Gravitational Pull

“Hurry up, I’m not waiting all day.” The guy turned toward us and shook his head slowly as we sat idling in the boat. All eyes were on two teenagers standing at the edge of a cliff. The precipice was probably 50, maybe even 60 feet above the lake. Neither kid looked very anxious about jumping. “They have been up there for 20 minutes, I don’t think either of them has the balls to jump.” The man was sitting on the bank across the small cove from the wanna-be cliff jumpers and appeared to be talking to no one in general, or was it anyone who would listen?
“Are those guys with you?” I asked him as I deferentially watched the boys playing the “You go, no you go” game.
“Yeah I know the idiots, they’re my sons.” He quickly shot back with a wide smile, and a shy, fun-loving twinkle in his eye.
I looked at the other people in the boat with me. Jimmy Lee and Mama, The boys, my daughters, Joanne my wife. “I’m going for it,” I declared and was over the side of the boat swimming toward the shore like an otter at the zoo. The path up to the cliff was steep and greasey, at least for someone as wet as a whale and bare footed. It switched back a few times and was dutifully gaurded by large cactus and yucca plants. As long as you stayed on the path you were okay, stray a little and forget about it. Your feet would end up like Bruce Willis’s in Die Hard. Remember that scene? Dirty wife-beater, over-acted limp, blood trailing behind him like a Wildebeest’s placenta on Mutual Of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
Upon reaching the summit I had to stop and catch my breath. Putting my hands behind my head and gulping in lung fulls I saw the two brothers about 20 feet in front of me, still dry, and still scared shitless. As I slowly approached the cliff’s brink they turned to look at me. The argument came to an immediate stop. I could see it in their eyes, feel it in their gaze, they were in awe, they were in the presence of a master, They were wondering, “what the heck is this fat old man up to?”
Sidling up alongside them I smiled and said, “How’s it going Johnnies?”
The older of the two, and neither of them were over 16, said “You gonna jump man?”
“I didn’t climb up here to crawl back down.” I looked one time over the edge, turned to wave at the occupants of the boat and jumped. What a rush! For what seemed like a minute I was suspended in air, I was Wiley Coyote. Just as I peeped out over the cliff across the bay gravity kicked in. The walls of the canyon rushed by, my eyes watered, my hair fluttered, and I reached down and protected my Jimmies. Splash. That was it.
I kicked to the surface, broke free and ripped off a Dukes of Hazzard quality rebel yell. Grinning goofily at the boat the only thought occupying my mind was “I gotta get up there and do that again.”