One beautiful summer day when I was about 11 years old the Behr family came over for an afternoon of socializing. The parents: Dave and Brenda brought the two boys: Brad and Kyle.
We had already bought the winter's hay supply and had it stacked in four huge haystacks out by the barn.
Now for you city-folk, haystacks are not big piles of hay like you see in cartoons. They are comprised of bales that are mechanically stacked by machines specifically designed for the task. The problem with these machines is that the stacks that they produce are not always very structurally sound. In other words, as soon as the guy driving the stacker backs up and dumps the load of bales against the previous load, the bales can settle and the whole thing gets to be pretty fragile.
Walking on a poorly stacked haystack is kind of like walking next to the edge of a glacier. You probably will be alright if your luck holds, but that sucker could fall at any minute.
The several years previous to that summer we had really solidly stacked haystacks, so we boys trusted haystacks. But Dad and Dave Behr didn't.So they told us to stay out of the haystack because it wasn't safe.
But since A: they couldn't possibly be serious, B: we knew haystacks better than Dad or Dave (when was the last time THEY spent any time playing in a haystack...Sheesh) and, C: they didn't really sound like they meant it when they told us to stay out of the stacks, we boys headed immediately for the haystacks to play cops and robbers.
After a few hours of this, Brad and I got a great idea. We would parachute off of the top of a haystack. They are about twenty feet tall.
But we didn't have a parachute. Come to think of it, the only experience we had with parachutes was those little army-parachute-action-figures that came from the dime-store. You remember those don't you? You folded up the chute, threw the army-man as high as you could, then the chute didn't open and Sgt. Plastic frapped in to the DZ every time.
Minor details like that can't hold up a redneck kid's plans. We'd simply have to make a field-expedient parachute. No sweat...Mom had dozens of bedsheets.
So we ran back into the house to get a sheet. While we were raiding the linen closet Mom asked "Hey, what are you boys up to?"
I answered "We're gonna parachute off the haystack."
Now Dad yelled from the kitchen: "I thought I told you boys to stay out of the haystacks."
Blank looks and silence all around. We hadn't lost any TV privileges yet today, and if we didn't say anything stupid our luck might hold. And tonight was "Six Million Dollar Man" night. I silently stuffed a sheet under my shirt (as if that would fool anyone) and we quickly exited the house single-file.
Besides, Dad still didn't sound serious, and we still had better judgement about haystacks than he did. Silly adults...We scampered out the door with our bed sheet.
Scampering is an underrated art only practiced by preteen boys who are just about to get in trouble. Have you ever noticed that action-heroes in books and movies never scamper? Just kids. It’s a rule.
When we got out to the haystacks, Brad and I climbed to the top of the most stable of the bunch. This stack had one end that was stair-stepped. There was a little plateau about four bales wide about ten feet off of the ground. The stack next to our chosen "Kitty Hawk" jump site had kind of settled into our stack so there was a cravasse between the two stacks that got narrower as it got closer to the ground.
After climbing to the top of the haystack, Brad and I each grabbed an end of the para-sheet. But we discovered that the sheet was longer than the haystack's width. We had to face each other with our heels hanging into space twenty feet off the ground while hanging onto the corners of a bedsheet for balance.
The plan was that we'd say "one, two, three, go..." and step sideways off of the end of the haystack.
We were nobody's fools...No sir. We had a plan. We were determined to jump from the top of the haystack to the landing ten feet below us. Once we had proven our plan, we'd jump off the whole stack. If the plan didn't work, no sweat...It was only ten feet. We routinely jumped that far anyway.
So we counted off "One...Two...Three...GO!" And off into space we went.
Now, I've got to tell you-- All these years later I still remember how long it took to fall those ten feet. Not because we settled gently and gracefully to the ground, but because immediately after stepping into space I realized that the para-sheet wasn't slowing us down AT ALL. In fact, it seem to have been pulling us earthward. This was a big surprise to me, and I wondered why.
Lots of thoughts went through my head during what must have been about one and a half seconds, but most of my thoughts were about was where my feet were going to land on the little plateau. When I jumped I made sure I was aiming for the bales below. If I missed that bale it was another ten feet to the ground. So I remember looking down between my black Pro Keds at the edge of the bale below.
