I have a letter here from Kyle that reads, “Dear Sean, I have the ring, I have the girl, but every time I try to ask her to marry me, I chicken out. Please help.”
Dear Kyle, so there I was, wearing a safety harness and standing atop a 318-foot tall iron structure with the world’s largest rubber band attached to my butt. My wife was standing miles below, in a river gorge, shouting things like, “WOOO! YAAAY!”
I was going bungee jumping.
The first thing you discover when bungee jumping is that everyone tells you there’s nothing to worry about. “You’ll be fine!” everyone insists. “It’s mostly safe!”
I had to sign waivers, of course. Lots of waivers. And if you take the time to actually read the tiny print, it will chill your blood into a raspberry slushy.
Here is some of the actual language from the waivers:
“The participant is fully aware that bungee-jumping and all associated activities contains inherent risk and dangers (including serious injury or death), that no amount
of care, caution, instruction, or expertise can eliminate. The participant hereby voluntarily chooses to incur any and all such risks and dangers in the event of death.”
This should have been my first tipoff that what I was doing was supremely idiotic. They do not, for example, make you sign waivers before you go mini-golfing.
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how I ended up here. I have never had a desire to hurl myself from 35 stories. I was only here because my wife talked me into this inane stunt. She can be very persuasive.
Her line of reasoning was: “You regret one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
This is exactly the kind of thing a loving spouse will often say once you have purchased decent life insurance policies.
So I, the participant, hiked to the top of the tower. When I reached the…