It seemed like a good idea at the time!

I really don't know where it came from, that deadly parachute, but I'm sure that my brother traded something to someone for it. Perhaps it was stolen. I'll have to ask him sometime.

Being a Buckeye, which is someone from Ohio, in case you didn't know it, I grew up in snow country. Living in snow country with a big hill behind our house ensured that we owned at least one sled of some sort. In our case, we owned a particular type sled which was popular in the late 1960's or early 1970's. This sled was composed of red plastic and was approximately boat shaped, with a rounded front, and it had 2 plastic handles attached one on each side. It was just the right size for 1 stupid boy to sit in it at a time.

Now, back to the parachute. It was an official U.S. Army surplus, 24 panel, reserve (or back-up) parachute, complete with pack and harness.

Sorry, did I lose you? So far we have one parachute, one plastic sled and two stupid boys. Sounds like we are going to do something on snow...however, it gets better.

Beside our house was a very wide and very long open field, in which, during the summer, the weeds and grass would grow rather tall, and as the season progressed into fall, the grass would become very dry, and sort of lay down. Imagine that this field is about the length of 2 football fields and about 1-1/2 football fields wide. If you imagine it as a horizontal rectangle running East-West, it was a mostly open field, open on the west and south but bordered by trees on the north and east. Additionally, in approximately the North-East corner, was a large circular clump of trees, perhaps 100' in diameter.

I swear it really was my brother's idea. (We'll call him stupid boy #1.) Anyway, Cliff  (SB#1's real name,)  and I realized that in the fall, when the winds really blow strong, and the summer's grass and weeds are now horizontal and dry, and the plastic material of the red sled, make a wonderful combination. We discovered that plastic slides very well on dry grass. We also discovered that if two stupid boys add one Army surplus parachute to the mix, and attach the parachute to the sled, that one boy can sit on the sled, the other boy can shake the chute open until it fills with wind, and they can slide rapidly to the other end of the field.

The trick to all of this is that the wind usually blew from SW to NE and whichever stupid boy was not riding at the time had to run along, or ahead, to get in front of the chute and collapse it before it got to the tree-line.

Now, this is where "It seemed like a good idea at the time" comes in. I've already established that SB#1 is my brother. This is not about SB#1 though. This is all about SB#2, which is of course...me.

It was a beautiful, dry, windy fall day. I thought that it would be a great day for a little grass sledding. My brother was....., actually, I have no idea where he was. This means that if I am going grass sledding, I'm going alone. This would probably be a violation of safety rule #1 ...except that we HAD NO safety rules. We were kids! Anyway, rather than attach the chute to the sled, which in retrospect, would have been a better idea, I actually put the harness on, and clipped the chute to the harness. Uh, no safety rule #2 either.

So now I'm sitting in the sled, wearing the chute and harness, and I start in the normal SW corner of the field. I actually had to stand in front of the sled, shake the chute open, then jump on the sled. As mentioned previously, the wind was pretty strong on this particular day, and I start a nice slide across the field. (Oh, did I mention that we could actually go pretty FAST?)

As I pick up speed and rapidly approach the NE corner of the field, I realize that I don't have my brother there to collapse my chute for me. (Remember the trees?) I suddenly remember the trees and I know that I have to stop...SOON! I do what any stupid boy would do in my situation. I try to slam my heels into the ground, like Flintstone brakes! This move accomplished exactly 2 things. First, I nearly broke both ankles, and second, my heels dug in just enough to catch, flip me out of the sled and right onto my face. The one thing that it did not accomplish however was to stop me.

I tried everything I could to grab handfuls of grass, weeds, dirt, etc., also to no avail.  I must admit that my hands were no more suited as brakes than my feet were.

At one point, I actually thought that I may get lucky, as I passed barely north of that tree island previously mentioned. Then something happened that I was totally unaware could happen. As I slid into that NE corner of the field, some as yet undiscovered law of aerodynamics took over. Apparently as the wind hit that long line of trees, it changed direction. It did not turn left or right though. Oh, no! It went UP! The parachute went UP! I was literally jerked up off of the ground and straight into that line of trees.

If you ever have the opportunity to slam into a tree, 10' in the air, at 10-15 miles per hour, just say "I'll pass!" It was not a fun experience. Surprisingly, I was not seriously injured. I was very scraped up, poked, banged and bruised, but I was alive!  The parachute was a little torn and got hung up in the tree. I actually had to release the harness and drop to the ground. I walked, crawled, hobbled to my front door and for reasons I don't remember, (perhaps I rang the doorbell?) my Mom met me at the door. I know that I looked pretty bad, because I never heard my Mom scream like that. I was pretty bloody.

Anyway, that's one of those things that kids manage to survive. Did I really learn anything from it? I don't know.  I do know that it was a lot of fun to do things like that as a kid. I know that I have probably told this story a hundred times since then, and it's always funny. (Also, It's pretty accurately told. This was not fiction!)

The thing that brought this to mind is that about 3 weeks ago...I finally threw that old parachute away. Yep, I've kept it for these last, what..35-38 years or so.  I guess that even Stupid Boys can grow up to be happy and successful.