More cool old photos from the world famous deYong Museum of Stuff Stored In the Shed:

My dad was five years older than my mom so they never went to school together. When asked how they met, they told very different stories.

Her version was that they met at a dance, that he shyly ambled over to her and asked if he could have the next Lindy Hop.

His version was that he was that he was driving down the street one day when he saw her window shopping. He claimed he pulled the car over to the curb and asked her if she would like a ride. Being the refined young lady that she was, she said no and quickly scurried away. He claimed he drove around the block, pulled over next to her again and asked if she was sure she didn’t need a ride. According to his version, she found herself powerless against his rugged good looks and farm boy charm and eagerly jumped in beside him.

She was always horrified when he told this story and responded with an aghast, “Oh, Bill, you know that’s not true.”

He would laugh and give a little nod to assure us that despite her protestations it was, indeed, true.

With their conflicting stories in mind, I asked him if it was difficult for a farm boy to find dates with the city girls. I was thinking about logistics. There were several miles of dirt roads between the farm and town. He was expected to do several hours of chores every morning and afternoon. And making the circumstances even more difficult, there were twelve kids in the family but only one car. The deYong kids had to ride horses to school (I cannot even begin to fathom how that was possible in a Montana winter).

These were the kind of problems I was thinking about when I wondered about dating difficulties.

“Those weren’t problems,” he explained. “The real problem was that it’s tough to go girlin’ when you smell like cow shit.”

You know the old saying, “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes?”

Well, in this case I just don’t think you’re going to like what you find on his shoes.

I can’t watch Wheel of Fortune. It’s the dullest show on television. Pat Sajak, its host, seems to have been sleepwalking through his job for the twenty years or so. I can’t blame him. I mean, how many times can you say, “Choose a vowel” before you start begging random strangers to put a bullet in your head.

That being said, Sajak is actually a very funny guy off the air. He’s semi-famous for his hilarious Tweets. Like this one, for example:

I forwarded this Tweet to my friend Ray because I thought it sounded like something he would say. He knows Jamie and I have been married for about a thousand years so he asked if that’s how she treats me.

A funny man, that Raymundo.

About five minutes after this photo was taken, my dad took a milking machine off one cow and took one step backward in preparation to put it on the next cow when some unsuspected short circuit caused a blue bolt of electricity to arc across the barn. His entire herd of six cows was immediately electrocuted, dropping dead as he stood just one step behind them.

In that split second, he lost his entire inventory, his entire production line, his livelihood, and all his savings. Not to mention 100% of his his bovine buddies.

I don’t know enough about electricity to know why he was spared. Was it because he was wearing rubber boots that provided enough insulation to protect him? Was it because he was standing just far enough away to avoid the arc? Was it pure luck of the draw?

Whatever the reason, it triggered a family financial crisis. My parents were forced to do something they were absolutely loathe to do — borrow money from the bank to buy six new cows.

I cannot imagine how it was possible to make enough money to live off the milk from so few cows, but they did it. And they had enough money left over to save up to buy another cow and then another and another and they eventually ended up with a herd of one hundred and fifty.

Every cow, just like every person, has its own unique personality. Some are sweet and gentle, others are mischievous, others are just plain cantankerous. When your entire herd consists of only six cows, you get to know each of them pretty well. And vice versa. They must fall on a scale somewhere between pets and co-workers. Maybe you even give them names. But when you milk hundreds of cows, you probably don’t have time to notice each animal’s individual quirks. You eventually get to the point where numbers become more efficient than names so each cow’s left ear gets tagged with an easy-to-read ID.

