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The Moth
Andy Christie: It’s Not The Fall That Gets You
00:12:40
A mid-life crisis pushes a mild mannered Simon and Garfunkel fan to go skydiving. Andy Christie is co-owner of Slim Films, an illustration and animation studio in New York. He is a Moth GrandSlam Champion. Visit him at www.AndyChristie.com.
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- [00:00]
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- [01:21]
Dan Kennedy
Welcome to another Moth podcast. My name is Dan Kennedy. I'll be your host. The Moth, as you know, is all about true stories. What makes it unique is it's true stories told live on stage. And those stories are told without any notes, without any kind of cheat sheet or reference material. And they are taken from our series in New York City, Los Angeles, and now Chicago, and also Detroit, and also from our events all across the country from tour shows. To learn more, visit themoth.org so this story that you're about to hear is by Andy Christie and it was recorded live at the Moth main stage this past summer. And the theme of the night was Dial M for Moth thriller stories.
- [02:10]
Andy Christie
So I'm 5,000ft above Albany on just a perfect day. Beautiful blue sky, not a cloud in the sky. I can see the horizon in every direction when the girl that just pushed me out of the airplane screams, wait, wait your shoot it's and she's gone with the plane. I don't think the sentence ends functioning properly. Have a great jump. I think it ends worse. I don't know a lot about skydiving, but I would think that a working chute lends to a better jump, especially towards the end. What happened was I was in my 40s suddenly, surprisingly, and I didn't want to be one of those kind of midlife crisis guys who runs out and gets a convertible. Besides, who needs two convertibles? And I, you know, I had already gotten divorced, so that was already checked off, but I needed to do something. So I went to, like cliche number three, and I drive upstate to this skydiving academy near Albany for my meeting with. My meeting with Annette, the school's bare bellied, khaki shorted, you know, tan shouldered senior instructor. She was 19 years old. She was, like, petite. I could have folded her up and put her in my pocket. She looked like a lowercase I with a smiley face dot for a head, which made me feel like a capital O standing next to her. But she was a professional, so the first thing she did was shake my hand. But then she put her arm through mine and squeezed it a little bit and said, this is going to be awesome. And then she led me into the office, which looked like it had been kind of delivered on the back of a flatbed truck and like they dropped it on his corner when they unloaded it inside the office. And the first thing she says is that I have pretty eyes. And then she hands me the liability waiver. It was an extremely Darwinian moment for me because what I should have done was drive away and do something else more well adapted to doing, like, driving. But I signed it because she told me I had pretty eyes. But I wanted her to know that I was more than just a pair of pretty eyes, that I, you know, had the right stuff. So I sign it, and then she takes me back outside. And while the pilot and I don't know his homeroom teacher are playing hacky sack out on the Runway, she says, we're going to start with the landing, because that's the important part. And then she pokes me in the ribs and she says, you know, it's not the fall that gets you. It's a sudden stop. And she giggles because it's a joke. Not the funniest joke I've ever heard. She kicks over a blue plastic milk crate about a foot tall. She tells me to hop up, and she tells me to jump off of it. And I jump off of it and my feet raise these two little kind of dust clouds like Neil Armstrong. And she gives me the thumbs up like I've got the right stuff. And then she says, we're going to do it. I'm going to teach you how to do a drop and roll, which is this maneuver you do when you land. It's where you basically is what it sounds like. You drop and you roll. Same thing you would do if you're on fire. And she demonstrates it for me like a Romanian gymnast. And she says, okay, you try it now. And she helps me back up into the box. She says, just hop on the bus, Gus. And I think, nice, we have something in common. Her parents, or her grandparents were fans of Paul Simon. So I get up on the box, hold onto her shoulder to steady myself and. Because I just wanted to hold onto her shoulder. And I say, I am a rock and I drop like a stone. And she just giggles adorably and helps me up. And as she's picking the gravel out of the palms of my hands, she says, that's pretty much all