Andy Christie - It's Not The Fall That Gets You

 

Andy squat. [audience chuckle] Hi. I'm about 5,000 feet above Albany on this perfect, beautiful, cloudless day when the girl who just pushed me out of the airplane starts screaming, “Wait, wait. your chute.” [audience laughter] And the rest of the sentence is drowned out by the wind. But I don't think it ends functioning properly, have a great jump. I think it ends worse. 

 

I didn't want to be one of these midlife crisis guys who runs out and buys a convertible, besides who needs two convertibles. [audience laughter] So, I drove up to this skydiving academy upstate for my appointment with Annette. The school's kind of bare bellied, khaki, shorted adorable, 19-year-old senior instructor, [audience laughter] who said, this is going to be awesome. And she told me I had pretty eyes. And then she handed me the liability waiver, which I signed, demonstrating that I was not merely handsome, but I was also brave and maybe the kind of guy who would one day risk his own life for hers.

 

She said, we were going to start with the landing and she kind of giggled and said, “Because it's not the fall that gets you, it's the sudden stop.” Funny. So, she kind of kicked over this blue milk crate, helped me up so that I could practice a drop and roll, which is what it sounds like. It's pretty much what you do if you're on fire. [audience laughter] So, she helped me up and I basically fell off the box. And she gave me the thumbs up and she looked at me like I had the right stuff. And she said, “That's pretty much all there is to it,” which would have been true if she were teaching me how to fall off a box. [audience laughter] 

 

Then she kind of took me higher and higher for about two hours from the milk crate to a wooden kitchen 5,000 feet above sea level, where I watched through the condensation on my goggles as she showed me the static line, which is a canvas strap that's attached to the plane, which will automatically pull open my chute when I jump. And she yanks on it twice to kind of prove that it will handle the whole upper body strength of a teenage girl. [audience laughter] And then she says, “Listen, cutie, when I say go, you go,” and pretty much all I hear is cutie. And she says, “If you need a little help, don't be afraid to ask for it. I can give you a shove. Don't worry, I'll be gentle.” 

 

Between the altitude and the pillow talk, I'm in this kind of like lovesick trance [audience laughter] until I step out under the wing and the wind kind of gets my cheeks rattling and I snap out of it. So, when she yells “Go,” I yell, “No,” but she can't hear me over the roar of the engines, and so she shoves me and that's when she starts yelling, “Wait, wait. You're chute. It's--” [audience laughter] And just the pathetic inadequacy of a two-hour skydiving lesson hits home and I'm heading for the power lines down below and reflexively squeezing my legs together so I don't die sliced up the middle [audience laughter] like twin flounder filets, and I'm just praying that my life doesn't flash before my eyes and ruin the last couple of seconds I've got. [audience laughter] 

 

When suddenly I feel this jolt and the static line rips my chute open and now I am suddenly floating to earth under this big white canopy. And it is very quiet because the wind has stopped and I have stopped screaming. [audience laughter] When I land, she's already down there waiting for me, beaming, and she has this kind of plastic clack cup of the complimentary champagne they promised.

 

And I run up to her and I say, “What the fuck.” And I like, I point to the sky and I point to the ground and I point to my head and she giggles. And she said, “You seem like a cool guy and I wanted your jump to be mind blowing, so--” [audience laughter] So that little, that cute sort of parachute malfunction trick was to spike your adrenaline. She got it from a bungee jumping friend of hers and I scream, “You know? Do you have any idea how it frightening, how terrifying, how stupid that was?” And she says, “Hey, you did it, right? At your age, before it's too late.” [audience laughter] And I thought, you mean like before I murder you? [audience laughter] 

 

But before I do murder her, it kind of sinks in that I just fell a mile out of the sky on purpose. As far as I'm concerned, without a chute. And it is not the fall that gets you, it's a sudden stop. So, I sign up for another lesson and I glare at her, hoping that I'm one of those guys who looks cute when he's angry and sign up for another lesson and I drive home with the top down. Thank you.