Free Falling

The long bench beneath me wobbles unsteadily. As I sit in cramped close quarters strapped like a prisoner to a strange man I have known for only a few moments, I look back and realize this could be my last few moments alive. My last moments alive and I am spending them with these foreign people with an apparent death wish. There were twenty of us in that small area of only about fifty square feet, the air was hot and heavy, I could hardly breath. I had left my mother on the ground about twenty minuets earlier, before I boarded that small plane, that might have been the last time I saw her, had the fate of that trip turned bitter. The door opened and a great rush of air filled the silence. I watched as partner after partner jumped through that small portal of rushing wind. After what seemed like eternity, my partner and I strapped together, wobbled towards what seemed to be the only viable way out. This is it I thought, I will not chicken out. I stood with the toes of my grass stained, tennis shoes out over the ledge. I looked out and I could see nothing but white clouds everywhere. I tried to look down and couldn’t move my head; it was strapped more tightly to the man behind me, the man with whom I was trusting my life. Before I could resist I was shoved into thin air. Falling at what seemed like a mile a minuet, all I could think of was Alice and Wonderland, and her spiraling journey to the dark depths of the unknown. I was dizzy and sick, I felt like I was on a sick, twisted roller coaster that was never going to end. What a mistake I thought to myself, if I was going to die, it should have been for something better, at least something pleasant. Suddenly we jerk upwards and everything slows down. I realize I am not plummeting to my death; rather I am floating, flying. I feel a hand lifting the protective mask from my eye at last I can see, and I can breathe. What I can see now, is truly the definition of perfection. Two thousand feet above the shoreline of Hawaii, I can see everything. From the crystal clean blue water, to the mountain tops and the beautiful green meadows, it was truly the most amazing thing I have ever seen. It all ends far too soon. The ground is getting closer and closer and the sky pushes further and further away.