It’s such a beautiful day I feel like I should tell you about that one time I went skydiving.

So it was a few years back & Offspring1 & I went to Fiji for a holiday. He was a homeschooled teenager & I was attempting to combine holiday, travel, and a ‘learning experience’. lol
I basically read books & drank cocktails while he camped in the hotel’s computer area. Excellent.

I can only do so much sitting around on a holiday so I checked out all the ‘What To Do’ pamphlets in the hotel lobby stand and signed the two of us up to a bunch of stuff. I didn’t consult with offspring1 because hey, parenting 101 right? Fail.

That night over dinner I told offspring that we were going skydiving in the morning.
I saw him lose colour. Like literally. He was damn near emo vampire teenager pale anyway but I swear he went translucent and I could see the skull and jaw bones through his now rice paper skin.

Because I’m not a total meanie I gave him an out. He didn’t have to do it.
Silence. Screaming silence. Like full orchestra silence. I’m unsure if he was breathing silence. Lonnnnnnng silence. Silence so pregnant it could hatch out octuplets.

O: what the fk is wrong with you? Are you trying to make me into that sad old song of the motherless child?
Me: not to completely negate your argument in a non-cheerful manner but if you skydive too there’s a chance we’ll both be gonners.

O: you realise this could be our last meal?
Me: nah. Breakfast tomorrow before we go.
O: I’m starting to appreciate the option of living with Dad. When he took us to Fiji the most dangerous thing we did was scrape coconut out of the shell.

Breakfast the following morning.
O: WHYYYY are you eating?
Me: last meal Dude.
O: great. So while you eat jam on toast I’m counting down to the likelihood WE will be jam on toast.
Me: oooooh. Yay! You’re skydiving too. That’s AWESOME. Hey I paid for the extra extra high dive.

He slowly puts his head on the dining table.
Me: I also paid for a videographer to film every moment of the jump.
O: (mumbling through the tablecloth to the rhythm of his forehead beating the table)
So Dad & (sister) can live through our demise. Excellent.

I slurp my coffee

Me: I feel this is the perfect time for you and me to discuss Fear vs Courage, Peer Pressure & How To Say No.
He sits up & looks at me.
We chat about what scares us. How to calculate risk. What fear does to our bodies and minds. How courage is feeling scared but doing it anyway

We talk about Peer Pressure. What if you genuinely don’t want to do something but all your mates are doing it? What if you want to impress someone? Which led us into talking about the need we all have to be accepted and how I believe this is especially relevant for males.

I know right?! Parenting like a damn expert. Hand me my medal already.

So the van picks us up and we go to the airport. I tell him that he can say no at anytime right up to the point of jumping out of the aircraft. All I ask of him is to tell me, at a later time, why he said no.

At the airport we meet the jump crew and go through safety stuff. Included in this process was standing on the scale. No worries.
I jumped on and the scale read 80kgs. Exactly what I had guesstimated for me.
Drama ensues. Crew makes me step on then off the scales THREE times.

They start to discuss logistics among themselves. You know, stuff like, “who signed off on the calibration of the scales?”
Yes yes yes I said. I look like I weigh less but that’s what I weigh. Sigh.
Soooooo, they had to ring for another crew member.

“I’m sorry mam but there’s a delay. We’re waiting for another crew member. He’s our ‘lightest’ tandem jumper and he’s bringing the extra large parachute to allow for, ummm, errrr, your, ummmm, errrr, weight.”

Sigh. I note to discuss dichotomy of body vs sizes w offspring later.

We’re in the plane. Taxiing down the runway and the plane breaks down. Literally. It stops. We’re towed back to the holding point.
I look at the offspring and he’s apparently quite nonchalant about it all.
Me? Not so much.

Now when you get into a skydiving plane your tandem jumper then clicks you into your harness and you’re attached to them. My jumper was a small dude (obvs lol) and he was a bit of a stuck record.
“Remember to lift your head back. Arch back. Always arch back” repeat ad nauseam.

Every couple of minutes he pulled and tightened the harness connecting us. Fair enough. Skills and all that. Safety first.
But let’s remember, the plane had broken down and we were stationary. In Fiji heat. Surface of the sun but with humidity.

Tighten. Tighten. Lecture. Lecture. Tighten. Tighten. After an hour & several repairs we take off. Offspring announces he wants to go first.
So the videographer jumps, then offspring. Meanwhile...
Tighten. Tighten. Lecture. Lecture. Then yanking violent tightening. And we jump.

Let me tell you people, skydiving over Fiji is MAGICAL. The islands. The water. The warmth. We got nearly a minute of free-fall and it was glorious.
Then my jumper pulled the ripcord.
It’s ALL caught on tape in high definition. Yeah that.

The extra large chute opened w such force that I passed out. Literally. Unconscious. Boom! Night night. Goneburgers.
The whole video is basically my head wobbly bobbing w my tongue out & my lips flapping about in the breeze while my limbs flail like a whacky inflatable tube man

We land safely on a beach & I’m freed from the harness and I instantly catch my breath and wake up.

Offspring looks down at me and cheerfully announces “Well I’d call that a success, wouldn’t you?”

To this day, that video of me skydiving is the most watched by offspring, holiday video ever. The offspring and ALL their friends, their friend’s families, and friends pets and childhood neighbours & hairdressers cousins plus the postie have roared w laughter at my experience.

Next time I thread I’ll tell you about the time I took both offspring on an army training fitness course and I got stuck on top of a power pole. Good times.

Happy sunny jumping y’all x

Later that day. #Earned (before straws were banned. Basically the olden days, when I drank )