Jump!

I must have been bored out of my skull because I ended up watching a TV show that I wouldn’t normally watch. One of those reality shows that seem to be on every channel these days. The show was mindless, I don’t even know what it was called. Something about people doing stupid things. One segment showed a young lady jumping off a roof and missing the pool by several feet.

It was an incredibly stupid thing to do and immediately brought to mind the incident…

The incident happened about thirty years ago, around this time of year. I still lived at home with my parents, brother, sister, a dog and another brother. Our two story home had a sun room facing the backyard and forest. Most of the snow had disappeared from the back lawn but it was deep and heavy on the sun room roof.

My father, sister and I went up on the roof and started shovelling the snow onto the ground. After a an hour we had quite a large pile and the roof was more or less bare. My father, a thrill seeker, figured it would be faster to get down by jumping. The roof was about fourteen feet off the ground but there was that great big fresh pile of snow down there. He landed right in the middle, laughing the whole time.

Having proven it could be done he yelled up for us to make the jump, couldn’t be safer. I was up next, a little nervous, but not one to pass up on a dare. I took a little run, the pile was several feet away from the house, hit it smack dab in the middle. My dad was right, it was fun.

What could go wrong…

We both looked up. My sister wasn’t so sure about this. She may have looked over at the perfectly good ladder, but in the end, she was one of the boys and wouldn’t miss this for the world. She lined herself up, checked her mittens, pulled her toque down over her ears, said a prayer and jumped.

She missed…

My poor sister landed squarely on her feet and her back has never been right since. An incredibly stupid thing to do. My father and I feel bad to this day.

So here I sit, watching stupid people doing stupid things and realized the only difference between us and them was a camera.