I recently went skydiving. And while that was exciting and everything, all I could think about was how to make it better. There were obvious choices involving silly string and diet cola, but I wanted to think of something that wasn’t already to trite and old. I said, “Hey, what about a food fight?” Been done. I thought, “What if I brought up a kiddie pool filled with Jello?” Both impractical and unoriginal. I think Roger Federer and his wife did that on their honeymoon. What about playing golf, like Alan Shepard on the moon in 1971? I don’t like golf – I find it tiresome and the ball to be too small. But I guess I kinda, sorta like tennis. So…yes, of course – skydive tennis.
So I tried this. I went up into an airplane and dove out and hit the specially-weighted ball, but it just flew to my diving partner. To tell you the truth, I fell asleep for a few moments during the descent, only awaking to release my parachute and lazily bounce back a ball. I fell to Earth thinking, “This is okay.” Nothing more than an okay. I went home and juggled chainsaws and breathed fire while watching
Rafael Nadal reruns on TV. I continued to think about that floating ball, like the quarter I used to hold on those drop rides at the fair. It had potential, but tapping into it at the right place was the challenge. Needless to say, I couldn’t stop thinking about my tennis skydiving.
But how boring it was. How could it be any more extreme? I could, perhaps, learn to fly a small bi-wing plane, fly up over a rural area with a friend, and climb onto the top wing, specially filled with a net and painted tennis lines. Yes, that is the solution to my problems.
