Ridiculous Business

         I would like, before all is told and the reader has irrevocably branded me a fool, to say that in no way was any of this my idea.  I like to think of myself as a staid and reasonable sort of fellow, and as such, was naturally opposed to the entire thing.  It just isn’t a sensible business to go jumping out of airplanes whenever the mood strikes, but my wife has always been one to let her whims get the best of her.  I just wish that her whims didn’t get the best of me quite so often.
         I haven’t the faintest idea how she ever got the notion into her excitable grey head, or what the context could possibly have been that gave her the idea that skydiving was a respectable pursuit for a sixty-four year old woman.  It might have been our son, for I dare say he has inherited all of her enthusiasm and none of my own good sense.  When I get my hands on him I think I’ll give his enthusiasm a good talking to.
         Of course I didn’t take it seriously when she first mentioned it.  You can understand that, can’t you?  There are so many things that get mentioned in passing at the dinner table.  If I had gone to every Victorian-era Chamber Music performance that it had ever been suggested I go to, I daresay I would not have had the leisure to have a career at all.  It rarely takes more than a nod and a murmur to banish those ridiculous ideas from conversation ever again.  Why my nodding proved an ineffective defense against this ridiculous notion of skydiving, I wish I knew.  Perhaps this is God’s retribution for my blatant lack of Catholicism, but I really shouldn’t go into that if I’m ever going to get around to telling you how this foolishness came about.
         If you have any sense in you, you have not been skydiving yourself, so I’ll do my best to lend the idiocy a rational progression for the sake of your own comprehension. 
         For any form of skydiving to take place, the first and most necessary step is the corruption of one of the more gullible members of the family, in this case, my wife.  This corrupted member proceeds to spread the obsession, almost disease-like, throughout the more susceptible of her acquaintances until it has grown to a racket that even the immune cannot ignore.
         Once this lack of sense has managed to permeate itself through all tiers of the decision-making body, the family decides to go sky-diving for the birthday of the originally corrupted person.  Once the idea has progressed to this stage, it is far too late.  The idea must be allowed to run its course, for no medicine known to man is potent enough to counteract the forces now exerting their pull on that poor family.
         It was my misfortune to only gain appropriate appreciation of the danger as it reached this stage.  My efforts, though valiant, came far too late to do any good.  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to abuse that woman of an idea that has wormed its way into her head?
         But as I said, I am a sensible man, and I know enough to stop my arguing before it gets me into real trouble.  Oh if only I had known then, I was so far into real trouble that with all the ill-tempered words in my vocabulary I could not do worse to myself than my complacency already had.
         So I thought if I’m going to endure it, I might as well endure it bravely.  I thought if they let people my age skydive, then it must be at least mildly safe.  I even went so far as to consider the possibility of enjoying it.
         As if one can enjoy something like that.
         I will once again assume that you, as a responsible member of the populace, have never gone skydiving.  The concept itself is innocent enough.  Fifteen thousand feet does not sound extremely high, after all.  Those in the skydiving trade believe, and rightly so, that nobody takes a distance measured in feet very seriously.  If it was anything significant they would measure it in miles, surely.
         This notion, however, is blown out of you rather quickly.  The very moment, in fact, that you glimpse just exactly how far a distance measured in feet can be.  My wife seemed to find the idea of a three mile long fall particularly, ah, interesting, as the true distance of 15,000 feet began to be impressed upon her.
         But she had gotten herself into this after all, and I had already paid for the silly thing, so she jumped.  As I watched her plummeting body I won’t say I didn’t have second thoughts, but no self-respecting husband will abandon his wife to fall that sort of distance alone.
         So I jumped out after her.
         I will allow you to think me a fool for this moment, because for that moment, I certainly was one.  If fifteen thousand feet looks far, it certainly feels even further.  There are certain times when even the bravest of men are justified in showing overt signs of terror, and I have oftentimes been called downright cowardly.  In sixty-seven years I have experienced a great many five minute periods in my life, and I don’t think a single one of them was nearly as long as the five minutes it took me to reacquaint myself with the ground.
         My wife was already there when I landed.  Would you believe that she was smiling?  The woman even claims to have enjoyed it.  Humph.  I don’t believe I have ever encountered a less enjoyable experience in my life.
         But she enjoyed it.  She enjoyed it so much it was worth breaking her ankle for, although I suspect not quite enough to compensate for her knee.