Entry 25.29

09 September 2013. I remember very little details about that morning. The first half of the day I know what happened, but that’s because of all the experience I would gain over the next few years. That’s the funny thing about memories. We believe that we are actually have certain memories, but they aren’t real memories. They are referred memories. Referred memories, or memory illusions, are not direct memories, but are formed from information we get externally, whether reading or being told that information by someone. Real memories are fewer and farther between than we think. For example, I am currently in Georgia for my brother Andrew’s wedding. This is the first time in eleven years that my entire family has been together. That is made difficult as my brother Jeff, his wife Kimberly and my nephews and nieces, Jack, Janie and Jonathan live in Hong Kong. So, I am soaking this in. I may not be a people person, but I do miss my brother as much as we didn’t get along as kids. I’m not going to say we hated each other but we were as much two very different people as we are now. But if he called from Hong Kong saying he needed me, I’d be on the first plane out. We don’t talk often and have really grown more apart as we have aged but he is still my brother and I love him. It has been a lot of fun watching my daughter Lexi and her cousins interact and play too. We went to the Georgia Aquarium and Zoo Atlanta, and they may be growing up 8,174 miles apart, but it feels like they see each other every day. Hopefully these are memories that are real memories. Memories that my brother Jeff and I shared as kids have been surfacing as we interact together for the first time with our younger siblings now that they are all adults (Amy, our youngest sister, turned 18 in January). For instance, Jeff and I both remember the awful crab bisque, if you could even call it that, that my mother once made or that we set up the tent in the backyard after a camping trip and it ended up in the pond. My parents don’t remember the crab bisque, probably because they didn’t sit at the table for an hour refusing to eat another spoonful like Jeff and I did (The only taste they did take made them realize why we were choosing to starve). I remember that evening with some intense detail. I still can’t eat most crab because of how awful that concoction was (blue crabs in Maryland I do enjoy). My dad remembers the tent going in the pond, but he doesn’t remember the fact that Jeff and I failed to stake it down despite those explicit instructions. Those real memories stick because they are tied to emotions. We’ll stick to the memories and won’t get into the emotions. Referred memories usually don’t have those emotions attached to them and therefore they don’t stick. We remember better when emotions are in play and those memories usually end up as real memories because we can still “feel” the experience.

Back to that day in September 2013. The later part of the day is what I do remember. Because of how much it hurt. And how much it could’ve changed my life if I had let it. I’m glad I didn’t. Well actually I’m glad I was too stubborn and hardheaded to let it. If I had, who knows if I would be where I am today, typing on my computer to share some thoughts with you. I don’t think I would be. That’s how much I believe choosing the other choice impacts your path in life. Once decision could change the direction massively. What happened that day that has me rambling on? It’s the first time I jumped out of an airplane. That of itself is a life changing event. For me, I faced one of my fears. I was not a fan of heights. Like at all. I remember a time in my life where I could walk down a flight of stairs but ask me to jump from the second stair to the ground and nope. I would freeze. Why? I have no idea. For some reason, I felt super high up when I thought about it. No attention to it and no issues. But eventually that level of the fear dissipated. I don’t believe fear ever goes away; we just get different levels of fear. It’s kind of like money. Everyone has money problems, but the problems a guy with one dollar to his name are much different than the guy with one billion dollars to his name. They both have money problems, just different kinds of problems. Back to heights. By the time I joined the Army low level heights no longer bothered me. But the obstacle courses we were required to navigate were a challenge. But little by little I learned to acknowledge the fear and keep going. The Army is really good at that. Training becomes habit. A lot faster than normal. If I could teach someone to play golf as efficiently as the Army teaches you to jump out of airplanes and deal with all the different problems you could face while in the aircraft, in the air, or on the ground that would be like cranking a mini-tour player out every 3 weeks.

That’s all Airborne School is: 3 weeks. Week one isn’t bad at all. It’s called Ground Week. All the training happens on the ground. I didn’t struggle with that at all. Week two is Tower Week. If I hadn’t just come from OSUT straight to Airborne School, I might have struggled with that week more (OSUT or One Station Unit Training is Basic Training and your Military Occupational Specialty, or MOS, school rolled into one. Only a handful of Army MOS have this structure, Infantry being one of them). But the different towers on the obstacle courses were about the same height as the thirty-foot towers used in Airborne School, so I didn’t give them much thought. Week three is Jump Week. As long as the weather doesn’t interrupt, graduation is on Friday. My class was lucky. The weather was perfect, and we didn’t get any of the late afternoon thunderstorms that are common in the southeast. I don’t remember any feelings of fear that Monday morning. We went through Pre-jump, got our parachutes and rigged up. I do remember being in one of the last chalks (in military terminology, a chalk is a group of soldiers, often paratroopers, who deploy from a single aircraft, but you don’t have to be jumping) so I had to wait for what felt like forever to load onto an aircraft. Eventually we got there. I was somewhere in the middle of my chalk. I know I couldn’t see out the door once we stood up and just waited for the green light staring at the back of the helmet of the “leg” in front of me (A leg is anyone who is not a parachutist) but that was about to change. The jumpmaster gave that signature slap to jumper number one and we started towards the door. I remember not even giving it a second thought when I got to the door. Out I went. Like a robot just doing what it was told. They talked to us about not freezing in the door. No issues there. I jumped out hard like they taught us. Being one thousand two hundred and fifty feet above the ground didn’t bother me a bit. Actually, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. It just happened. Exactly like it was supposed to. Until it didn’t. Yes, my parachute opened. It was the split second between jumping and my parachute opening where it went wrong. Even though I don’t remember feeling the fear, I think the adrenaline was still there. I must’ve launched myself out the door. Then I twisted, went inverted and then felt my left arm get yanked back up behind me. Then POOF, my parachute opened above me, and I started my slowed descent to the ground.

