Hold

I once jumped out of a third story window at recess.

 It was just one of a plethora of hijinx that we used to get up to during our somewhat unusual schooling. My parents wanted the best for us, they also had some philosophical contention with the public schooling system. My Dad, by nature and profession, is a teacher and a nurturer, and it was his judgment that saw us withdrawn to be schooled at home.

I don’t remember minding all that much. We had moved into town by this time, so we weren’t riding the reserve bus and enduring the good natured yet somewhat merciless teasing of all the Rez kids anymore. I was a blood and bone introvert, and I didn’t like all the attention that early in the morning. It wasn’t until much later that I learned to appreciate and relish the deep love and rich humour of the First Peoples of the West Coast, so until then I just endured being called Parsnips and getting my hair tousled a lot more that was absolutely necessary.

We weren’t riding the Rez bus anymore; we could walk to school, but there is a stigma attached to being a preacher’s kid that, after a certain age, begins to matter, and my nature didn’t meld well with all the differences that began to extrude barriers between myself and much of the rest of the playground.

So I was home schooled, and at my home was a beach, and a massive, glorious Cedar tree. It was, and still is, a culturally modified tree, and had been ritually burned out at the base, and wore the spectacular barbed crown of an ancient. My older brother undertook the Parlee family tradition of securing the ropes from the lowest of the widowmakers to set up the tarzan swings shortly after the house was expanded enough to hold us all.

There were many, many kids that would come to our yard to use those swings over the years, until kids got weird and we had to lock them up. The swings, not the kids. Maybe one of thise kids was you, if so, I’d love to hear about it.

Dad would take any opportunity to show off how to use the swings properly under the guise of sharing a teaching moment, and his lesson always included a “Whoopieeee!”, or maybe even two.

I never managed that kind of gusto, possibly because I was often busy measuring my chances of survival. There were two swings, each about twenty feet long, slung under muscular branches that were spaced at about 120 degrees from each other around the trunk. The main swing was a swing, meaning that you would swing back and forth, often accumulating additional riders until people started falling off, or the arc became a bore. The other swing needed a little more daring and hand strength on account of it not having a seat. To use it, one would have to bring the swing the other 200 or so degrees arond the tree towards the launch site for the seated swing, then run, jumping off the bank to come around in a wide arc to finish in a desperate braking manoeuvrer to avoid hitting the tree with too much force. Alternatively, you could just let go and run out once you were past Mom's rhododendron. As I’ve written before, this is how I learned physics.

The second swing was not approved for civilians. Only students of the “Parlee School” were vetted for such endeavours. It wasn’t so much about the collisions with the tree, most kids could figure that out and the injuries were minor, nor was it about the hand strength, as most people didn’t mind so much the rope burn and tumble into lawn. The danger was the other swing.

When you combine a gaggle of children of ages spanning a decade, patience is in short supply, so it was inevitable that many close calls occurred. Two swings on differing arcs are going to intersect from time to time, and, with a little practice, we got it just right. If swinger one launched a second after swinger two had run off the bank, the ropes would cross, and the high-G death spiral of hilarity and real terror would commence, ending only if someone let go before their hands got wound between the ropes.

I was the youngest kid who would try this, and small compared to a long post-pubescent boy, so when I took the black rope(swing 2) in the crossing I’d torque up to nearly horizontal on contact, which put me pretty close to the tree at high speed, so I’d have to defy the force, and tuck in hard. Holding on wasn’t a problem; I chopped firewood every day and could climb all the way to the top of the rope with no feet, which was why I was confident that I could jump out my third story bedroom window and survive.

I needed an accomplice, though, and I didn’t want to let the older guys know in case they wanted to try first, or even talk me out of it, or tell Mom.

This one was for me, so I took my fishing rod up to my room and lowered a hook to one of the wide-eyed younger kids so I could draw the rope up. That done, I had some thinking to do, none of which involved thoughts of NOT doing it.

The black rope wasn’t a back and forth swing, as I have mentioned, and that meant that if you held on too low you’d just be walking around with a rope if you weren’t pushing towards perpendicular. There was a knot, but it would kill me to use it, so I had to discern the optimal hold location. Too low and I’d impact, not into Salal bushes this time, but onto concrete, too high, and I’d just be waaay up in the air, swinging lamely. These were both unacceptable options.

I also had to hurry, because my parents and their guests were finishing their coffees in the living room one floor directly beneath me, and recess would soon be over. There was no way that I could face Word Building without the fresh taste of victory, so I told the kiddies to clear out, stepped up on to my window ledge, picked a spot that I knew would work because I was a fucking pro, and dropped.

I dropped pretty far, too! My butt was about eye level with Dad’s seated guest before the slack came out of the rope, and I went faaaar. I know for fact that rope had never seen a higher arc, and that was good because it meant that my instincts were sound and I hadn't hit the ground. I hit the house though, dead center of the 5x5 picture window at eye level with Dad’s guest. I hadn’t thought about the backswing, not until I had completed the...frontswing? Outswing?, and was heading back. Anyway, I hit the window really hard, but I didn’t go through because I had hauled up until I was hands to chest, and tucked in, desperate to be as short a pendulum as possible. So I didn’t go through, but I hit it with enough force that I saw the reflections in the window flex, flex, then shudder as I fell away, and I beheld, beneath that reflection of sea, and tree, and me, the shocked, and appalled faces of my parents and their guests.

After a couple more swings, I lowered my self enough to run out, and it was done. I had played. I had survived another one of my plans. I was fucking glorious.

I went back to my Word Building, which, after whatever grade 12-year-olds attend, became known as Etymology.

 Later that winter the window with the broken seal fogged up and had to be replaced.

I’m not going to reflect on this. Today I can just enjoy.

Thanks for spending your time with me.

Play when you can.

Be fucking glorious.