A fall from the rope
I come to write sitting in dull pain, whimpering and humiliated. The rope that I tied to a tree came loose. It is around 8 meters high and, being on a ledge with a 3 meter drop, you accomplish considerable speed.
The reason why I come down to write about it is because I can focus on nothing else then my tailbone, but I am waiting for the pain to subside to decide if I should seek medical attention. I can walk fine but I feel an impulse to walk on my toes, as if my ass were afraid of the ground.
Pain is unpleasant, isn’t it? As I was swinging, I thought “oh this is a beautiful day of spring, the birds louder than ever, courting each other, the sun is shining but the shade is right on top of me, as I’m swinging on a rope. I almost feel guilty about it”. And then I grew ambitious.
Let’s see how far I can get! And, standing on the concrete ledge, I bent my knees and did a vertical leap, catching the seat between my legs, surging forward. And up I went! I repeated a couple of times until I reached maximum height. But I knew I had just reached a local maxima, if I tried other methods of jumping I was likely to reach newer heights.
So, instead of jumping vertically, I tried jumping backwards, diagonally. I could put my feet on a ledge and following the pendulum motion of the rope, I would try to maximize the incoming motion so the outcoming motion would match it. And so I soared yet again new heights.
On my second try with the new technique it happened: I reached my maximum height thinking “I am the king of this new sport which has no name or followers, so I only have myself to challenge!” and as I was coming back celebrating my record, the rope slipped from my amateurish knot, and I only had time to think “I’m loose” when I landed on the concrete ledge with my lower-lowerback (right where the butt cheeks meet).
You know when people hurt themselves, and there’s a period of time that they take to assess themselves, like, first of all, where am I? The pendulum’s force had sent me flying, so while I landed on the ledge I skidded towards a hill of dirt where I laid motionless for some seconds or minutes, I don’t know. Nina, the dog, came to check on me. I rolled over and put myself on four, and then slowly and carefully came to erect myself. Then I walked like a duck into the living room where is my office, and I wrote this account.
I have no idea how long ago that was, probably 15 minutes? The pain is much more tolerable now. It feels like when you are a kid and you land from a fall on your ass. That’s it, it’s most likely just a bruised tailbone.
And a bruised ego too.