The last one hundred feet above the ground is where the fear came back. That’s where I learned what people mean by it’s not the fear of falling; it’s the fear of the abrupt stop at the bottom. I wasn’t afraid of jumping. But I was afraid of blowing my knee out. I was barely allowed in the Army because of my knee. I had to fight to get them to allow me to enlist, specifically because I wanted an Option 40, which is a direct shot at the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP). The stop between OSUT and RASP was Airborne School. I did not want to mess up this landing and injure my knee again. See, a few years prior to enlisting, I had major knee surgery. I had my ACL, MCL and PCL reconstructed, and my meniscus repaired. The Army wasn’t so keen on that, and I had to send my packet to the highest medical board to get it cleared. So, if I said that wasn’t in the back of my mind in that last one hundred feet, I’d be lying. Feet and knees together, bend in my knees, don’t reach for the ground. THUD. Landings are never graceful in static line jumping (much different than free fall or skydiving in the civilian world) but I had made it! Pull out and down on the safety clip and then thumb through the cable loop, pull down hard to activate the canopy release assemble. Pack up my parachute and off to the assembly area. I turned my parachute in and then off to my chalk line where my canteen was waiting for me. That’s where I first noticed the problem. I reached down with my left hand (as I’m left-handed) to pick up my canteen and I couldn’t lift it. Like my arm wouldn’t work. Then the pain hit me like a wall of water crashing down on top of me all at once. But I had no time to think as it was time to load up on the bus and head back to the barracks. My buddy Nelson and I got on the bus, and I told him something was wrong. He didn’t say much. He knew that our ride together through OSUT, Airborne and and hopefully RASP could be at its end. I would be recycled for medical reasons and may never see him again.

If I had said anything that is. Later that evening Nelson and I were talking and he told me based on the new bump I had on my shoulder and the fact my arm didn’t want to work that I had probably separated my shoulder. He said someone he knew had done it, his brother I believe, and what I was describing sounded exactly the same. He told me he didn’t think I was going to be able to jump again the next day. But I am stubborn and maybe a little stupid. I told him I would see how it felt in the morning. It wasn’t any better. Actually, it was worse. I told myself that I could at least run down to the Rigger shed. How I faked my way through my left arm being over my head during Pre-jump I will never know. But I did. I could always tell them at any point that I couldn’t do it. But I could at least get my parachute. Getting my parachute tightened down on my shoulder was excruciating. I remember at one point I almost told one of the jumpmasters. But I told myself I could at least wait until my chalk was next. Then I could tell them while we were lined up to get on the bird. Then I could tell them before we got stood up. And before I knew it, I was out the aircraft again feet and knees in the breeze.

This time I didn’t jump. I had replayed the jump the day before in my head countless times and my evaluation was that the further you launch yourself out the door, like we were taught, the more turbulent the air would be. My intellectual hubris kicked in and I developed a solution. Instead of jumping up and out, I stepped out. The result? No crazy acrobatics in the air (I would step out for the rest of my career and never have another issue). The fear at tree top level wasn’t about my knee this time. It wasn’t fear at all. It was expectation about how bad my shoulder was going to hurt when I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. You’re supposed to two strap the Universal Parachutist Recovery Bag. I one-strapped it to avoid additional pressure on my shoulder. Nelson and I met up and he couldn’t believe that I had gone through with it. The next three jumps were easy. No more worrying about making it to the next step. I knew I could do it now. And I did. On 13 September 2013, I graduated, earned my jump wings and moved over to the Pre-RASP barracks. Now the real test. Could I get through Pre-RASP and on to RASP? I still had no idea whether I could do a pushup which I would need to do for the PT test. I hadn’t tried. We got a pass that weekend and at some point, I decided to try. The first few hurt, but I kept going. When I hit fifty, I stopped. Any doubt in my mind that I could make it through Pre-RASP was extinguished. I don’t think my hubris helped my situation any. If that couldn’t stop me. What could? I felt like Captain America. Hit me as hard you want but I’m gonna get up again and tell you “I can do this all day.” The rest is history but when I look back at those decisions, I’ve decided I was far more stupid than I was strong or smart. When I went through my med board, one of my doctors said my shoulder was so deteriorated and full of arthritis that it looked like I was sixty-five. Except I wasn’t even thirty-five yet. After I told him the story he said with some proper recovery that probably could’ve been avoided. Like I said. I’m an idiot.

This week I’m going to do something I don’t think I’ve every done before. I’m going to leave you hanging. I told you a story, but I want you to try and connect the dots. It’s a mental exercise. I will tell you what some of the other dots are. Three words. Process, fear, control. That’s all you get. If you decide to take me up and try to work this out, I’d love it if you would send me a short blurb about where you think this is going. If you’re reading this on email, just hit reply (Reply, NOT Reply All. Don’t be that person). If you’re reading this on CoachNow, just reply to the post. If you are on my blog, send me a reply there. I want to see what you can work out on your own. Because yes, this one hundred percent has to do with golf. But you’re going to have to wait to get my thoughts. Until then, three words: process, fear, control.