My Skydiving Days (Part 4)....

These aren't really chronological, but more thematic in nature. But if you'd like to catch up, you can read the previous parts here:


My Skydiving Days (Part 1)
My Skydiving Days (Part 2)
My Skydiving Days (Part 3)

Tonight's theme is the unpleasant one of injuries.

I was lucky in my (brief in numbers but protracted in years) skydiving career. As I mentioned at the end of Part 3, I once heard a jumpmaster say that particular drop zone had never experienced a serious injury. He then went on to say the only serious injury was death.

I probably had a LOT more opportunities for injury than the typical skydiver, because I had no idea most of the time what I was doing. When I was jumping round canopies, one time I had a near in-tree landing. I landed in the yard of a woman's house, and I was RIGHT OFF THE END OF THE RUNWAY. I mean, I could SEE the airport, but I couldn't get there. I could just imagine myself dangling in the tree, but I was lucky enough to make it all the way to the ground. The canopy, however, was stuck in the tree. And there were strict rules that forbade me from unhooking my harness, which I would have loved to do so I could slink off into the woods. Instead I had to stand there, tethered to a pine tree while the woman who owned the house leaned out her window, saying, "Ya landed in a tree, didn't cha?" while I waited for personnel from the drop zone to arrive and free me. As if that weren't embarrassing enough, when I got back to the shed I had to take the rig down to the head honcho, who was teaching PLFs to a new crop of students, and explain that I'd had a close encounter of the pine tree kind.

Another time I could have been injured (or worse) was the time I couldn't find east (more on that story in another episode). The last communication I had with the instructor on the ground told me to "find a spot to land." When I looked down, all I could see were power lines and pine trees. Good grief. I was still jumping a round canopy, so steering away from the hazards was not an option. I had to float with the wind and hope I got over both obstacles. The odds of doing so were not good. I know for a fact I wasn't breathing. I was getting ready to "get skinny" if I had to go between the power lines (it's only dangerous if you touch two of them, but I didn't want to put THAT to the test), and at that point the trees were the lesser of the two evils. The gods were smiling on me that day, though, because I drifted well over the power lines, not even draping my canopy over them, and I found a teeny tiny little patch of a clearing among all the pine trees. I was across the road from the shed. Seriously, I could have thrown a rock and hit it. Sigh.

After I started jumping square canopies, I developed a TERRIBLE habit of lifting my feet up when I pulled down on the brake lines. (Without getting too technical, because I'd be terrible at being technical, the best way to land a square canopy is to basically stall the canopy right as you touch the ground. That's what the brake lines do, pretty much collapse the canopy.) I think I was pulling my feet up in an attempt to get more leverage into my pull, because it seemed my arms weren't long enough. Once at a tiny drop zone where the owners later caused me significant embarrassment by using my camera to take pictures of their own penises, the landing area was hard-packed Georgia red clay. I came in for my typical not-following-the-rules landing, lifting my feet and legs up, and I landed on my knee first. There was a small rut gouged out of the hard-packed clay where my knee struck it. I didn't break anything (gods were smiling on me again), but my knee was a technicolor mess for several days. And I still didn't know how to correct my landing.

And I continued to have enough trial-and-error experiences that I should have learned a lot. You know you've had a bad parachute landing when you head back to the packing shed and EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. you pass along the way asks, "Are you okay?" As approaches go, it was a good one. I was on target to land on the drop zone (instead of a different zip code), possibly in the "peas" (pea gravel in a some-foot diameter circle that was the targeted landing spot for the really good skydivers). Heck, I was just proud not to have a 15-minute hike in front of me. I saw the ground approaching, flared my canopy (too high - again), raised up my feet and legs (again), and bounced on my tailbone. What happens when you stall a canopy too high is that you're not close enough to the ground to land. At least not properly. And you're TOO close to the ground to allow the canopy to re-inflate. Thus the bounce. It hurt pretty badly then. But that ain't NOTHING compared to how it felt in the next two weeks. Oh, and I was doing my student teaching at that time. With a toddler to take care of. I mentioned to someone that I thought about going to the doctor to have it checked, at least to have them x-ray my tailbone. Then someone said to me, "Bragger, they don't x-ray for that kind of injury. They check it.... using other means." Since I was pretty sure they couldn't do anything about it anyway, I just toughed it out. And it WAS tough, but I had no one to blame but my own stupidity.

