Cats cannot fly. I know this because I’ve done extensive research. Well, actually, I used to make little parachutes for my cats when I was seven, so it would be more accurate to say that they don’t fall in style.
Now before you say that I was cruel, let me tell you something: I was seven. I wasn’t entirely aware that dropping them from my tree fort was going to hurt them. I’d grown up on Tom & Jerry, and thankfully had the presence of mind (or perhaps, just lack of resources) to know that taping a stick of dynamite to one of my cats would have been a bad thing.
But the parachutes were amazingly well designed for a seven year old. It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized that the reason the poor animals were not landing on their feet was because they were tangled in the parachute lines.
Plus, I usually tried to have someone ready to catch them if the plan went awry (which was always). The victim was usually my brother and, well, let’s just say he wasn’t the best at catching those cats. And when he was, he usually had a good set of scratches to show for his trouble.
Predictably, when a cat got away, we’d spend at least half an hour looking for him again. It was lucky that they came in litters, though. That way, you could lose one kitten for a while and its brother or sister would admirably fill in; once you lost your backup feline, your original tester had returned, having forgotten all the fun he’d had just an hour or so ago!
What can I say, I was a child of the eighties and I had time on my hands. When I got discouraged with creating parachutes for the various felines in my house and the neighborhood, I usually started testing them out myself. Which, as you can imagine, was a reasonably stupid mistake. I wasn’t the brightest kid out there.
The first time (yes, as in, I did this on multiple occasions) was from the same tree fort that I’d been dropping the 121st Kitten Airborne from. I figured (incorrectly) that if they could survive that fall, why couldn’t I?
And besides, all the action movies and cartoons had told me that it was perfectly fine. No problem! Just fall from a big height, roll, and you’d be A-Okay. Rambo II later taught me that I could be a Vietnam infiltrate without much trouble, but right now, let’s just stick with my parachute fantasies.
I stood on the top railing of the tree fort and, with a moment of hesitation (as it really seemed a lot higher standing on the rail!), I leapt into space. I don’t remember much of the fall, mainly because it took a lot less time than I’d anticipated. I was expecting a light glide to the ground, but instead, I received a stomach churning rush of wind and the dull sound of my legs and then my head slapping the ground.
I opened my eyes to see my brother standing over me. He looked a bit concerned, like I’d just fallen fifteen feet to the ground (I had). But the first words out of my mouth were not, “Could you call an ambulance?” or “Call 911!” or “Get mom!”. No no, they were, “Did it work? Did I slow down?”
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Because I’m thinking the same thing, too. You’re thinking, “Okay, so you fell and learned your lesson. WHY DO IT AGAIN?!?!”
Come come now, you don’t expect that a seven year old is going to expect the forces of gravity to operate the same way twice, now are you? I figured maybe I had done something wrong. I was sure that my design was right. Why, I was the great Andy Attebery, seven year old engineer. I was going to skip school and work for NASA. Duh. Don’t doubt me.
The next time, I climbed to the tallest branch in our tree. A very tall tree. I imagine it was three or four hundred feet tall. Which in non-kid terms means that it was probably about thirty feet to the largest branch I could get to.
This was serious business now. It was either fly or die, and I was confident that I… well, that was about the point that I slipped off the branch before even trying to make the jump. I hit every branch on the way down, and I really mean it. Every. Single. Branch.
I felt all the leaves and pieces of bark slapping me and hitting me, and then I landed on something fairly hard: the ground. Well, I imagine that’s what happened, because I don’t really remember much after that.
I “came to” when I heard my brother asking me if I was okay. I’d apparently gotten turned around by one of the branches and landed straight on my butt, legs extended in front of me. There I was, sitting upright with my eyes closed, and I’d bitten my front lip (a scar I still have today).
My parachute was undeployed from my backpack, and other than a good number of scrapes, bruises, and a bloody lip, I was perfectly fine. It occurred to me that the cats had been fairing much better than I. Of course, they’d lost all of their whiskers from the stress of my little “tests”. I, on the other hand, at least still had my hair.
The problem was obvious: I needed to jump from something much much higher that had the most reasonable landing platform possible. Immediately, the answer came to me. In my seven year old brain, I had concocted a plan so amazingly awesome and grand, so devious and befitting my parachute, that it would outdo any of my previous schemes.
It was going to be even more amazing than the time that I put my brother in the dryer with the safety disabled and turned it on. It was going to be more exciting than that time I set off a bottle rocket and it flew into a huge box of fireworks (it sure was awesome, though).
My plan was simple: jump from the top railing of the railroad trestle that went over the Santiam river.
OH YES!
How could it possibly go wrong, am I right?
For reference, I was able to dig up some old pictures of the bridge over the Santiam River. Here they are:
Standing at the very top, I was understandably quite a bit more hesitant to take the leap. Sure, I’d leapt off the bridge before, but not from the top. It seemed like it should have been fine, but my brother and my friends Jack and Michael couldn’t tell me for sure.
They all just shrugged their shoulders and said, “Go for it Andy!”
With parachute in hand (I’d decided to throw it upward just as I jumped, just like Rambo would), I leapt forward expecting my fall to slow almost immediately.
It didn’t.
To say that I hit the water hard is a mild understatement. My not-so-elegant parachute had done nothing for me, and in fact, had only provided me with lines and material to tangle up in when I went under. But that was only after the full on belly flop of amazing proportions had provided my brother and friends with the loudest clap of sound they’d ever heard.
My brother later described the sound as a watermelon being crushed by a falling piano. Honestly, that’s pretty much what it felt like. I remember the air being knocked out of my poor little body and, as I surfaced, I was acutely aware that I was no longer wearing my shorts.
Now, I was never a very bashful child. I’d lived most of my life trying to get out of wearing much clothes. But clothes do offer a certain modicum of protection in certain areas when you do a belly flop. In this case, not so much. I’m still not certain if they came off in the fall or when I hit the water… but they essentially did nothing.
I walked home from the river (about three miles) wrapped in my parachute. My brother beside me, laughing hysterically and pointing me out to every car that passed. I would periodically stop and punch him in the arm, but it didn’t matter. He was never going to let me forget about it (though, I never let him forget the time he lit my legs on fire with a propane tank, either).
My friends were equally merciless, and responded about as equally well to my punching of them.
The next day after jumping off the railroad trestle, I had a bruise that went from just below my neck, all the way down to the middle of my thighs. I was sore like I’d been beaten up, but otherwise okay. I never explained to my mom or dad what happened, and frankly, they both appeared like they didn’t want to know. My dad usually just shook his head when I came back in the house bleeding or bruised up. But I think he understood.
I never did get that parachute to work the way I wanted. I did eventually have a plan to jump off the 100ft high cliff outside of Lebanon, but it never came to fruition. My mom wouldn’t drive me out there, and I could never figure out why.