The walls of the little plane were so thin that the sound of the engine permeated them completely. There was one clear, thin, plastic, rickety door that didn’t look strong enough to keep people from falling through it. The plane was old and small with only a seat for the pilot, barely enough room for five adults to sit on the floor, and not enough height to stand. I was afraid but not about breaking the invisible rule book. As they saw it I was breaking the rules of Blackness. They quickly glanced at the rest of my team and then back at me as if that clinched their point: The only people doing this risk-your-life, crazy foolishness are some loony white boys and you. One of them said, in a conspiratorial tone and at a volume meant to slide under the sonic radar of the white people sitting right beside me, “Brother, Black people don’t do that.” The other two nodded in agreement. I told them I was on my way to go skydiving. We got to talking and they asked what I was doing there. On the way to the skydiving center the production team stopped for lunch at a restaurant where three middle-aged Black men who worked there recognized me from TV and came over to our table to say hi. I did it for a TV show called “I’ll Try Anything Once” in which every week I accepted fear-inducing challenges. Jumped out of the plane solo at 14,000 feet. For about four minutes in 2007 I was above-and plummeting rapidly toward-a small town in the middle of the Florida panhandle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |