Binaries

Sofy Dzhanashvili
04/02/09
English 211W
Professor Henkle

Crying and Kicking

10,000 feet in the sky. Israel. Hertziliah Beach. Summer 2007.
No, it didn’t take much to convince me to jump out of an airplane. It’s true, maybe I’m terrified of dark alleys and (embarrassingly) cross the street when any rabid, coked out squirrels are on my block, but jumping from thousands of feet up in the air didn’t really seem to faze me at all. We were on summer break in Israel- called H’aretz Sky-diving Industries, set up a Sunday appointment, and just went. Simple decision. Simple process.
But we shouldn’t have smoked beforehand.
It took us a solid THREE HOURS to locate the sky-diving ranch. We were borrowing my aunt’s car- an old, dark blue, beat up Audi that (unfortunately) drove on stick shift- and were all too stoned to focus on Tel-Aviv’s roadway map to come to any good decisions about which direction was the right way to go. Dave was driving (even sober, he is only semi-functional) and kept getting off at random exits in order to “explore” them. But we got there- albeit a few hours late- taking another “break” in the parking garage, of course, before we checked in for our reservation.
In Israel they make you sign the same forms as in the States- documents which, very plainly, allow for the owners of the sky-diving ranch to take no responsibility whatsoever for your welfare and well-being prior, during, and after you pay 1,200 shekel ($230) and jump out one of their small-carrier planes. The signing away of our lives still didn’t faze us, however, and we penned our names on the dotted lines and marveled at how brave we were for living life so fearlessly.
Becca started crying- sobbing- during the instructional video. No, not because we were being reminded over and over again about the dangerous, possibly life-threatening jump we were about to endeavor on, but because she had just realized that her boyfriend didn’t come on vacation with us, and he must be bored back home and “screwing a lot of sluts.” She was an emotional wreck. Backed out of sky-diving. Now we became 3 out of 4.
Before we were scheduled to board, there was a required 2-hour class that we were forced to sit through. Adam couldn’t stop kicking his left leg (?) and talking over the instructor, so he was asked to please leave and come back when he felt fit and mature enough to be able to sky-dive. This left 2 out of 4- me and Dave- like always. We were a badass couple back then (ish).
So we did it! By the time we were up in the air we had both returned (on the most part) to our normal states of mind, there- Hertziliah Beach, Israel, 10,000 feet in the sky- the two of us, laughing at how our friends stayed (crying and kicking) back at the ranch, too messed up to take this plunge.

Change
My mother and I were always very close. I discuss everything with her- my daily activities, my relationships, my problems- and truly regard her as a confidante, motivator, and very much so a friend. This was why going away to college was so difficult for the both of us.
I was ready to go by Monday morning and we started packing the car. My mother insisted that we bring a new mattress to my school (since the beds at the dorms would leave me with “chronic scoliosis, I promise it happened to Debra’s daughter…”) and we struggled to carry it through the hallway and stuff it into the back of my cousins van (which was the biggest car we could find). But it didn’t make it that far. On our way down the stairs, the side I was holding slipped out of my hands and fell, causing the entire mattress the crash and roll over, toppling down the steps until it came to a triumphant thud on the bottom floor. My mother, usually a nervous wreck when it comes to matters of such “importance”, glanced over to me and just smiled, and we both sat down on the steps and starting cracking up.
It was, of course, a turning point in our relationship: I was leaving to college for four years, moving out of the house and going to live on my own, and for the first time she didn’t care that a huge mattress just might have ruined the new wax-job of her hard-wood floors. Things were certainly changing.