My First Rappelling Experience

The fete that SIS conducted was pretty cool. The stalls were fun-Nerf shooting, golf, and loads of food stalls. Even the tattoo stall was awesome [it had to be, I ran it].but the best were the adventure sports stalls, or more precisely, the rappelling stall. Many things went through my mind as I did my first great adventure.

As I walked down the basketball court to rappelling area, I saw a guy jumping off the second floor balcony and slowly climbing down. ‘Looks easy’ I thought. When I reached there I saw a flushed out guy screaming as he landed. ‘Seems okay’ I thought. I put on the gear and climbed to the top.

Then the first thing that hit my mind was an ad I saw about the Aussie stunt academy. In it a guy sets himself on fire but before that he says something that echoed through my mind.

 ‘This is a very silly idea’.

I then tried to console myself with the regular, ‘I can do this, I can do this’. But as I reached the edge I started thinking, ‘I can’t do this’.

As I got two steps down I started shouting the same. At that point I was willing to scream and beg them to pull me up.

But then Saju uncle shouted, ‘come on, your dad’s great at this’. For some reason that inspired me to stop complaining and keep descending.

A lot of things passed through my mind as I rappelled down. First I thought of my PS2 game – the “god of war”. I realized that that game was just stupid. In the game, if you die, the character can regenerate and you can start again. But in the real life there was no restart button. Once you die, its game over, for good. Sadly, that pretty much took out half my interest in video games.

Then I thought about all the girls I’ve been teased about in school [not that they mean anything to me]. I realized that I was just being stupid losing my temper every time those perverted freaks in my class teased me on a girl. I noticed that they only pick on the smart guys to make them lose their reputation. Honestly, I don’t even like her. If I did, I’m pretty sure I would have asked her out to the movies or something.

So…ahem. Anyway, while I was thinking of all this, I’m pretty sure that at the back of my head I was writing my own obituary. It went something like-

A.L.Ashkenaz, died age 13.

Died by jumping of two floors of a building.

Remembered by……..etc.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to use it. While I was around 10 feet from the ground, Shyam uncle asked me to jump. I freaked and thought ‘is he crazy?’. I ignored him and kept climbing down. As soon as I was out my gear, I gave a whoop of exhilaration and ran around

Later, I found out even if I let go of the rope, I wouldn’t fall. So now I have two regrets about the fete.

Regret no. 1- I didn’t rappel again.

Regret no.2-while rappelling I didn’t let go off the rope and scream like hell, pretend as if I were falling.

Rappelling was truly an experience to remember. For me, it was also a dawn of many truths. So, I guess I must thank Trackfinder for organizing this event and I shall be back, hungry for more.

Unniposeidon out