Of course, when you are a Skydiver completely defying gravity is your last chance if something goes terribly wrong! Thankfully, I have not ever had to call on divine intervention to make that happen. Twice in the 1200 Skydives I have made; I have had to leave my main parachute and use my reserve parachute but that is the subject of another story.
My life has been one of never accepting what people wanted to classify me as. Now that I am aging, I intend to defy that classification. As I explained in another story I wrote, I had a very close call that I survived on the Matterhorn. Now, I use my Matterhorn Avatar picture as my representation because every day it reminds me how blessed and fortunate I am to still be on the planet.
I have come to the realization recently that I can understand bias because I am demonstrating it personally. I have to admit when I look in the mirror, honestly, I don’t like the aged reflection that I see. It must not be that bad because I get a lot of good reactions and cause a lot of laughs and smiles so I am guilty of my own age bias.
I like the idea of being represented by something that looks better than I now see in the mirror. My daily Avatar picture makes me feel good when I view it and reminds me to thank the Supreme Being responsible for making that possible.
In the United States, I have personally experienced that racial identity is a bit subjective and weird. I still remember a statement that I heard about from an entertainer about the amount of African American blood that person would have to have to be considered, an African American. The statement, meant to be comical was, “If there are sixteen people in a room dancing and partying, and you walk in, they would have to change the music!” In traveling the world alone, as I have been able to do many times, the remarkable thing that has happened to me is that people have tended to want me to be their nationality. They have accepted me as one of their own and I have gained many remarkable benefits. I have been able to stay in people’s homes in many countries, even with little knowledge of their language, and communicate using gestures and facial expressions and always having a great time.
I was getting prepared to compete in the sport of Para-Skiing. We in the Skydiving community were trying to have the combination sport qualified to be included in the Olympics. The events of the sport included the standard Skydiving accuracy sport that consists of jumping from an airplane, opening the parachute immediately, and guiding it to place your foot on a four-inch diameter disk that is located in the middle of a circle of pea-sized gravel. The competition is held during the daylight hours and at night. My very first trophy in Skydiving was earned at a night accuracy jump. For some reason, I could focus better on the flashlight that was buried in the pea gravel, covered by a four-inch diameter transparent red disk than on the unlit disk in the daylight, and I nailed it! The Skiing part of the competition was racing the standard Giant Slalom skiing course. Each Skydiving and Skiing event had to be done twice, generally on different days to allow for the necessary dress and equipment changes.
My skiing advanced very rapidly because I was able to receive one-on-one coaching as a part of the many classes I took. I told my ski instructors what I was trying to get prepared for and all of them enthusiastically supported me and did a lot of personal coaching during the class period.
Throughout my life, I have gotten preferential treatment when trying to accomplish many things. I always make it my practice to tell people what I want to accomplish, request their support, and do my best to thank and reward them for assisting me in the process. I don’t view it as simply asking for their help, I view it as teaming with them for our mutual success. In my current quest to redefine the aging process with my “Ageless Role Modeling” efforts, I am requesting and expecting a lot of assistance. When I more clearly define the objectives and more fully describe how beneficial it is to everyone to lead a more productive and enjoyable life while aging that has produced additional support. I take the view that it does not make sense for anyone not to support my efforts. We are all aging, and the AI Era is producing great assistive tools to make the process much more productive and enjoyable.
In a ski class on Matterhorn Mountain, Switzerland, before we headed down the slope to start the lessons, the instructor asked each of us about our nationality. I didn’t realize he was asking about our country of origin. When he pointed at me, I said, “African American.” He looked at me somewhat disgustedly and said, “You can be African or American … but you can’t be both!” I then replied, “I’m American!” He then pointed menacingly to the back of his skis and said, “You stay right there, American!”
After making sure that all my equipment was properly secured, I emphasized to myself, “Game on!” Another Ski Instructor had told me “Stay on the back of my skis,” when I had parachuted into Sun Valley and the Resort Manager had paired me with one of his best Instructors. I had set a record for beginning skiers, so my anticipation and adrenaline were sky-high. After a couple of hours when we pulled up to wait for the other skiers to catch up, his smile told me that he was pleased that I had been able to continuously closely follow him. I then shared with him what I was trying to accomplish, preparing to compete in Paraskiing, and hopefully help make it an Olympic sport. He stepped up the pace at that point and I had to recite loudly to myself “Don’t look where you are, you will scare the hell out of yourself … just follow!” He was guilty of getting carried away with my training because as we pulled into the lift area to return to the top of the mountain, we looked back up the mountain to see how the rest of the class was faring, and we got a bit of shock! Everybody in the class was down! Seeing all the different inverted positions they were in was comical. We had to wait a while until everyone got all their equipment together and joined us for the ride back up to the top.
Having practiced it and experienced the benefits, I am a firm believer in personalized coaching. As a skydiving instructor, I remember helping and demonstrating to my students how to move their body parts to fly exactly where they wanted to be in freefall, and it was rewarding. It reminded me many times of teaching a baby to walk. In Skydiving it was more like teaching a baby Eagle to fly! That kind of coaching is not being practiced enough because that is the real beauty of Skydiving. It is a human ability to fly, if only usually less than a minute, like a bird or plane. During that period there is the wondrous feeling of “Defying Gravity!”
