Story #7 - Temporary Insanity

Alright, this week, I have another memoir. As the title would suggest, this memoir details a crazy moment in my life. In short, it's the time I decided to jump off a building (ziplining, don't worry, not suicide). I had maybe a bit too much fun with Random Capitalizations in this story. Let me know if I overdid it. Also, I really wasn't sure how to end it, so the ending is very abrupt. That's about it, I think... True story, all of this really happened. I don't mean any offense by any of the things I say... Disclaimer, disclaimer, etc. As always, thank you to everyone who read and/or reviewed my last story. I hope you enjoy this one! :)

Title: Temporary Insanity
Warnings: ...Risk-taking?
Summary: The story of when I decided to jump off Sky Tower in New Zealand.
Length: ~ 2,500 words
Notes: First point of view, mostly present tense but there might be some mix-ups. Genre is memoir and... kind of a mix between drama and humor, I guess.

Temporary Insanity

            Auckland Sky Tower is the tallest building in Auckland, New Zealand. It’s also the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, standing 1,076 feet tall. So, naturally, when my family and I travel there in 2008, we have to visit the tower! We reserved a place for breakfast in one of the restaurants there. The restaurant is located high up on Sky Tower – not at the top, but up there.

            It’s a rainy, cold, windy day when we go to the restaurant (it’s July, but that’s winter in New Zealand). I like those kinds of days, so I’m happy. I’m in New Zealand, on another wonderful summer vacation, and we are going to eat in a Really Cool restaurant way up high. So what if it might not have any food I like? They probably have pancakes.

We go up to the restaurant in an elevator with a transparent floor, so we can see the city zooming away below us. It’s somewhat scary, but exciting as well. When we get to the restaurant, the hostess leads us to our table. The Sky Tower has windows all over it, and we’re on a slowly rotating platform. So the result is that as we eat our meal we get to enjoy 360º views of the largest city in New Zealand. Unfortunately, the rain makes the view a bit dreary, but it’s nice nonetheless.

We’re taking pictures, enjoying our meal, and having a nice time when all of a sudden we see something flash before our eyes.

“Whoa… what was that?” I exclaim, looking out one of the many windows. There is no sign of whatever that was.

“I don’t know,” my mom replies. After a moment, we return to our meal.

But the flashes keep on coming. Eventually, we figure out that the flashes are people. People falling past us because they had jumped off Sky Tower. Apparently, Sky Tower has more than just restaurants. They have the Sky Walk, where you can walk around the tower way up high. And they have the Sky Jump, where you can jump off the tower even higher. It is a zipline, not a bungee jump – when you jump off, you don’t bounce back up. It’s just a one-way landing. The jump is 630 feet, and you can get up to 53 miles per hour on the way down.

Those flashes we had seen had been people ziplining down the tower. Forget the wind and the rain and the cold, people are still jumping off the building (and probably walking around the Tower, too). Let me explain something about New Zealanders – they’re crazy. I love New Zealand and I love New Zealanders, but they have absolutely no concept of safety. They’re risk-takers, and they don’t seem to sue as much as Americans do. The things you can do in New Zealand… there’s no way they would last in America.

But anyways. I’m getting off track. There we are, continuing our meal, taking pictures and videos when the occasional jumper fell by. I sit there eating my meal and suddenly I think, Hmm, that looks like fun.

It’s The Thought I Can’t Take Back. My moment of Temporary Insanity has begun. The rest of the meal, I keep on thinking about it. When the meal is over and we’re waiting for the check (or cheque, as New Zealanders would say), I say to my mom, “I would do something like that,” pointing to one of the jumpers.

My mom is a daredevil. She fits right in with the New Zealanders. She loves anything involving heights and jumping from them. She’s bungee-jumped loads of times, and she wants to sky dive. So I know she’ll want to zipline. The only question is whether she’ll let me go. To my shock, she does, saying, “Well, let’s go and find out whether we can still go!”

We start getting ready immediately, my mom ushering me along and reassuring me that they probably won’t be ready. (Later, my mom will tell me that she had to get me up there before I changed my mind – this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!) I just kind of follow her, in a state of shock but also giddy anticipation. I don’t do these things. I never take any risks, certainly not one as pointless and thrill-seeking as jumping off a building. But Here I Am.