there is to it. Which would be true if she were teaching me to jump off a milk crate. I could have gotten my diploma and just gone home. For the next two hours. We kind of gradually raised the diving platform, the practice platform, from this milk crate to a kitchen chair, to an aluminum kitchen dinette table, to a painter's ladder to 5,000ft above sea level up in the plane. She shows me this canvas strap which is called the static line. It's attached to the plane and it's attached to my chute. It will open my chute automatically when I jump out, so I won't have to worry about anything. And she tugs on it a couple of times to demonstrate that it can withstand the full upper body strength of a teenage girl. And then she puts one hand on either of my cheeks, leans in close, stares in through, you know, through the fog in my orange goggles that I'm wearing, and says, listen, when I say go, you just go. Don't think. She says, if, you know, getting cold feet, if you need a little help, don't be embarrassed. Everybody gets like that. I'll just give you a little shove. And then she says, don't worry, I'll be gentle. So between the altitude and the pillow talk, I am basically in a lovesick trance. And I'll do anything for her. I will shoot myself if I think it makes me look bright, brave for her. But when I hop out onto the wing and I look down at all these like, you know, pointy steeples and pine trees, I get a little cold feet. I have some second thoughts. And when she yells go, I say, up. Yep, yep. But she doesn't hear me and she actually says, geronimo. And she gives me a shove and I'm gone. And I look up and I just see her terrified eyes. And that's when I hear her say, wait, wait your shoot. It's. And really like the pathetic inadequacy of a two hour skydiving lesson hits home right then. I mean, it took me longer than that to learn how to knit. So I'm heading for the power lines down below me and, like, reflexing, you know, just reflexively kind of squeezing my legs together so that I won't die, you know, sliced up the middle like a couple of flounder filets. And I'm just like, praying my life doesn't flash before my eyes and ruin the last couple of minutes I have, when suddenly I feel a jolt and I'm yanked around and this big, white, fluffy, beautiful canopy opens above me and I am floating to earth in dead silence. It is really quiet, so I can really hear my heart pounding when I get down. And I drag all my gear, the helmet and the straps and the shoes, through the onion field back over to the office. Annette is already there waiting for me, and she's holding this plastic cup of the complimentary sparkling wine they talked about and the brochure, and she's just beaming. And I walk up to her and I say, what the fuck, you know, was that? And she giggles and she says, you know, you seem like a cool guy, so I wanted you to have a really awesome jump. So the little parachute malfunction thing was to spike your adrenaline at the last minute? That's what I said. And so I'm like staring at her, trying to think of some language this chick might understand. Do you have any idea how dangerous, how terrifying, how illegal that probably was? And she says, wait, wait. Hey, you did it right before it's too late. By which she meant at your age. So I'm trying to think, you know, am I going to do this with a knife or just strangle her or beat her to death when my heart starts kind of slowing down and what I just did sort of starts sinking in, you know, I just like fell out a mile out of the sky on purpose without a chute for most of it, as far as I'm concerned. And I dropped and I rolled and I survived. And I think about the little joke that she told me earlier, how it's not the fall that gets you, it's a sudden stop. And I think, you know, maybe she's right. I'm not going to stop. That's what kills you. And so I lock eyes with her and I glare at her and I hope I'm cute when I'm angry and I sign up for another lesson and I drive home with the top down. Thank you.
- [11:25]
Dan Kennedy
Andy Christie is the co owner of Slim Films. That's an illustration and animation studio in New York. He is a Moth Grand Slam Champion. You can Visit him at andycristi.com the moth is a non profit organization. I know you haven't heard me mention that before at all in the podcast, but consider supporting our free podcast or becoming a moth member. Two great reasons to hit the site. Visit it@themost.org and now you can also download the Moth podcast directly to your smartphone and listen on the go. Visit st.stitcher.com and you can download the free application there today. Thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Network Podcast hosting by PRX Public Radio Exchange Helping make public radio more public@prx.org.