I am tempted to say my dad was a hard-hearted businessman who viewed each cow as nothing more than a unit of production, and when that cow no longer produced enough milk she was shipped off to a bovine retirement village. But he had one cow he just plain liked. He kept her long after her most productive days were over. He could never explain why. He’d just say, “I don’t know why I keep her. I just like her.” It’s kind of like why the Dodgers keep Clayton Kershaw on the team. They know he’s not the greatest pitcher in baseball anymore; they know he won’t lead the league in wins; and they know he’s lost a couple miles per hour off his fastball. If asked why they continue to pay Kershaw $30 million per year, Dodgers President Andrew Friedman might say, “I don’t know why we keep him. We just like him.”

One year one of my high school buddies (we’ll call him Tim primarily because his name was Tim) begged my dad for a weekend job. My dad laughed at Tim and told him he was a city boy who wouldn’t last one shift with the cows. But Tim was persistent so my dad finally relented and gave him the job. I, who since I was a little boy had been doing the job for which Tim was hired, was tasked with training him.

Tim showed up at 4:00 a.m. for his first shift. I showed him how to bring fifteen cows into each side of the barn. Cows are not the smartest beasts, but they all learn quickly that they will be rewarded if they walk into the barn and stick their heads through the stanchions. I showed Tim how to pull the lever that closed the stanchions, trapping the cows in the spots where they’d be milked. Although it seems counterintuitive, the cows are happy with this arrangement for several reasons. First, the barn is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Second, every time they are herded into the barn, they’re given the tastiest food of their otherwise dull dietary lives. And third, the milking machines relieve the painful pressure they feel from carrying so much milk. It’s a win-win-win situation for the cows so they line up in the holding pen at milking time, each one eagerly awaiting her turn. (And to expand the every-cow-is-different theme, some cows are the first in line every morning and afternoon and others are recalcitrant and always wait until the very end.)

After closing the stanchions on the first group of fifteen cows, Tim’s next assignment was to wash them, using a pressure hose to clean all the mud and cowshit off the cows prior to them being milked. But the city boy had never really been around cows and didn’t have a clue how to begin.

I demonstrated the proper washing technique on a couple cows, pushing my way in between them to get at the hard-to-wash spots.

He looked at these huge beasts, suddenly realizing how big they were, and with real concern asked, “Don’t they ever kick you?”

“I”ve been doing this since I was a little boy,” I told him. “And I’ve never been kicked.” It was true.

I handed him the pressure hose. He began by spraying the water from a safe distance beyond the reach of the cows’ hooves. “That won’t work,” I instructed him. “You need to get in closer.” He nodded his head and nervously moved in a little closer. I honestly believe the cows sensed his fear. The cow on Tim’s left quickly took exception to his amateur hosing technique, pivoted its right rear leg forward, and then let loose with a hell of a kick that, unfortunately, struck young Tim right square in the portion of the body in which men least want to be hit. He fell to the ground doubled over in excruciating pain, rolling around on the wet, shit covered floor of the barn. He was my pal, so I, of course, found his pain absolutely hysterical. I was laughing so hard I could barely finish washing the rest of the cows while he writhed in agony. Seriously, he had been on the job for only five minutes before suffering an injury I had never experienced.

As you might expect based on this inauspicious beginning, Tim’s career as a farm worker was not a long-lasting one. He gave notice as soon as he could line up a different job that didn’t include the prospect of being booted in the balls by a 1200-pound bovine. But he left behind a legacy. The city boy thought pets should be named, and he could not get it out of his head that the dairy cows were not pets.

”Why don’t they have names?” he asked.

“There are too many of them,” I responded. “They have numbers instead.”

”What about that cow your dad likes. Doesn’t she have a name?”

Tim kept up this line of questioning for the few remaining weeks he kept the job. It got to the point that I was tired of hearing him prattle on about it. So I took a big red paint stick that we used to mark the cows and began writing names on the their right hindquarters.

“Wilma! Bessie! Gertrude! Bertha! Harriet! Edith! Margaret! ” When I ran out of old-fashioned women’s names that seemed appropriate for cows, I began putting our classmates’ names on the cows. “Joyce!” Linda! Nora! Susan! Patti! Veronica! Lee!” Then I moved on to silly nicknames like “Poopsie! Dollface! Babycakes!”

