Parachuting

• Erin Slogrove, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2014

Parachuting
I was watching this dare devil show and I saw this man who jumped from the highest mountain in the world.
I thought to myself “What if I had a go at parachuting?”
So I went to my father and asked him if I could have a go, he said that “Girls can’t parachute, only boys can.”
I replied to him saying “Well I’ll be the first.” I pulled the cutest puppy eyes ever. My dad tried to look away.
My dad tried to look away but he just couldn’t, so he said that I could have a go as long as I didn’t die.

The next morning I was so excited and a bit nervous because what if the parachute had a hole in it, or the plane’s engine shut down. I got in the plane, my knees were shaking and my teeth were chattering. As we got higher and higher the butterflies in my belly started back flipping. They strapped the harness on me and buckled me up. I was just about to fall over backwards, when the instructor said to jump. So I jumped out of the plane, wondering if my parachute would open. My dad was riding with me; he asked if I still felt all right with this.
I just replied to him saying “Yes” as there was no going back. I was falling at about one hundred miles an hour. I was falling silently, listening to the birds whistling to each other, and the air rushing past me.

I listened as my dad talked to the instructor guy and heard them say that they gave us the wrong parachute; instead they gave us the first aid kit. I was wondering how that could have happened and I asked my dad. He said they probably aren’t pros at parachuting as we did go to the cheapest parachuting place in the world it only cost $40 for the both of us. My dad was a cheap guy he always got the cheap things which really annoyed me because sometimes the cheap things aren’t always the best things. I asked my dad what we were going to do about having no parachute.

Then suddenly a funny tube thing fell from the plane, I looked at it wondering what it was, the instructor said it was a parachute and we needed to unbuckle the harness from the first aid kit and buckle it back to the parachute. But there was one problem my dad didn’t know how to unbuckle us and buckle us up. There was nothing we could do about it.
We were about 200 feet off the ground, and then I suddenly came up with an idea. I told my father the idea and he said he’d rather do my idea than die. So I told my dad to hug the tube thing as tightly as he could then open up the parachute. He did exactly what I told him to do and we landed safely. But we landed in the sea, lucky dad had his phone on him but we weren’t able to use it because the water had broken it. The instructor came up behind us and told us which way to swim. We swam up to the shore and collapsed straight away.
So I guess I learnt my lesson, never go parachuting with a mobile phone.

The End!!!! By Erin Taylor Slogrove