This Lawyer Goes Skydiving
THIS LAWYER GOES SKYDIVING – October 11, 2024 – Boulder City, Nevada, USA
After winning his first big settlement for a client, Blake Montagne decided to reward himself. He worked nonstop through law school, studying for the bar exam, and then during his first year at his law firm. He deserved a little fun.
Blake was always fascinated with the thrill and recklessness of skydiving and was now ready for the adrenaline rush. He tried to convince friends to join him, but none were up for it. Blake scheduled a session and drove alone from his Las Vegas office to the little airport in Boulder City.
At the skydiving company’s reception counter, Blake was handed a stack of release forms to sign. He quickly read through them, recognizing the legal language he used when writing contracts for clients. He methodically added his signature where requested.
“I’m done,” Blake announced as he handed the forms back to the receptionist.
“Go ahead and relax while you wait for your session to start,” the receptionist replied.
Blake sat on a hard plastic chair with a view of the highway he traveled to reach the airport. He fiddled with his phone for a few minutes before a group of five customers arrived and were handed the same forms Blake completed. They all moved to the signature pages without paying much attention to the legalese.
The two women and three men in the group were obviously friends. They looked to be about a decade older than Blake and excitedly talked over each other to decide who would jump from the plane first. They barely had time to sit down before a bubbly young employee appeared wearing shorts and a polo shirt emblazoned with the skydiving company’s logo.
“I’m Tyla and I’ll get you started today. You’re all set with your forms and payment information, so follow me back for a little instruction.”
Blake and the others followed Tyla through a door that led to a small, enclosed room with a video screen. Everyone stood while Tyla played a five-minute video explaining skydiving basics. They would be paired with a professional tandem jumping partner who would worry about the parachute and landing. They would be strapped to their partner with a harness and could simply relax and enjoy the ride.
The video ended abruptly and Tyla asked, “Are you ready to have some fun?” She only got tepid head nods in return and so she repeated the question until everyone in the room shouted, “Yes!”
They walked into a large hangar with its tall roll-up door open and facing the airport’s runway. The building’s walls and roof were covered by metal sheets painted off-white. Most of the space on the cement floor was taken by parachutes folded into long vertical strips but not yet tucked into backpacks. Harnesses and jumpsuits hung from walls or were stacked on shelves.
“You’ll wait here until the plane is ready and your jump partners show up,” Tyla announced.
“How long’s that going to take?” asked one of the five strangers joining Blake.
“Hard to predict. It depends on the weather and the group before you. Just relax and hang out. And be sure to stay close.”
Tyla gestured toward some chairs and picnic tables sitting inside the open hanger at the edge of shadow and sunlight. The group ambled to the chairs and was left to wait without supervision. The five strangers sat close together and for the first time truly acknowledged Blake with a round of hellos.
“You from Las Vegas?” someone asked.
“Yeah.”
“First time jumping?”
“Uh huh.”
“Same thing with us.”
At that point, the group of five’s conversation turned inward. One of them said, “We’re all forbidden from talking about work. No work talk!” The others readily agreed and veered toward discussing new Vegas casinos, shows they had seen, and whether the Raiders could make the playoffs.
When the conversation hit a lull, one of them asked, “Anyone got any good jokes?”
“Would it be appropriate to tell a parachute joke?” another of the five answered.
“Do you know one?”
“There’s the classic one where you have a few people up in a plane and it starts to crash but they don’t have enough parachutes. The punchline ends with some egotistical lawyer grabbing a backpack he thinks is a parachute and jumping out.”
“Yeah, yeah. I remember that one,” a third member of the group said with a chuckle. “Classic.”
Blake sat close enough that he clearly heard the entire conversation. He grimaced at the joke. He hated lawyer jokes. The lawyers he knew were pretty great people and not the money-grubbing know-it-alls popularly portrayed.
“That reminds me of another one,” said the joke teller from the group of five. “There’s an accident at the reptile house at a zoo and all the snakes escape. The zookeeper can’t catch them so he tells his assistant to call a lawyer. ‘How’s a lawyer gonna help with snakes?’ asks the assistant. The zookeeper tells him, ‘We need someone who speaks their native language.’”
The joke got more laughs and led to more lawyer jokes. Blake grimaced in angry silence before standing up and walking away like he was interested in inspecting the hangar. By the time he returned, the group had moved on from lawyer jokes and were talking about visitors from California.
Blake barely returned to his seat when an all-white single-engine plane veered off the runway and taxied toward the hangar. The plane halted a hundred feet from the building and its propellor spun to a stop. At the same time, six professional tandem jumpers appeared from around a corner and walked into the hangar wearing black jumpsuits. They introduced themselves and announced who would be paired with whom for the upcoming jump.
Blake was matched with someone named Chris, from Australia. Chris was friendly and high-energy and had a head thickly covered with sun-bleached hair.
“There’s nothing to worry about, mate,” Chris told Blake. “You’ll have loads of fun.”
“You’ve done this a lot?”
“Thousands of times. I’m a bit of an adrenaline junky but jumping is perfectly safe compared to shark diving or back-country skiing.”
Chris helped Blake into his harness and explained how they would be clipped together during their fall. He also explained where Blake should put his hands and how to tuck his legs. They were the first to load the plane through its rear door. Blake followed Chris along one of two parallel benches and they sat facing backwards and straddling the bench, Chris behind Blake. The other five pairs quickly joined them in the crowded space and the last professional jumper onboard rolled the back door shut.