Someone finally fixed that problem for me. Some random experienced skydiver suggested that when I unstowed the brake lines under canopy, I should take an extra wrap of the cords around my hand. That meant I didn't have as far to pull them to get a full stall, I didn't have to lift my feet and legs up in an effort to get the extra pull I needed, and I didn't have to spend a couple of weeks walking like I'd just given birth to a drill sergeant. It worked like a charm. (Further evidence that a lot of our "training" was random and arbitrary."

One final "injury" of sorts before I bore you to death. Ultimately I got to the point where I was allowed (nay, encouraged) to pack my own chute, especially necessary if I wanted to jump again the same day. It's not actually as complicated as you might think, the whole rig being held together by rubber bands and velcro. I'm not even kidding. There were a lot of steps to the process, though, and the only way I can learn is by DOING something. I can watch it a jillion times, but until I do something hands-on like that, the process remains a mystery. And I have to do it a number of times before it becomes intuitive. I performed a jump right after packing my own rig one day, and most of the jump went off flawlessly. Good freefall, good opening. WHAM!!! It felt like I had run full tilt into a tractor trailer. The canopy was good, I landed uneventfully, and the purple bruises where the four straps had been around my thighs and upper arms wouldn't show up until the next day. When my jumpmaster landed, he asked how my jump went, and I mentioned the hard opening.

"It happens sometimes," he said. "Next time try rolling the nose just a tad more."

Roll the nose. That means rolling the front edge of the canopy under just a little bit before packing it into the bag. The purpose is to slow the opening down ONLY FRACTIONALLY, YOU UNDERSTAND, preventing sudden, hard, bruise-inducing canopy openings.

Roll the nose. So THAT was the step I left out.

Walking on the Beach Part 2.....

When I was walking on the beach yesterday, I thought about a time roughly a hundred years ago, before I ever got married ..... the first time ..... when I went walking on the beach alone at night and wound up with blood poisoning.

Now that I've ruined the punch line, you don't have to read the rest of this if you don't want to.

I realize you don't have to read ANY of it if you don't want to.

Nurse Jane lived in a condo on Cocoa Beach, and I went to visit. I'm mildly surprised that I didn't just move in with her. It wouldn't be the first time I had done that. I mean, her building was RIGHT. ON. THE. BEACH. I'm sure that's what Heaven is like.

I went for a walk late one night, mainly because it just felt so RIGHT that I could merely walk out her door and be on the beach. Okay, down the hall and down the elevator and around the building, but you get the idea.

That was back in the day when I had no fear, and walking in the dark on the beach didn't faze me at all. I was striding along purposefully, probably contemplating all the strife and worries associated with being a 19-year-old college student. You know, what to wear to the first football game. Heavy stuff.

I stepped on something with the heel of my left foot. I distinctly remember there was a slight hesitation, then whatever it was punctured my heel (my feet were pretty tough back then). I sort of picked my foot up and shook it so that whatever it was came out. Then I continued down the beach. It wasn't gushing blood or anything, not that I could have seen it in the dark. But no sharks came strutting out of the ocean to make a meal out of my mangled heel, so I figured the injury wasn't too bad. I have no idea what I stepped on. It could have been a shell, a fishhook, a piece of glass, a beer can.

When I got back to Nurse Jane's condo, I decided I would continue my health-conscious ways (right before or after I smoked a cigarette, I'm sure) and walk up the stairs. I don't think I mentioned that she lived on the 17th floor. My foot didn't hurt terribly. And it wasn't bleeding.

Until the middle of the night. It throbbed. And ached. And throbbed some more.

The next morning, when I had slept very little and experienced a great deal of pain, Nurse Jane took me to the doctor. And I am almost positive she didn't have the money to do that. But because I was 19, I fully expected that someone would take care of me; it certainly wasn't MY responsibility.

At the doctor's office, they took down my information (I probably let Nurse Jane fill out the forms too, because I was self-absorbed like that) and took me back to an exam room. Nurse Jane waited in the ..... waiting room. That sounds so redundant.

After an hour or so of waiting for someone, anyone in a white coat to come through the door, I mustered all the 19-year-old righteous indignation I could, and I marched right out the door. I probably wasn't familiar with the concept of being worked into an afternoon of scheduled appointments. I probably wasn't familiar with anything that didn't fit nicely into my little world.

At any rate, we saved the money we would have spent at the doctor's office, because that was back in the day before they got smart and started making you pay before you even sit down in the waiting room.

I don't remember what we did the rest of that day, or even whether or not my foot bothered me. That evening, however, long after doctor's offices were closed for the day even if we HAD been able to find one that hadn't heard about the petulant patient with the punctured pad, I was sitting with my ankle crossed over my knee.