We go to the Sky Tower people and find out it’s not too late. They warn us about the wind, rain, and cold (I guess that’s the extent of the New Zealand “don’t sue us” speech), but we’re set. I’m really doing this.

We have to wear these baggy, unattractive blue and yellow things that will protect us against the rain and that had hooks and stuff to harness us to the zipline that will hopefully slow us down before we hit the ground. In the bathroom. I take my phone out, thinking about texting my friends. What would I say? Getting ready to jump off a building! If that doesn’t sound insane and suicidal, then I don’t know what does. I decide against texting my friends, for reasons I’m still not sure about. (I think it had something to do with a. having more to tell them after I jumped and b. wanting to keep it a secret so I could shock them all when I came home, which is what I ended up doing.)

When I’ve changed, I go outside to meet up with my mom. We’re both excited, she that I’m actually doing this and me that I’m actually doing this. But at the same time, I’m starting to slip out of my shock just a little bit, enough to get nervous. Not enough to get any “abort abort bad bad stop” warnings or “Too Late to back out now” doomsday thoughts, but enough to start feeling some butterflies in my stomach.

We take an elevator up to where the other Sky Tower activities are taking place, higher than the restaurant. We meet a group of people there, all dressed in similarly hideous blue and yellow things. But they're walkers, planning to walk around the tower in the cold, wet, and wind for an hour.

“Are you two going to jump?” One of them asks my mom and me.

“Yes,” I say, hardly believing it myself.

“Wow,” one says. “That takes guts.”

It’s a good feeling, knowing that other crazy people admire me for being even crazier.

We’re on this sort of weird observation deck, still inside, waiting for our turn. Whenever someone opens the door, it’s like a hurricane out there. A cold, not-tropical hurricane. After a while, the Sky Tower people come for my mom. I watch as they strap her up (I can see through the window). She’s standing on this platform that we had seen the other jumpers stand on before they suddenly fell through the air. Watching my mom, my mind begins to race, finally thinking of all the things that could go wrong. What if she falls and the zipline doesn’t slow her down? It’s because of me that she’s up here in the first place. If this doesn’t work and she dies or is maimed or brain-damaged or paralyzed or something, I’ll never forgive myself.

But now is the “Too Late” moment my brain skipped out on earlier. I can’t really barge out there and tell them to stop. These things hardly ever Mess Up… I just have to hope that we’ll both be okay. My mom gives me a thumbs-up and then she’s gone, flying down to Earth. I don’t have much time to think about it before they’re Coming For Me.

The walkers I was waiting with are very kind to me, giving me encouragement and luck. I’m touched by their compassion. They probably know how nervous I am.

I step outside, some Sky Tower Guy leading me. The first thing that strikes me is how utterly FREEZING it is. And windy. The rain isn’t bad, just dreary drizzle, but at this altitude, the cold and the rain are ridiculous. Maybe as ridiculous as me doing this 630 feet jump in the first place.

Sky Tower Guy chats with me as he straps me into everything. He has to shout over the storm. After he’s mostly strapped me in and hooked me up, he yells in his New Zealand accent, “Stand over there.” He points to The Edge of the platform, The Edge that I’d seen so many fellow jumpers fall off.

“Look down at the View!” he shouts. I hesitate, because I really do NOT want to Look Down. There is only one way to go from here, I know that, I’ve jumped off a high dive enough times. But just because for some crazy reason I’m doing this, that doesn’t mean I want to Look Down. For the first time, I think, This is insane. This is absolutely insane.

“Come on, take a look,” Sky Tower Guy entreats me.

“No thank you, because that would require me to take a step forward,” I almost say. But instead, I grit my teeth. There’s nothing for it. I step up, take an impossibly quick glance down, and step back before I can fall off The Edge. I’m not completely strapped in yet and that would be a really stupid way to die.

I don’t take in the View at all. I’m shivering, my teeth are chattering, and I feel like I’ve just survived a near death experience (maybe I have). I both want this part of the jump to be over and want it to never end. Because if it ends, that means I’ve jumped.