“What the hell are you doing?” my dad asked. He clearly thought I’d lost my mind.

”Tim thinks the cows should have names so I’m giving them names.” Eventually I was able to put names on all 100 milk cows before Tim came back for his next weekend shift.

He got a kick out of it. But not the kind that made him roll around in agony.

I have been accused of having a story for any random subject that may get mentioned. I do not deny it.

You may have read that hideous, bloviating cow esteemed television personality Whoopi Goldberg is in trouble for opening her ugly pie hole and spewing an anti-Semitic thought or two on national television. No, I take that back. I doubt that any thought whatsoever has gone into anything this vile pile has ever said or done.

So, of course, this would be an appropriate time to tell my own Whoopi Goldberg story. (I normally say that 98% of JimandJamie.com is 99% true, but in this case names and details have been intentionally blurred to protect the innocent.)

A number of years ago I got a phone call from the marketing director at very well-known company that had just signed Whoopi to star in its new commercials. “You’re good at writing funny commercials,” the client said. “We’d like you to write a bunch of scripts for Whoopi.”

“That,” I responded, “would be a waste of my time and your money.”

”Land sakes alive,” the marketing director exclaimed. “Whatever do you mean?”

“This woman’s an egomaniac,” I answered. “She’ll never read anything I write for her. She’ll want to have them written by someone she knows and trusts.

“You think?” he queried.

“Absolutely. But it could be worse. She might remind you of her legendary comedic skills and demand the right to write her own scripts.”

“Oh, no,” said the client. “We love your work. We think she’ll love it, too.”

“It’s your money,” I responded. “But remember my prediction.”

I wrote a bunch of scripts. I thought they were pretty funny. The client agreed and sent them on to Whoopi’s people. A studio was booked and a date was set to shoot the commercials. I cashed the company’s check and forgot all about the project. That was very unusual because I almost always attend the shoots for TV commercial I write. You never know when an on-the-spot re-write will become necessary because words that looked good on paper don’t work as well when they’re spoken. But understandably, I was not invited to this shoot.

A number of weeks went by and I got another call from the client.

”It was even worse than you predicted,” the marketing director moaned.

“Did she insist on writing her own scripts?”

“Worse. She insisted on ad-libbing the commercials. We shot a full day of Whoopi ad libbing about our product.”

“Are they funny?” I asked, kind of hoping for his sake that they were.

“Well, Whoopi thinks so,” he said glumly, “but no one else does.”

So take it from one who knows, I am not surprised that Whoopi got herself in trouble for ad libbing. But I am surprised to find out she’s an anti Semite.

Nah, I’m really not.

Just one additional thought: What the hell was Ted Danson thinking? In addition to being obnoxious, Whoopi looks like she went wardrobe shopping at Barnum & Bailey’s circus tent close-out sale.

(See what I mean, Whoopi? That there was a damn funny line. You should have used the material I wrote for you. Wait! Wait! I have another one: “Whoopi has plenty of funny material, but Joann’s Fabrics doesn’t have enough of it to cover her fat ass.” I’m killing myself here. I’m friggin’ hilarious. But Whoopi’s still just an unfunny anti-Semite.)

More from the deYong Museum of Cardboard Boxes and Plastic Crates:

Only one conclusion can be drawn from this deYong family photo: My grandparents, George and Bessie, would have been the richest farmers in Montana if only their fields had been half as fertile as their loins. They had twelve children, eleven of whom survived to adulthood.

Check out my grandmother on the far left. She was born in 1877 and my dad (fourth kid from the left) was born in 1911. He looks like he’s about eight or nine in this photo, so she was probably only about 43 years old when this photo was taken. But look at her hair. It had already turned pure white. I imagine giving birth to twelve kids will do that to you.