It looked like someone had taken a red felt-tip pen and drawn a crooked line from about the middle of my leg down to my ankle.

I asked Nurse Jane, who wasn't an official nurse at that time, but had nursed me and all the other family members as long as I can remember, "Does that look like a red streak to you?"

She responded, "Get in the car."

After several hours in the ER at Cape Canaveral Hospital and several injections, I went home all better. I'm a lot more careful about walking on the beach now, and the sun would have to go down about 6:00 PM for me to take a walk in the dark.

It would be nice, though, to know what it was I stepped on.

Childhood Injuries.....

When I read the post of my friend MamaNeena's recent experience with an injury to her child, it reminded me of some of the unusual injuries Sweet Girl managed to inflict on herself as a child. You haven't truly experienced motherhood until a school official calls you (on your birthday, no less) and tells you to please come get your daughter because she has a star stuck in her ear.

Or the time I had to try to explain to relatives why Sweet Girl was scratched and scraped and banged up......in her armpit.

Or the time Sweet Girl was standing on the toilet and slipped, and somehow on her way to the ground, she managed to pinch her who-who between the seat and the rim of the toilet. I have just clinched my legs tightly together just remembering it.

But the one that took the cake was when the nearly tore off her uvula.

I'll wait here while you go look up uvula. Don't be bashful, guys.......you have one too.
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In a previous wifetime, we had just finished dinner when we heard a blood-curdling scream come from the back of the house. Sweet Girl came running with that open-mouthed, airless, silent scream when a parent thinks the child may never stop to draw a breath again.

She couldn't tell us what was wrong. I thought she had shocked herself in an electrical outlet, then I remembered that our hair is naturally that way.

Finally one of us said, "What did you hurt?"

She said, "I hurt the thing that Tweety Bird thumps on the Pussycat."

I thought she was delirious with pain.

"WHAT?"

I looked at the ex. "What in the hell is she talking about?"

Somehow his viewing of cartoons must have matched hers. "She's talking about that thing that hangs down in the back of your throat."

You know how our mothers tell us never to run with something in our mouths because we might fall and jam it down our throats, only it has never actually happened in the history of mankind?

Except to my child.

Seems she had this really cool Barbie baton that came with some retarded costume, and she had discovered that if you TOOK OFF THE RUBBER TIP and blew on the baton, it made a really cool noise. Note that this baton that she nearly swallowed was WITHOUT THE RUBBER TIP. That could have protected her uvula when she fell with the baton in her nmouth while making this really cool noise.

There's not really a lot you can do for a torn uvula.

I took her to the doctor, and they gave her antibiotics and something for psychosis (not really, I made that part up) and said that we would have to make her drink to avoid becoming dehydrated.

She told the doctor she was NOT going to drink anything, so he picked up the phone and pretended to call the hospital and have them go ahead and reserve a room for her. (She was a gullible little 5-year-old.) She finally drank a tiny sip of water, glaring at the doctor with hatred in her eyes.

She was probably the only kindergartener who knew what a uvula was.

My Childhood Injury.....

I shamelessly stole the idea for tonight's blog topic from my blogger friend Maggie. She and HER friend Hecate are using writing prompts from this book for their blogs. They are sending each other their writings each week and then posting their favorites, along with a link to each other's blogs. I did get permission from Maggie to use this idea, and she said she would send me the topics each week.

I have so many childhood (and adult) injuries that it was difficult to pick just one. Many of them were caused by my own stupidity. In a few months when I'm pretty sure everyone has forgotten that I've already used this topic, maybe I'll write about another one. It's my blog, I can do what I want to.

When I was about four years old, my eldest brother had a chemistry set that he would use to heat up glass rods and bend them. Why anyone gave him anything that involved fire and/or chemicals is a mystery to me. But I was unaware that this was anything scientific. I only knew that the glass rods fascinated me after they were bent into little half-moon shapes.

Aside: Several people have asked me how I can remember intricate details from very early in my life. I have a very simple answer: I don't know. But those details are stuck in there, and no amount of defragging the hard drive will get rid of them so I can make room for information I can really use. Like where I put that USB cord I was supposed to send with one of my eBay sales items.

One day I was taking a bath, and I spotted one of Bo's bent glass rods on a shelf or something. I don't consciously remember making the decision to try that myself, and I don't know how I knew where his stuff was. But I climbed from the bathtub and went and got one of those glass rods. I have a distinct memory of climbing back into the tub and seeing my little wet footprints all over the hardwood floor. I was thinking to myself, "That is probably going to get my ass beat." Only I didn't say "ass" back then, not even to myself.

