How I Almost Died on My Skydiving Trip (a post on socially and non-socially acceptable risk)

A few years ago, I was invited to go skydiving by my friend Beth. That had been definitely something on my list. I was pretty excited and told some people at work my plans. This was back when I was at The Warehouse From Hell (CVS warehouse). If I am going to be completely honest, The Warehouse From Hell's worst fault was how boring it was. Even though I supposedly was in the most exciting aisle--my job was to put vibrators, lube, and condoms in totes. Someone from there said, "Oh, I would never go skydiving. I have kids. I have things to live for."

Well, damn, Karen, I want to live too, okay? I ended up looking up statistically how dangerous skydiving actually was. It said that driving a car was more risky. So I went. 

The first harness that the instructor put me in was broken. He laughed it off and told me to switch out to another. I wasn't feeling incredibly safe about that, but I did find it hilarious. Strapped to him straddling a bench in a roaring airplane I said that it felt weird to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. He said there was no such thing as a perfectly good airplane. We jumped.

We did a 360 flip in the air and started falling toward the earth. I couldn't really breathe from the wind blowing my lips back and I momentarily thought about how I was glad I didn't pay the extra $80 for the video package because I definitely wasn't going to want that expression to be available to replay.

I thought I was going to be way more afraid. Honestly, roller coasters are scarier! It was beautiful, wonderful, then we pulled the parachute and he allowed me to control it and flip us around side to side. We had a perfect landing.

Then I drove home. Or started to.

I was going 65+ on the highway. A car got off one exit, drove straight across two lanes and slammed into the side of my tiny Nissan Versa. I kept the car straight, but couldn't avoid the accident. I went flying off the highway onto the grassy strip and the old tan sedan that hit me crossed over two more lanes on the other side of the highway and exited, leaving me and the poor Nissan there. They were never found.

I got out incredibly shaken (and heartbroken and furious because I really love my vehicles and it was obvious that this one was very injured). It was amazing that I wasn't seriously hurt, or killed. 

The next few days I kept thinking about how quickly life can just...end. And how mine could easily have done so on that highway. And I also kept thinking about how it usually isn't because of the things that you spend your whole life scared of. The statistics were right. It probably wasn't skydiving that was going to kill me. But so many of us spend our whole lives being careful. We all take risks in life--CALCULATED risks. Going to work is a risk. Driving is a risk. Going to the bar is a risk. Walking down the street is a risk. But those risks are socially acceptable, necessary to our everyday lives we might even say. Then comes another risk--climbing a mountain, skydiving, dancing in a lightning storm, traveling alone, backpacking, swimming in a flash flood creek (okay, I don't recommend that one, but no regrets either) and people say those things are crazy. And even though those things statistically aren't more dangerous (except the creek, don't do the creek), many people say that it's reckless and not worth it. But, to me, it is. Really living is not being reckless, it's a risk that I have calculated and decided that it is 100 percent worth it. I have not chosen my lifestyle blindly. I sat down and very consciously made a choice. That choice included agreeing not to regret it, no matter what happened.

Why are you afraid to go skydiving, but not afraid to drive to work? Is it simply because one is judged as irresponsible? 

I wrote this song last spring. Here are a couple verses. As I was writing it, two strangers approached me in the wilderness and said they were looking for another person for their whitewater rafting permit. They were leaving for the Colorado River and Cataract Canyon and doing 100 miles, spending a week sleeping in the sand under the stars. 

I said yes, of course.

And we

Work in the warehouse dust

Do the things they say we must

We go to war

Give in to lust

Go to the bar for a stranger's trust

And we take our medication

Say we just can't leave him

And that it's all

Gonna change

Throwing caution to the wind

They say I might break and I might bend

Throwing caution to the wind

We all take calculated risks

Throwing caution to the wind

Stand back I'm gonna go fullsend

...and she asked me

What was my biggest fear

And I said realizin' I was so safe

I never lived while I was here