Liberating Humanity From the Constraints of Gravity Tricia Robertson

The news has been freaking me out lately. It seems like more people are jumping on the bandwagon of throwing common sense out the door to follow their passion and give the ole heave ho to a little thing I like to call gravity.

When I was in first grade, I got in an argument with my mother one night over bedtime. She wanted to give me older brother more responsibility and allow him to stay up later while I had to go to bed. I didn’t want miss the nightly party with cupcakes that I just knew was going on every night after I went to bed so I argued with her. Drove her nuts. She kept coming into the bedroom and screaming at me for not falling asleep until finally she was actually waking me up to yell. This caused me to have a pretty restless night. Until sometime around 2am when I won the fight by falling out of bed.

“S P L A T”

It made a classic sound that I, and my family, still remember. My bed was not against any walls and it was on top of a hardwood floor. My little toe-head bouncing off of the floor made exactly the sound you think it would. My head immediately spun around for several minutes like Wiley Coyote after the Road Runner dropped an anvil on his head. The next day, my face lit up into all the crazy bruise colors known to mankind. When I got home from school, there was a police officer discussing the “situation at home” with my mother. He had been called by the school councilor. Like I said, I won the fight. No adult should ever pick a fight with a first grader, there is no way to win.

Since then, I’ve had a strong respect for gravity and its forces. That is why the news has been freaking me out this week.

For instance, I was watching the news last night and they had a story about the Olympic trampoline competition. I didn’t know they had that! 

Trampolines! At the Olympics!

This is way different than the trampoline I had in the backyard as a kid where my neighbor Mike kept trying to get my brother to jump off the fence onto the trampoline. My brother is a pretty smart guy, even back then, and could always get Mike to do for himself. Mike did develop some skills doing that, I guess and the scars on his face only give him character now.

Now modern Olympic trampoline involves highly skilled, athletic, muscular, fearless, petite gymnasts jumping a good 20-30 feet into the air and doing flips and tricks, landing perfectly back onto the X at the center of the trampoline tarp. This sport is not for the faint of heart; it has killed one Olympic athlete to date. What possesses perfectly intelligent, normal human beings to tempt gravity and propel themselves in the air like that is beyond me, but I can’t wait to see the competition. Its like a monster truck race without the safety measures of all the mud on hand.

It is also very popular in many other countries and looks to be becoming more so here.
America’s best chances for a medal lie with 23 year old Jennifer Parilla. She has been competing since 1993 and has already won many competitions in the US. This girl is nothing if not fearless. Check her out when you get a chance. And check out our other athletes, you never now when a dark horse will steal the competition. That’s good tv.

Then there’s this guy, Alain Robert a French stuntman, who today has once again gotten himself arrested for climbing up a skyscraper, this time the New York Times building WITHOUT A ROPE OR ANY SAFETY EQUIPMENT. Call me a ninny, but the fear of “splat” gets me nervous climbing off my front porch in the morning without coffee. How can a person climb 52 stories without thinking “splat” and without any backup should his mind get off track for even a moment? I couldn’t do it. But the interesting thing is, once he was done (and arrested), another guy did the exact same thing on the exact same building. What inspires this madness? For Alain, this time, it was his passion for our planet. He was doing it to protest global warming and promoting his cause, The Solution is Simple. I bet this guy’s life story is some really good reading; he has been doing this for years.

And don’t get me started on the newfound, re-found popularity of 6-inch heels. Now you are nobody in entertainment if you haven’t been filmed on a red carpet wearing a pair of these gravity defying pain-trappers. For once the British media got off of Gwyneth Paltrow’s case for doing it and instead has posted a story on Natasha Kaplinsky, a 35 year old British newsreader who is in her sixth month of pregnancy (oh yeah, I said P R E G N A N T). More power to her, I wouldn’t do it on a double-dog dare. Give me my Birkenstocks or give me a sofa! You don’t want see this teetering on anything higher than a 1-inch flat.

I don’t mean to make fun of anybody who’s out there following their heart. I found these stories while surfing the net looking for inspiration because I think I could use more inspiration.

If you can do any of these things are something like them, go for it. Me, I’ll be on the couch eating a hot dog watching Law & Order re-runs wearing my brand new purple Crocs. And I’ll probably still suffer from a paper cut from the tv guide. Some people are not meant to be higher. Go forth, find pain! More power to ya!

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