The Third Atrocity

To complete my list of Three Most Evil Acts I've Perpetrated Upon Others, I offer this, a sad tale of intrigue and betrayal set in the world of skydiving. But since it's kind of arcane, I'll be brief...

I don't know what the current world record is for the largest single formation (my last hurrah was as a sub-organizer of the record breaking 220 way) but for a few years the holy grail was a hundred person formation (I believe when I started jumping the record was 60). One year, at the U.S. Nationals in Muskogee, Oklahoma, a group made several attempts at the elusive 100.

I was a young up and comer at that point, small town boy with talent but little national experience. One of the big boys, a current national and world champion, took notice of me and checked me out over a series of jumps. Evidently he also did a kind of background check by asking other people about me.

Anyway, on an attempt at the record, this guy wanted another guy off the jump but he was outvoted by the main organizer. Not only did he think this guy was detrimental to the jump, he had apparently shown some kind of interest in the daughter of another jumper's girlfriend. Since there was a thirty year (or so) age difference, this wasn't sitting too well.

I didn't then nor do I know now the truth of the matter. I do know that the girl in question was, shall we say, precocious in the ways of men and women but that in no way excuses the behavior of a forty year old man who should no better regardless of anything else.

So my new friend recruited me to shaft this guy and get him off the record attempts. His plan was diabolically simple. He arranged the exit order from the plane so that our target was just in front of me and my new partner was just behind. Rather than follow each other rapidly but orderly down to the formation, he wanted us to blow the doors off and scream past the target. The theory was that it would so fluster the boob that not only would he look bad on the exit but that he'd rush his approach and either blow it completely by not docking or else hit the thing hard and embarrass himself right off the load.

Well, it worked. Honestly, though, his exit was so poor it would have been hard not to pass him, even though the instructions given to everyone on the jump were to follow the person in front of them. So the guy was not only off this load, he was off all the later attempts as well.

I don't remember what that formation built to (I think it got to somewhere in the nineties) and I ended up watching the rest of the attempts from the ground as my team had decided that since all of us were not invited on the attempts that none of us should participate (I was the only one this affected, go figure). Anyway, the next attempts were made in Vancouver and then somewhere else when the goal was finally reached. I was somewhere else for that one, too.

So I helped screw the one guy out of his glory. At the time I followed orders without question but I never felt good about it. To this day I still feel ambivalent. Who the hell was I to do such a thing to a guy that I kind of knew and was friendly with on a casual basis?

This is the only one of my three Evil Acts that doesn't make me chuckle when I think of it. All these years later I'm still ambivalent, neither proud nor satisfied that I did the right thing. Likely I was just a putz and had allowed myself to be manipulated and that is perhaps all I can really take from the thing. I tell you what, though, I never did anything like that ever again.