The Depression scattered the Montana deYong clan all across the country. I cannot even name all my aunts and uncles and certainly don’t recognize them based on this photo. I’m not even sure I ever met all of them. And I know for sure that I have cousins out there I’ve never met.

One uncle became a gravedigger in Alberta, Canada and eventually a Canadian citizen. Another uncle ended up as a vacuum cleaner repairman in one of Chicago’s Indiana suburbs. My uncle Hank bought a farm near the family farm and his son still farms it to this day. Another uncle took over the family farm and it is still in the family, too, owned by my second cousin. My youngest uncle followed my dad to California and they milked cows together until he went off on his own.

My aunts are a different story: I don’t think I met my aunts Mable and Bertha more than a couple times, so I don’t know much about them. My aunt Gertrude moved to Southern California, got married, and gave birth to my cousin but died before I was born. My aunt Sue was a school teacher in Washington. I guess that I met her four or five times in my life, and it was always a fun occasion because she was the sort who made everyone laugh.

You might think that twelve kids in one family is pretty crazy, but let me make it a little crazier. My grandmother’s sister also moved to Kalispell, got married, and also had twelve kids. They must have been rationing names in Montana in the early 1900s because the two sisters gave a lot of their kids the same first names (two Petes, two Hanks, two Gertrudes, two Anns, two Susies, two Georges). So that’s 24 brothers and sisters and first cousins, many of them sharing first names, all in a town of just 8,786. Yes, that’s a very precise number but it’s official because I looked up the United States Census to verify the population of Kalispell in 1910.

That’s me standing in front of the old one bedroom farmhouse in which my grandparents raised twelve kids, the same house that’s in the sepia tone photo at the top of this story. I think it has been demolished now, but it was still standing as of a couple years ago.

To repeat: It was a one bedroom house. I can understand how my grandparents handled the first two or three or maybe even four kids in the house. But how do you even make half a dozen more babies when you already have half a dozen running around the house? Where do you find time? Where do you find the energy? Where do you find a place where inquisitive toddlers don’t barge in unexpectedly asking, “Whatca doin’, daddy? Whatcha doing, mommy?”

The list of places I want to visit to but never will has just increased by one.

I’ve bitched for several years that thanks to failed socialism (but I repeat myself) Jamie and I will never see Angel Falls and the Catatumbo Lightning Fields, both in Venezuela. The political situation is far too unstable and the crime rate is far too high to take the risk.

Now we can add to that list one more wanna-see destination that will soon be off-limits — The Gates of Hell in lovely Turkmenistan.

I read an article that said Turkmenistan is closing The Gates of Hell and then as sort of an afterthought added that the country has no tourism infrastructure. It has nothing for tourists to see nor do. And even if it had things to see and do, it has no roads to get tourists to where they could see and do them.

As a rule of thumb, and I think it’s a reasonably accurate one, countries ending in “stan” (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) are generally not considered tourist havens. You’re more likely to find camels and sand fleas and religious fanatics than tourists. I’ve never heard anyone say, “I can’t wait to visit Turkmenistan.” I’ve never seen an ad for the Turkmenistan Bureau of Tourism.

I’m going to assume you are not familiar with The Gates of Hell so please allow me to describe it. It’s a huge crater — a huge flaming crater — out in the middle of the desert, the middle of nowhere, really, in the middle of Turkmenistan. The fire burns 24 hours a day 365 days a year in a cauldron that measures more than 230 feet across and 100 feet deep and it gets a little bigger every year thanks to erosion of the sandy soil that surrounds it. It looks like a place where astronauts might have practiced landing on the moon.

I’m not sure if The Gates of Hell qualifies as a natural wonder. Maybe it can be found on lists of natural wonders but if so, it’s probably appended with an asterisk like Roger Maris’ 1961 home run record.