This is insane, I think again. But it’s much Too Late, and even if it weren't, I would probably do it anyway. My moment of Temporary Insanity hasn’t left completely.

“Are these straps secure?” Sky Tower Guy asks me, and I make sure to check all of the straps very, very carefully, because this is literally Life or Death. They’ll all on tight.

I’m all strapped in now. We stop to pose for a picture. Sky Tower Guy gives a thumbs-up for the camera (that’s what my mom was doing, I realize, posing for the picture), and I can’t think of anything better to do so I copy him. Then he explains to me that they’re going to stop me before they drop me too far so I can pose for another picture, hanging in midair.

I’m cold and wet and way, way up high.

Finally, it’s all ready. I’m holding on with a white-knuckled grip to these two black ropes, standing close to The Edge. Sky Tower Guy releases whatever was keeping me anchored on the ground, but I’m still there. The only difference is that the ropes are leaning me forward now, instead of upright.

“You need to Take a Step Forward,” Sky Tower Guy yells. “And then Let Go of the ropes.”

Take a Step Forward? Let Go? I thought they’d, I don’t know, push me off or drop the floor down from under me or something. I didn’t know that I’d have to Take a Step Forward and throw myself into the Void. Somehow, me being in control is a million times more terrifying than someone else having the control.

My grip on the ropes is slipping. It’s wet and windy and my fingers are numb. At any moment I could lose my grip and tumble downward.

“C’mon, Let Go and Step Forward,” Sky Tower Guy encourages me.

If I don’t let go, I’ll either be stuck here forever or have a heart attack when I lose my grip. This is insane, this is insane, this is Insane, but it really really really is Too Late now.

Taking a Step Forward is scary. I can feel my feet now, on The Edge, the literal Edge of The Edge. I’m probably restricting the blood flow to my hands; I’m gripping the ropes so tightly. They’re the only things keeping me safe. But I have to Let Go.

It’s like when you’re going in to cold water. You can’t just wade in slowly; you have to jump in all at once. I can’t Let Go finger by finger. I’m up here now, Temporary Insanity or not, and I have to control my own fate. I have to fall face-forward toward the buildings and the people and the who-knows-what, 630 feet below me.

Letting Go is the hardest, most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. But to my pride and surprise, I do it. One minute I’m standing there, leaning over the Void, thinking I’ll never do this they should give up on me now, and the next, I’ve Let Go and I’m falling.

I fall for a few short seconds, and it’s a rush, it’s exhilarating, it’s frightening, and then – then they stop me. Oh yeah. Picture. I’m still close enough to the platform to hear Sky Tower Guy shout, “Wave!”

I wave, trying to smile at the camera, but I don’t know where the camera is. I hang there for some amount of time, and then they let me go and I’m falling again. I get that “stomach’s left behind” feeling again. The rest of my ride consists of a few clear, calm thoughts.

First: After a bit, I realize that I look stupid with my arms spread out to my sides, like I’m Trying to Fly or something. But I don’t know what else to do with my arms, so I leave them there.

Second: After another while (you lose all concept of them when you’re falling down a building, it seems), I realize that I should probably be taking in the View. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I shouldn’t zone out through the whole thing. Even now, this View is probably higher than the one we saw in the restaurant. (I have no memory of any View, so I must have zoned out. Too bad.)

Third: As I’m approaching the ground, I see the upturned faces of my family. My mom (safe and alive!), my dad, and my brother are all waiting for me. I realize that I should probably wave at them or something, so I do. I seem to have an extremely long time to wave, probably because they’re slowing me down.

Fourth (and last): I’m about to land on the ground and I finally have a brief moment of panic when I realize that I’m not really sure how to land. I really don’t want to fall on my face. But when they set me down, I only stumble a little – a lot more graceful than my mom’s landing, my family will tell me later.

I don’t remember much of what we do the rest of that day. I share my story with my family. Even then, I only remember a few clear, calm thoughts during The Jump. My family and I call the whole experience my moment of Temporary Insanity. Because I Do Not do stuff like jump off buildings… except for when I Do.

The End! J