Another aside: Where was whoever was supposed to be watching me in the tub? I was the youngest of five children; surely SOMEONE had been charged with the duty of making sure I didn't drown. Or try to bend a glass rod over my knee.

It just seemed the most logical way to accomplish that magical feat. Of course it wasn't, and I have the scar to prove it. I'm sure whoever was supposed to be watching me came pretty quickly when I started screaming. And when he/she saw the wet footprints and the bloody bathwater (wasn't that considerate of me to bleed in the bathtub?), I'm sure he/she thought, "This is probably going to get my ass beat."

You can read about Maggie's injury here.

Strange Injuries......

Luckily, I haven't suffered many injuries in my life. The ones I have had, however, have naturally tended to be strange. I've always been (fairly) active, and you would think that would make me more prone to accidents and injuries. But no, most of the time when I've been hurt, it hasn't had anything at all to do with sports or other physical activities. There was the (I think) broken tailbone when I had a bad landing while skydiving, and another incident in that sport in which I think I was about 8 seconds from death......but that's for another post.

I have dislocated both knees multiple times. The first time was in high school, and I WAS trying out for cheerleading on that particular occasion. Nothing more embarrassing that trying to do your best split in front of half the high school and having your knee pop out of place. The next time I dislocated it I WAS playing softball in a cow pasture, but COME ON.....I merely bent down to pick up the ball. It's not like I was sliding gloriously into second base or anything. I wasn't even in the batter's box. Oh wait.....we were in a pasture. Never mind about the batter's box. Or second base.

The next time I dislocated my knee was the last quarter of my senior year in college. And I stepped off a bus. Seriously. There I was, in front of all those people, and I collapsed to the pavement right in front of the bookstore. On the first day of class. How lucky for me that my classes alternated between North Campus and South Campus. Fifth period South, sixth period North, seventh period South, eighth period (Women's Glee Club.....my absolute favorite, and I'm NOT being sarcastic this time) North. The campus bus stops could not have been placed LESS conveniently for those four particular buildings. I hauled my arse across the bridge all those times ON CRUTCHES for two weeks. And then with a cane.

I even insisted on going to a UGA football game on crutches, although the doctor did talk me into leaving my leg brace at home. We left the tailgating spot an hour before kickoff (for the life of me I can't remember which friend was kind enough to go with me, but whoever you are I LOVE YOU STILL), and I missed first quarter. Left the game at the end of third quarter, and there was nary a piece of chicken left when I got back. I think they had constructed some new dorms by the time I got back.

I managed a few years injury-free, except for the aforementioned tailbone thing, until Sweet Girl was around 5 years old. As a favor to a friend, I was attending a school event at the middle school where I taught. Naturally I took Sweet Girl along with me, because I thought she needed the cultural experience of a middle school orchestra concert. Whatever. She was at that stage that all children go through, namely collecting bathrooms. Every new place she went, she HAD to use THAT bathroom, because it was a completely new and thrilling experience. She also HAD to bring along a stuffed animal, because that was something else she does. Did. Whatever.

It was a stuffed rabbit on this occasion, and I'll tell you why I remember that. Sweet Girl was sitting on the toilet, probably not doing anything useful, and I was relegated to the job of holding the bunny. (Was I relegated to the job? or was the job relegated to me? I'm too tired to look it up.) Then she needed toilet tissue, and I stuck the bunny BETWEEN MY KNEES and TURNED TO GET THE TOILET PAPER. Very bad idea. My knee popped out, and I hit the floor.

In her defense, Sweet Girl thought I was trying to entertain her. I guess that's the only reasonable explanation for why her mother was suddenly sprawled on the floor in the stall of a middle school bathroom. So she laughed. Hilariously. Uproariously. Until she realized I was crying, at which point she extended her little bitty hand to me and said, while still sitting on the potty, "Here, Mommy.....I hep you up." (Note: she said "hep" and not "help." I'm trying to be historically accurate here.)

The last time (and please, God, DO let it be the last time ever) I dislocated my knee was a couple of years after hubby and I got married. I was mopping the floor, and I still don't know if I stepped in some water in my Keds, or if it would have just happened anyway. There I was AGAIN, lying on the floor and crying in pain. With no one else here. Sweet Girl was at work, hubby was at work. When he got home, hubby was very sweet to fix me an ice pack and fetch my well-used crutches from the basement. When I told him what had happened, he said, "You should have known better than to try something new."

My mother-in-law said it was because I was mopping on Sunday.