The pilot wore a huge welcoming smile. Before starting the engine, he announced in a teasing voice, “We’ve only got enough parachutes for twelve people. If we have engine trouble, can I get a volunteer to give up their chute so I can make it back to my wife and kids?”
Still stung from hearing lawyer jokes, Blake impulsively raised his hand. “You can have mine!” he shouted.
The pilot laughed in surprise. “No one’s ever volunteered before. That’s pretty generous of you. What makes you raise your hand?”
“I’m a lawyer!” Blake declared. “I’m used to helping people.”
Blake could only see the backs and sides of most of the heads in the plane, but he was sure most of the group of five smirked when they heard him.
The pilot started the plane’s engine and noise filled the cabin. As the plane began to move, one of the professional jumpers yelled, “Once we get up to altitude, if any of you change your mind, just say so. No judgment and no pressure. You can stay onboard and land with the plane.”
They rolled onto the runway and the pilot gunned the engine. The sound level increased as the plane gained speed and lifted from the ground. It began a gradual, circular climb and the passengers silently gazed out the windows or made encouraging hand gestures toward each other.
After twenty minutes, the professionals instinctively knew they had reached jump altitude. They clipped into the harnesses of the customers sitting in front of them and helped stretch goggles over their heads. The professional closest to the rear door slid it open and air rushed inside the cabin. The first pair of jumpers moved to the edge of the opening, leaned forward, and disappeared.
The woman sitting next to Blake suddenly panicked. Her breathing accelerated as she swiveled her head like a cornered animal. “I can’t do it! I don’t want to do it!” she screamed toward the professional sitting behind her.
The second and third pair of jumpers left the plane. The panic in the woman next to him quickly spread to Blake. The fear in her eyes made him remember how far above the ground they were. Jumping seemed completely irrational. He leaned back and shouted to Chris, “I don’t want to go either!”
Chris patted Blake’s shoulder to acknowledge he understood.
The fourth pair left the plane and Blake looked over at the panicked woman with a sympathetic smile. Unexpectedly, she changed her mind.
“Okay, I’m ready now!” she shouted to her partner.
“Are you sure?” her partner shouted back.
“Yeah, I don’t want to be the only one stuck here with the lawyer!”
The woman and her jumping partner crawled to the door. They paused for only a second and then pushed outside.
Blake fumed. What was her lawyer remark supposed to mean? There was no way he could stay put after hearing it. He would show her and the rest of the group. “Let’s go! I’m ready!” he shouted to Chris.
“You’re sure?”
“If she can do it, I can do it!”
Blake scooted forward on the bench to reach the back door with Chris right behind him. They dangled their legs off the side of the plane with Chris sitting behind Blake. Chris shouted one last instruction into Blake’s ear. “If you feel you can’t breathe, just start screaming!”
Blake looked at his feet as he leaned out of the plane. He instantly felt his stomach drop as he picked up speed. The sound of air rushing past his ears was more deafening than the airplane’s engine noise. His exposed skin felt like he had plunged into an ice bath. He screamed as he reached a terminal velocity of 120 miles per hour and his body tilted forward so that he was horizontal to the ground.
Freefall lasted fifty seconds. Blake caught views of the brown desert floor and the distant blue water of Lake Mead. He practically forgot about Chris who was right behind him. Then Chris pulled the cord and the parachute deployed, yanking them both backward and upright. The screech of the wind disappeared, and Blake immediately felt warmer.
The leisurely drop below the parachute lasted three minutes. Blake had more of a chance to admire the view and let his senses catch up to their surroundings. He focused on the airport below, which kept growing larger. He spotted the parachutes of those who jumped before him. He should have ignored what the panicked woman had said and enjoyed the ride, but it repeated in his head loud and clear. “I don’t want to be stuck here with the lawyer!” How dare she say something like that? Did she have any idea who she was talking about?
Blake and Chris made a perfect landing with Blake in a sitting position. He stood up, was unclipped, and skydiving was over. Chris shook his hand and congratulated him on his first successful jump. “Hope to see you out here again, mate.”
The five other amateur jumpers milled around one another watching Blake. He was sure they were laughing at him and saying all kinds of nasty things about him for no reason. He had to conclude they were shallowly ignorant. They were prejudiced and hated others like him. It was unfair but sometimes that was simply how the world was.
The woman who had panicked on the plane surprisingly broke away from the group and hurried over to Blake, her face flushed with excitement. “I’m glad you decided to jump too.”
Blake shrugged his shoulders, unsure how to reply.
“I didn’t mean anything by that lawyer remark up there,” the woman continued.
“You have the right to think whatever you want,” Blake said in a hurt voice.
“No, no, I was only joking around. I’m a lawyer too. I work for the district attorney’s office.” The woman gestured to the others in her group. “We’re all lawyers. That’s why we appreciate lawyer jokes.”
Blake blushed in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t realize . . .”
“I wasn’t sure if you caught my little joke or not. That’s why I wanted you to come over and talk to the rest of us. Now we know we all have skydiving and lawyering in common.”
Blake was a little shaken but composed himself by the time he was welcomed into the little circle of celebrating jumpers. He very quickly forgot how minutes earlier he had classified them as prejudiced ignoramuses. Now he was simply happy to meet a few more great lawyers like him.
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