t just suggest but downright screamed how impractical and ungraceful this idea was, I knew it was too late.

Facing the wild blue yonder of doom, this date was about to become unforgettable in the worst way possible. Ava clutched my hand, her confidence practically contagious—which is to say, like every winter cold I’ve ever caught. In the face of impending airborne disaster, I accepted my fate, yet still plotted a graceful exit—or at the very least, a dignified plummet.

As the plane climbed, I found myself involuntarily mimicking a giant human-shaped stress ball, each squeeze a futile attempt to pop back to the ground. The cabin reverberated with the sound of the engine, Ava’s excited chatter, and my silent prayers to whatever skydiving gods were out there, likely laughing themselves breathless at my predicament.

Ava, meanwhile, was bouncing in her seat like a caffeinated jackrabbit, gushing about the freedom of the sky. She clearly relished this ninety-seconds of insanity, her enthusiasm output matching the plane’s rapidly ascending altitude. How did she not feel the gravitational betrayal at risking one’s existence for a few seconds of, let’s face it, utter madness?

I was pondering the likeliest statistical outcomes of disaster when the instructor turned to us with a grin that radiated either sheer joy or sheer insanity. I hadn’t determined which. “You ready?” he bellowed over the drone of the engine, as if we were simply preparing to stroll across the carpet to a different room and not dangle from the clouds like bewildered bats.

Ava screamed, “Absolutely!” with a fist pump, while my lips muttered a treasonous “Sure,” completely bypassing my brain’s panicked “No!”

Now let’s get one thing straight—stepping out of a plane is not a stepping action at all. It’s rather like being coaxed off a very high diving board by someone you hardly trust with shoelaces, much less with the contents of your lungs and bladder once you’re airborne. “Just lean forward and fall,” the instructor relayed, cementing the absurdity of this particular Tuesday night excursion.

The door slid open, and the sky—and all its disconcerting emptiness—rushed at me with the vigor of an over-eager puppy. I was acutely aware of being tethered to both Ava and the instructor, who seemed less like a lifeline and more like a cheesily dressed dispatcher of doom.

“1, 2, 3, jump!” he called, resilient against my what I could only presume were evident escape efforts. And just like that, out we went! The rush was like being shot from a cannon, every cell of my being stimulating me on a meaningless journey to the heart of what could only be described as manic frivolity.

The world fell away, dwindling into a patchwork quilt, every object far below taking its proper place in the category of things to be avoided hitting at high velocity. Somewhere mid-plunge, I found the breath to scream, contributing what I presumed was a basso wail to Ava’s soprano shriek of delight—a perfect duet of lunacy echoing across the windy canvas of the stratosphere.

Plummeting through the layers of air, pasty-face glued to profound inevitability, I found a strange kind of freedom. But don’t misinterpret; it was the kind of freedom that made you appreciate carpets, not clouds. The kind that has you mentally rehearse your best-ever “I-was-just-kidding” apology speech to gravity.

Even with the parachute opening—an event akin to suddenly being yanked from one mistake in fashion into another—I experienced the chaotic ballet of mixed emotions, buoyed along by the absurdity of life choices. And of this particular date choice.

As we floated down like misguided leaves, gravity bemusedly inviting us back to earth, I realized Ava was the kind of person who didn’t just live life on the edge—she regularly jumped right off it. And though every sensible fiber of my being wanted to reprimand every other fiber for agreeing to this airborne abomination, a tiny part of me felt… exhilarated? It demanded both glory and French fries in equal measure for enduring this aerial escapade.

At last, we hit the ground with a thump that I swear resounded from kingdom come. Ava seemed entirely unfazed—ecstatic, even—as bubbles of laughter sprouted from her. Myself? My legs were wobbling like strands of spaghetti that’d been boiled a few seconds too long. Yet somewhere in the ridiculous experience we now shared, something profound-ish had snapped into place—or had just snapped, period.

She turned to me, radiant as a care-free maniac, and asked, “Would you do it again?” I considered, caught between the windswept thrill and the hijacked hysteria of it all, ready to craft my answer.

Ava’s question hung in the air like a Frisbee defying physics, spinning slowly, daring me to catch it but praying it didn’t smack me in the face. “Would I do it again?” I mused, borrowing time through investigatory blinks as I righted myself back into civilization’s gravity-hugging teddy bear embrace.

High on adrenaline and marginally rooted sanity, I managed to cobble together a reply that didn’t broadcast pure terror. “Maybe… under certain conditions,” I stammered, with all the confidence of a DJ whose record just scratched in a room full of doubters. Ava beamed—grading my non-committal enthusiasm as if a decision to skydive freely and willingly again were merely a term paper in Charm 101.

We ambled back toward the skydiving center amidst echoes of genuine laughter, the breeze whispering blissful nonsense in our ears. And this, my friends, is the moment fate decided to really deliver its surprise package—the universe knocking at my cerebral door with a knowingly wrapped box of irony handbags.

Around the corner, standing by the ultimate “I joined this club” board, was an impressively aged gentleman. He was perhaps closer to decomposing entirely than I was to visiting the Cretaceous Period. He looked like he’d crash-landed straight out of a time memory dedicated entirely to black-and-white television, clutching a photo. Of a younger version of himself, skydiving.

“How was it?” he croaked, voice as leathery as a cowboy’s saddle.

I considered. Options such as “horrifying,” “life-altering,” and “I now require a comforting presence and several calming teas,” filtered through my mind. But as the words tethered, they failed to stick. His eyes glinted with that mischievous glimmer people acquire when privy to life’s infinite carousel of pratfalls. So what else could I say?

“It was amazing. Life-changing, really.” Maybe even honest. Glaringly honest.

