At the age of 18, I decided I was going skydiving. I had never been in a plane before!

The center my frineds and I went to was well known at the time, they had done jump master training for the army and those newly minted instuctors in turn returned home to teach the grunts. So our instructor was really good at bellowing, he scared me a little.

Our first jump went fine. Out the door at 3,000 feet, climb on to the strut under the wing of the plane, he'd scream to let go, hands off, we'd drop until we hit the end of the static line which pulled the parachute for us. It was great!

It was so great we went back for another jump. Only this time we got the owner of the place, a quiet, pleasant man in his late 30's. Up the plane went, the door opened, I was first so out the door I went to hang on the stut of the plane under the wing...the guy smiled and nodded at me. I smiled and nodded back. He nodded. I smiled. Then the pilot got into it, yelling something about why didn't I let go? I had missed the jump zone.

So there I am, literally flapping in the breeze under the wing of the plane like a streamer from an air conditioner while they had to vey carefully circle back keeping the plane banked because if he leveled out, the door would swing shut and hit me. Then they had to check the winds by dropping rolls of streamers. Finally the guy smiled at me and yelled "GO!!"

Smiling, I let go.

On my jump card, the instuctor wrote, "nice smile"

Purrs,
Elizabeth

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