Here’s what I mean:

It’s a wonder to be sure, but not really a natural one. Back in the late 1960s a team of accident prone Russian petroleum engineers were drilling a natural gas well on the flat plain in which the crater now sits. They accidentally drilled right through the roof of an unknown methane-filled cavern, which collapsed under the weight of all the drilling equipment. Equally accident prone Russian geologists quickly realized that the collapse had begun releasing a reservoir of deadly methane gas into the atmosphere. So some accident prone Russian scientists came up with a brilliant solution — light the damn thing on fire. They did so, assuming that it would burn out in a matter of days. Or maybe weeks. Or maybe months. Unfortunately for the environment, but fortunately for Turkmenistan’s nascent tourism industry, it has now been burning non-stop since that anonymous Russian moron dropped that match into the pit back fifty-one years ago. And it shows no sign of sputtering out anytime soon.

In a land with no spectacular mountains, no remarkable rivers, no Grand Canyon, no Mount Rushmore, and no Las Vegas, the giant burning hole in the ground quickly rose to the top of the list of major tourist attractions. Is there any other country in the world whose greatest tourist attraction began its life as an environmental disaster? It’s as if Alaska decided to promote the Exxon Valdez oil spill as if it were Disneyland.

Unfortunately, the government of Turkmenistan has always been a bit embarrassed about the fact that its greatest environmental disaster is also its most popular tourist attraction. The Turkmen periodically announce that they want to extinguish the fire because that will do more good for the envinonment than the flames will do for tourism.

So Turkmenistan’s president has yet again ordered the government to find a way to snuff out the colossal bowl of flames. According to long-time, even longer-named President Gurbanguly Malikkuliyevich Berdymukhamedov, the fire is having an adverse impact on the environment and affecting the health of people living in the vicinity.

As an aside, “long-time president” is clearly a euphemism for the word “dictator.” All “Stans” have dictators, but as far as we know none of them are named Stan. Not unless Gurbanguly is Turkmeni for Stan.

In case you want to visit The Gates of Hell while it’s still open, the site is located some 160 miles north of the Turkmenistani capital of Ashgabad. Keep going north and you’ll soon find yourself at the border with Uzbekistan.

Another delightful country currently suffering from a severe shortage of tourist attractions.

More from the deYong Museum of Cardboard Boxes and Plastic Crates:

What the hell, you may wonder, is going on in these photos? Who is this gorgeous, exotic creature and why is she sitting on hirsuit young Jim’s lap?

It’s a damn good story.

So I’ll tell it.

Back in the mid ‘70s my cousin Ron got married up in Kalispell, Montana. We’re only a few months apart in age. I flew up from Los Angeles to attend.

I hung out with all his high school and college buddies the night before the wedding. There was a red hot rumor flying around that Playboy was doing a big Playmate photo shoot somewhere in the Kalispell area. Ron’s friends theorized — somewhat reasonably, I thought — that these goddesses would be unlikely to sit around their hotels rooms on a Friday night and that if we hit enough bars we would eventually run into them at one local drinking establishment or another.

We spent the night going from bar to bar to bar but had not so much as a single Playmate sighting. Oh, sure, the bars were filled with local girls built like, but not as pretty as the horses they may have still have been using to plow their fathers’ fields, but nary a scantily-clad Bunny was spotted.

The wedding was beautiful. My cousin had lucked out and convinced a really smart, really beautiful girl to marry him. I was convinced I would never be so lucky.

The next morning I had an early flight back to Los Angeles. I had already established my now routine habit of arriving at the airport early and boarding as soon as possible in order to people-watch as other folks board and walk down the aisle to their seats.

The plane was gradually filling when I saw the exquisite creature shown in the photo (above) approaching. She hadn’t noticed me because (a) I was not particularly noticeable, and (b) she was busy checking out the numbers posted above each row. I, on the other hand, gawked unabashedly, immediately realizing that she had to be one of those Playmates who had so successfully eluded us in the town’s bars. Much to my surprise she paused when she got to my row, carefully looked at the row numbers on one side and then the other to make sure she sat in the seat to which she had been assigned, then put her carry-on bag above my row, and demurely seated herself next to me.

