Take the plunge - part one

                          TAKE THE PLUNGE – GLORIA EMERSON – PART ONE

It was usually men who asked me why I did it. Some were amused, others puzzled. I didn’t mind the jokes in the newspaper office where I worked about whether I left the building by window, roof or in the elevator. The truth is that I was an unlikely person to jump out of an airplane, being neither graceful, daring nor self-possessed, I had a bad back, uncertain ankles and could not drive with competence because of deficient depth perception and a fear of all buses coming toward me. A friend joked that if I broke my bones I would have to be shot because I would never mend.

I never knew why I did it. It was in May, a bright and dull May, the last May that made me want to feel reckless. But there was nothing to do then at the beginning of a decade that changed almost everything. I could not wait that May for Sixties to unroll. I worked in women’s news; my stories came out like little cookies. I wanted to be brave about something, not just about love, or a root canal, or writing that the shoes at Arnold Constable looked strangely sad.

Once I read of men who had to run so far it burned their chests to breathe. But I could not run very far. Jumping from a plane, which required no talent or endurance, seemed perfect. I wanted to feel the big, puzzling lump on my back that they promised was a parachute, to take serious strides in the absurd black boots that I believed all generals wore.

I wanted all of it; the rising of a tiny plane with the door off, the earth rushing away, the plunge, the slap of the wind, my hands on the back straps, the huge curve of white silk above me, the drift through the space we call sky.

It looked pale green that morning I fell into it, not the baby blue I expected. I must have been crying; my cheeks were wet. Only the thumps of a wild heart made noise; I did not know how to keep it quiet.

That May, that May my mind was as clear as clay. I did not have the imagination to perceive the risks, to understand that if the wind grew nasty I might be electrocuted on hightension wires, smashed on a roof, drowned in water, hanged in a tree. I was sure nothing would happen, because my intentions were sos good, just as young soldiers start out certain of their safety because they know nothing.

Friends drove me to Orange, Massanchusetts, seventy miles west of Boston, for the opening of the first U.S. sports parachuting centre, where I was to perform. It was the creation, the passion, of a Princetonian and ex-Marine named Jacques Istel, who organized the first U.S. Jumping team in 1956. Parachuting was “as safe as swimming”, he kept saying, calling it the “world’s most stimulating and soul-satisfying sport”. His centre was for competitions and the teaching of skydiving. Instead of hurtling toward the earth, sky divers maintain a swan-dive position, using the air as a cushion to support them while they maneuver with leg and arm movements until the rip cord must be pulled.

Too be continue – part two

Here...Alas Mrose...the original contents by www.sensualityface.com or www.fairyage.com / describe with the help of Modern English Gloria Emerson