My 21st birthday was not the first time I tasted alcohol or hung out in a bar. Truth is, I’ve dabbled in both since high school, but I didn’t want a cliché birthday: You know, 21 shots till you drop. After 20 birthdays it was hard to think of a fresh idea.
First, I asked some people about their idea of a good 21st birthday. Annie Dochnal, a human physiology instructor and employee at the Health
Center, suggested: “Swim 21 laps, kiss your girlfriend 21 times, spend 21 minutes meditating. You’ll be the role model for other students who will turn 21 and may be tempted to fall for drinking games due to a lack of imagination.”
A 21st birthday suggestion with alcohol omitted – that’s a first.
My mom chose to focus on what I shouldn’t do.
“Whatever you do, don’t go skydiving or do that crazy thing with 21 shots,” Mom said. “Kids kill themselves doing that.”
What, the shots or the skydiving?
Well, sorry Mom, but on my 21st I jumped out of a plane.
Five friends and I drove south on I-5 to Eugene Skydivers in Creswell, Ore. After 20 minutes of basic instruction we put on blue and red “bat suits” and climbed into the sketchiest-looking five-person plane ever.
“Do we need helmets?” my friend Jackie asked.
“What good is that gonna do?” the tandem instructor asked, smirking.
‘Mike the Pilot’ flew us to 8,000 feet and opened the door. I felt like I was going to fly out like a piece of paper being sucked out of the window of a speeding car. The instructor began to count to three, but before he got there, and before second thoughts could deter us, my tandem partner and I front-flipped out into the sky. I was expecting my stomach to come out of my mouth but surprisingly it felt like jumping into a pool. The free fall felt as I imagined outer space would – weightless. I only knew I was falling from the from the feeling of the wind rushing around me. After six liberating minutes we formed an “L” shape with our body and slid onto the grassy field of a local farmer.
Sure, statistically there are more dangerous things a person can do, like drive a car, but skydiving seems like the ultimate test of fate.
Turning 21 shouldn’t be about doing what everyone else did or waking up hungover on a neighbor’s lawn, it should be a unique experience.
“I refute the idea that alcohol is essential for a great birthday celebration,” I remember Annie Dochnahl from the Health Center saying. “The irony is that drinking in excess makes a birthday unmemorable.”
But ‘in excess’ are her keywords; you do have to drink something on your 21st. Pitchers of Oregon microbrews interspersed with four cocktails and something called a “flaming Dr. Pepper” certainly did the trick for me – and they offered a nice contrast to the freefall when they made their way back up at 2 a.m., right onto my buddy Brandon’s porch.