Ok, so that might be a little bit of an exaggeration.

A friend of mine skydives semi-obsessively. Understandably my interest was piqued and when the opportunity to go came up in the form of a 70+ degree F day I was onboard. Risk wise, skydiving is worryingly safe. Worrying because some of the things we do everyday (ex. driving) without thinking twice are much more dangerous. With that in mind, and the fact that I ice climb/ski race/rock climb without thinking twice, I signed right up.

I didn’t really start freaking out until I called my dad to tell him. I made him promise not to tell my mom until after because I knew she would flip out. Well, turns out my dad sucks at keeping promises as less than three hours later I was on the phone with my mom being reamed out for a lack of  skill in assessing risk. My mom is a smart women and she got me thinking…

• The parachute could fail
• The reserve parachute could fail
• My harness could come off
• The plane could crash
• I could hit a bird in free fall
• My instructor could be suicidal/murderous
• The wind could hit my face so hard that it’d break into 100 pieces (yes, this did go through my head)

The night before I was 98% sure that I would wimp out. I had nightmares about smashing into the ground and turning into a pancake and then being peeled off the ground and having to live my life as a 2-dimensional blob. Big benefit was that I could slide under doors.

On my trip to the jump zone (yeah, I use cool skydiver lingo now) I had calmed down a bit, a major move for me, and was pretty determined to hurl myself out of a plane at 13,000 feet strapped uncomfortably close to another human being who is literally in charge of saving my life.

A few hours later I was on the ground recovering from the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve ever experienced.

Lesson learned: I need to chill the f**k out.

Really though. I know I hear it from my parents, friends, doctors, random, strangers on the street but it’s finally started to sink in.