It’s an odd situation to find yourself… Dangling off a small airplane several thousand feet above the ground. There was something just really surreal about the whole thing.

My instructor was sitting in the doorway of the airplane. He yelled at me: “Arch!”

This was the command to let go. It’s a reminder to adopt the proper skydiving posture after you let go of the plane. In this small of an airplane, there’s no jumping out the door, you’d hit your head on the underside of the wing… So instead, they have their jumpers climb out onto the wing-strut of the plane (a supporting bar that runs from the under-side of the wing to the base of the airplane), and just dangle there until instructed to let go, as I had just been directed to do.

But I was having technical difficulties. I couldn’t get my fingers to loosen their hold. It wasn’t that I was afraid, I’d been wanting to skydive for several years now. I couldn’t wait to experience this. “Adrenaline junkie” is hardly a first impression that anyone would get from me. Indeed, I usually have little interest in “X-TREEME!!!!” experiences… I find that living on the edge dulls my senses to the subtleties in life that I love so much. But somehow, I got skydiving under my skin. I wanted to experience this… I wanted the ultimate adrenaline rush. But now that I was here, I couldn’t seem to get things going. My fingers stopped taking orders from my brain… they had some sort of manual override.

I think my fingers just felt wrong about the whole thing. This was so unnatural, to willingly let go of a plane and knowingly send themselves, along with the rest of my body, plummeting toward earth at a frightening rate. I asserted my mind upon them again, but still couldn’t make them obey. I mentally imagined lifting one finger at a time from the airplane, but still, nothing.

My instructor yelled at me again: “Arch!!!”

“I’m trying!!!!” I yelled back, against the wind rushing in my face.

My interior struggle continued, yet still to no avail. My instructor surveyed the scene. It was clear that nothing was happening, it was the end of the day the sun would be setting soon, and we were getting out of range of our target, he needed me to go now or simply call it off. He couldn’t know the nature of the struggle my hands and I were having, he could only see that I was unable to comply with his command. I wonder if he considered his options, whether it occurred to him to have me climb back in the plane, or if it was just standard policy for him to do what he did. That is: TO PULL MY RIPCORD SO THAT MY PARACHUTE WOULD OPEN AND YANK ME OFF THE PLANE!

I can’t say as I blame him, and I have no hard feelings. God only knows how long it would have taken me to work it out with my mutinous digits. But I don’t know that I’ll ever be more shocked by any course of action that someone decides to take.

I didn’t get to experience free-fall, the ultimate adrenaline rush has still evaded me. But my slow flight through the beautiful countryside brought me an intense sense of pleasure and awe, which filled me from my toes all the way to my fingertips.