He nodded knowingly as though skydiving was to him a quaint reminiscence, akin to reading the morning newspaper with a steaming cup of… you know, vague satisfaction. Our acquaintance nodded a farewell, transporting himself through a drift of stratospheric smiles, leaving Ava and I staring at his back.

Call it an epiphany shrouded in the buzzing drop of plausibility from atop my inner tower of life’s discomforts. Translucent wisps of realization fraternized in the pits of my sanity, enlightening me in ways only a planetary shift—or manual dive—could.

And that’s exactly when it clicked. The ground opening below me—not horror-wise this time, but opportunity-wise. Opportunity enough for a final fledgling mental flourish.

“I’ve got an idea,” I declared with unexpected gusto, suddenly finding my adventure-themed compass thrumming. Ava turned, and I’ll be honest—I’m quite convinced the look she gave me could have melted all the functional parts of my being.

An awe-inspiring, ocean-surf smile radiated from her, clutching her heart as though it had just experienced a musical crescendo fit for Broadway. “What is it?”

“Let’s make this date even wilder,” I proposed. Not one to slander such foolish notions, my mind hypnotically corralled experience-based bravado from the deepest reservoirs of idiot-infused memory. “You’ve heard of indoor skydiving, right?”

There I was, standing on the threshold of true epiphany, contemplating why we earthly-bound creatures delight so readily in entombing ourselves in skydiving suits.

This, my friends, this exertion of truth-in-glory riddled with idiocy found Ava thrilled beyond measure. Contortions of merry madness flinging themselves betwixt my calmer overtones of peaceability. That’s how we caught ourselves, palm in nervous palm, ready to leap inside humanity’s equivalent of the teeming void—a motion-sensing machine—as eyes filled with untarnished joy at all that lay beyond.

***

Fast forward a few hours—welcome to the Inner Sanctum of Madness, also known as the indoor skydiving center. Ava and I were dress rehearsing what could only be classified as our party pieces for the Flying Circus: jumpsuits in neon obnoxiousness and goggles that transformed our faces into tropical fish. Here we were, ankles deep in an absurdity carnival, banking on the reassurance that indoor flying would be exponentially less traumatic than its authentic counterpart.

The wind tunnel was a glass cylinder of experiences with machinery below bearing a shocking resemblance to an overcaffeinated desk fan. I mentally chided myself for previously dismissing pamphlets espousing adventurous nonsense, usually left unopened in dental waiting rooms.

Our soothsayer instructor, this one presumably rated with a more stable electroencephalogram, assured us that we’d be airborne in mere minutes. He rattled off instructions as if we weren’t embedded in reality’s vehicular horror show and nodding like intellectual bobbling ornamentals on our familial dashboards.

Just before takeoff, a fleeting glance at Ava nearly reworked gravity. Her eyes bore that spark that rendered even quantum physics feasible. Her earlier buoyancy persisted, broadcasting positivity that verged on infectious. That’s when the existential penny dropped, clanging against the copper planes of my tepid conformity. It wasn’t about the leap—either upward or horizontal—it was about the sharing.

“Flying is falling without the inconvenient thud,” the instructor griped, bolstered by every morbidly intellectual comedian ever to preside within the standing room. His words inexplicably emboldened me into a misplaced calm. Or acceptance. Hard to say. Let’s call it a cocktail of benign surrender laced with foolish optimism.

Ava eagerly positioned herself first; how on earth our flights path conspired without bodily confusion is anyone’s guess. With elegance and streamline poise equivalent to an undisciplined penguin, she elevated, majestic as calamities unfolded around her. There she floated, graceful as you’d expect a rocket propelled bird to look, while I stood below, still grounded with warming envy marching steadily toward an indescribable euphoria. Pure comedy in motion.

Now my turn: Into the calibrated abyss! As they held me horizontal and unleashed the fan’s primal force, my body shot upward as gravity relented, freeing me from the mortal coil. Limbs flailed like linguine in zero-G, my face arrested and sculpted by currents of air.

Imagine a synchronized dining room mishap, plastic plates levitating ever so briefly before clamoring. I executed each wobble with the accuracy of a malfunctioning sprinkler system. Superb control, if uncontrolled bewilderment were the goal.

What joy! What folly infused with hints of self-empowerment! The ecstasy of shared madness. Ava howled encouragement as I wobbled my way skyward, exposed as the amateur flying spectacle I inevitably was. Wonderment. Chaos. Discovery wrapped in whimsical pandemonium as I all but fluttered.

Finally, after multiple clockwork rotations and lopsided spins that heralded the world’s least coordinated top, I descended, unceremoniously greeting solid ground once more. Standing there, chest swelling with improbable triumph, mutual joviality restored to the universe’s absurdities—Ava and I celebrated the successes engraved within our cotton candy, sunshine-streaked flaws.

In the aftermath, infused by the veil of newly concocted camaraderie, we exited the wind tunnel lighter than when we had met, our conqueror crowns invisible, but felt by all in attendance.

“Not too shabby, huh?” Ava inquired with an intimacy born from shared adventure, quirking a sunny smile my way—one of sheer mischievous audacity that prompted slow-burning possibilities.

“Not too shabby,” I agreed, emboldened by the thrill of allowing deliberate, unreasonable courage to influence reality, even if only tangentially.

As we tumbled into the moon’s glow that night, shallow breaths harmonizing our laughter, our utterly spontaneous and ridiculous soiree shimmered through benighted cylinders and swirled between infinite pinprick stars. And for that brief intermission from mortal hiccups, clutched by transformation’s wingspan, the wonders borne from skydive to skybound interchange seemed timeless, infinitesimal, and gloriously endless.

In an exploratory world drawn momentarily still and big-time spectacular, life entreated us the fairest of gifts—the gift of genuine wonder—and the unchartable flight from fear to courage.