The first thing you should know about Bungee jumping is that your first time should be from lower heights to get you aclimated to the free fall. Fortunately for me I tried bungee jumping from a mere five feet. You see at five years old I was playing it safe because I couldn’t climb any of the taller trees and I wasn’t sure how to make things go. In fact I wasn’t trying to bungee jump at all, I was trying to parachute. I had taken a plastic bag from the grocery store and placed my arms through the handle holes and then wrapped a small bungee chord around the branch of the tree and then affixed the other end to my belt buckle loop.

I braced myself for the wonderful feeling of being suspended in the air (due to the ‘parachute’) and then lept out into the wide open space below me (wide open was a relative term because I had about a one square foot area upon which I could land without destroying some of my grandmother’s garden). To my surprise the grocery bag did not open up in a wide parachute but instead, blocked by my body the opening of the bag did nothing, much like the Vice President of the United States. Fortunately I had a backup plan, the bungee chord. This chord, measuring approximately 18 inches in length had lost at least eight or nine inches to the branch and so the 10 inches of elastic bands stretched to their limit quickly and I found my male parts severely restricted as my pants strained at the belt loop to be free.

I quickly bounced up. OK, not really, instead I hung their by my belt loop in pain until the sheer weight of my five year old body pulled the belt loop off of my pants and I fell well beyond the one foot area. Of course I was going to have to explain to my mother why my pants were missing a loop but what delight and joy I experienced once the blood flowed into my legs… I had invented a new sport.