I Chute My Pants

In the summer of 1991 I was fully entrenched in my job as a gas-jockey at an Esso service centre in a commercial sub-sector of Nepean called Bells Corners. I had lucked into my job there after being laid off from my busboy job at a local 'roadhouse' (in the same commercial area) called Hurley's because I was showing up to work while 'coming down' too often. Also because I regularly butted heads with this ridiculously face-painted manager named Kathy who was far too overweight for the debutante image she tried to present. I was attending classes full-time at Carleton University, and working a full-time overnight shift at the gas station, and traveling every weekend to Toronto to study broadcasting at a private institution. My life at this time was both exciting and self-destructive, and in my semi-unconscious efforts to kill myself, I took up skydiving as a hobby. My jump partner was one of my fellow Esso employees named Jeff Hawkins - a somewhat blue-collar accident of the white-collar high school we had both attended with a great sense of humour and timing, and a penchant for marijuana and music, like myself.
One summer afternoon, we drove out past the east end of Ottawa to a small private airport in the township of Embrun. It was where we had taken our skydiving training. We were told upon our arrival that there was a waiting list for jumpers and that we would be up in about three hours. With that much time to kill, we made the brilliant decision to drive the full hour all the way back to my west end home in a community called Briargreen to smoke a 'fattie' - and was it potent! When we arrived back at the airport, bleary-eyed and giddy two hours later, it was almost our turn. As we were about to board the small cessna that would carry us to some 8000 ft., Jeff decided it would be hilarious to make some joke about panicking and pulled his rip-chord while we were still on the ground. Our jump was delayed by another 20 minutes while his chute was repacked. I wish the same had occurred for me.
8000 feet later, I swallowed my fear of heights and my heightened paranoia and readied myself for flight. The jump-master examined me suspiciously and questioned whether I was okay to jump. "Suuuuuuuure", I said through penny-slit eyes and a cheshire grin. Moments later, I was free of the encumbrance of the plane and enjoying weightless bliss. As I approached the 3000 ft. critical rip-chord pull altitude, I gave a confident tug. My pilot chute (an about one metre square mini-chute that provides the pressure necessary to pull out the main chute) violently exploded from my back and fluttered helplessly against the unseen entanglement still packed snugly in its home on my back.
Uh-oh.
More inexperienced jumpers (like myself) are equipped with a two-way radio on their chests so that observing jump-masters on the ground can assist in the process.
Cccchhh (radio static) "Uh, jumper number three? It looks like you've got a serious chute release problem there. You're gonna wanna go ahead and release your primary chute and deploy your emergency chute immediately."
Cccchhh "No-no. I've got a good looking pilot chute here. I'm gonna see if I can land this."
Silence.
Cccchhh "Uuuuuuuh, . . . jumper number three!?"
Of course I was kidding. It is typical of me to make an off-coloured joke in the face of adversity. Plummetting earthward at nearly 200 km/h and well past the minimum critical rip-chord pull altitude I swallowed again and tugged on my chute release chord. Time seemed to slow as I watched my first 60% chance of survival carelessly flutter away above me. I tugged on the chord for my remaining 40% chance to live and my circular emergency chute blustered to life above me and slowed my descent to a survivable velocity, although it didn't feel like it to me. My experience with landing the smaller emergency chutes had only been in training, which was definitively in the past. I sprained both my ankles upon impact, but I had broken nothing . . . and I was alive, ALIVE! It was like a religious epifany. It was only later that my mortality was clearly confirmed by the side-effect of fear that I found in my pants.

See you in hell,
Shakes.