I'm sure Brad was having similar thoughts too. But his aim sucked.
In the split second before we landed the para-sheet actually caught enough air that it seemed like it would pull my arms out of the sockets.
I realized that this para-sheet stuff might actually work.
Then I smacked into the edge of the bale below with ten feet worth of thirty-two feet per second (squared) inertia. The next thing I knew, the bedsheet was yanked out of my hands. I saw it slither off to where Brad was supposed to be (but wasn't), and then snake out of sight into the cravasse between the two haystacks.
I also remember Brad screaming like a girl.
Kurt, Kyle and I all rushed over and looked into the cravasse. All we could see was the bottoms of Brad's tennis shoes and our para-sheet. They were both located directly above the source of the muffled screaming.
Brad had landed wrong, twisted his ankle, collapsed on our landing pad and fallen head-first into the cravasse.
No sweat, we'll just dig him out. We pulled enough bales out of the way that we could reach Brad's feet, but he was sort of stuck.I say "sort of" because he wasn't really stuck, but it caused him a lot of pain when we pulled because when he wedged himself into that tight spot his body pushed all of the stems in the bales down. Now we were pulling against those stems, so he had thousands of "broom straws" poking him as we pulled on him.
Well, he couldn't stay there forever, so we pulled him against the stems by yanking on his twisted ankle. He wasn't amused.
Everyone but Brad was a little amused though.
When we finally pulled him out, Brad really was complaining about his ankle. I'd heard his complaints before though. Brad would always have an imaginary injury during play, complain and cry about how life-threatening it was for a couple of minutes, limp around for a couple more minutes, get some sympathy or rest, then forget all about it.
But this time he wanted to talk to Dad...after all, Dad's a doctor. Just the attention that Brad needed after being poked and scratched a zillion times by hay stems.
So we helped Brad into the house so he could see Dad, who promptly asked how Brad had hurt himself.
I cheerfully told him that we were parachuting off of the haystack. I didn't feel any sense of dread at this revelation, since I STILL knew more about haystacks than Dad, and two or three more jumps from a higher altitude and we'll have this para-sheet thing perfected. Dad would be so proud. I was bubbly at the thought of inviting the parents to witness our perfected para-sheeting technique later that afternoon.
Oh boy did the fecal material ever hit the fan. Brad's ankle was completely forgotten about (even by Brad who had become surprisingly quiet, given the gravity of his injury).
My brother Kurt became invisible. This was an amazing gift that he typically used when we had been caught doing something stupid. He figured that if I was the only kid present, then I got all of Dad’s attention. So *POOF*, Kurt disappeared.
And Brad’s brother Kyle was no where to be found at the first sign of trouble. He was the youngest and smallest, so he must’ve snuck out between someone’s feet.
I’ll leave out the colorful bawling-out session. I spent the rest of that beautiful, sunny afternoon in my boring ol’ room (where there were no haystacks, surprisingly enough), Brad's ankle would have to heal on its own, without further medical treatment. Shucks, it was pretty much healed after Dad's lecture anyway. I always though Dad should use profane outbursts in his practice based on this single incident. Brad’s recovery was nothing short of a medical miracle.
Later I found out that Dad agreed with me about bawling-out his patients, but always felt more constrained at the office than he did at home. Something about professionalism, ethics, and swearing an oath at some guy named Hypocrates. Unfortunately his patients were robbed of the chance to miraculously heal. On the other hand, he didn’t lose patients (get it?).
We almost invented para-sheeting that day. It ended up more like hay-diving, which has wisely been completely dismissed as an olympic event.
Maybe I started a personal voyage that day. Later in life I found myself doing lots of parachuting while being cussed at. I got cussed at before jumps. I got cussed at after jumps. I even remember a couple of times getting cussed at DURING jumps (I have a scar on my hand that I got while being cussed at, so I've got proof). Yep. Lots of jumping, and LOTS of cussing.
Some people are gluttons for punishment. Oink.