We started talking and I told her the story of the previous evening, how we had tried unsuccessfully to track her down.

“Well,” she answered, “you found me now.”

We hit if off immediately and talked all the way to Salt Lake City and then hung out together in the terminal while waiting for our connecting flight to Los Angeles. As we walked past one of those coin-operated photo booths on our way to our gate she excitedly said, “Let’s take some photos together.”

Damn straight, I thought. Let’s take some photos together because no one will believe this without photographic evidence.

So here it is — proof that I once had a very close, personal relationship with a Playboy bunny. So close, in fact, that she eagerly sat herself right smack on my lap.

As our plane touched down in Los Angeles she scrawled her name and phone number on a piece of paper and said, “This was fun. Give me a call and we’ll do it again.”

I could at this point delve into explicit details of the torrid affair we immediately launched into, make some veiled references to a series of kinky sexual exploits, and describe how this insatiable little manx could not keep her Playmate paws off of me, but unfortunately that would be complete bullshit. The truth is that we never went out. I just couldn’t get up the nerve to call her. She was a freakin’ Playboy bunny and I was a rube farmboy pretending to be a sophisticated advertising copywriter. I do not mind telling you that she scared the hell out of me.

I don’t even remember her name.

I wonder what ever happened to her.

A quick trip to Phoenix, Arizona results in two JimandJamie.com posts. That’s what I call a successful weekend. Thanks, American Airlines.

Apparently American Airlines has become quite hoity-toity while I wasn’t looking. The rack in the seat in front of you is now reserved for “Literature only.” Unfortunately my rack was empty. I didn’t even get a copy of the airline magazine. Just a tattered copy of the emergency evacuation guide.

UPDATE: Now that I’ve given this a little more thought I think it might be a really good idea. Schools don’t teach shit anymore, so the airlines could perform a huge public service by offering the classics to their customers. “April is Greek Epic Month” or “July is Russian Novel Month.” And for shorter, commuter flights, maybe “November is Japanese Haiku Month.” Delta Airlines, headquartered in Atlanta, could offer “Gone With the Wind.” Alaska Airlines could stock “Call of the Wild.” Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, both headquartered in Dallas, could offer “Lonesome Dove.” That kind of thing.

More photos and stories from the Archives:

We still can’t get back to Australia because of Wuhan Flu quarantine rules, but that doesn’t mean we can’t visit via the Wayback Machine.

Let’s begin this amateur psychiatric session with an admission: I am terrified of heights. Far as I know, it’s my only irrational fear.

Many years ago, while on a driving trip through New Zealand, my girlfriend and I stopped along the side of the road because we saw lunatics jumping off the old Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge just east of Queenstown. The bridge stood about 150 feet above the river. After a few minutes of watching this spectacle from the side of the road, we circled back to the adjacent parking lot and walked out onto the bridge to get a closer view of the complete lunatics who were willing not just to jump off the bridge, but to pay a pretty penny for the privilege.

Insane, I thought. Why would anyone jump off a bridge? Yet we stood there completely transfixed. Every time someone took a leap, my stomach also took a leap. I didn’t even like standing on the bridge looking down and absolutely could not imagine tying flexible cords to my ankles and stepping off the edge of that rickety platform.

Flash forward to 1991. I had saved up several years of unused vacation time and took off for six weeks in Cairns, Queensland up on Australia’s tropical northeast coast, nuzzled up against the famous Great Barrier Reef.

A few miles north of Cairns, just off Highway 1, was a huge sign that said “BUNGY JUMPING” with an arrow that pointed into the rainforest. I pulled into the parking lot and walked a few hundred feet through the rainforest to the base of an immense arch built specifically for bungy jumping tourists. It looked like a steampunk version of the St Louis Arch, but was tall enough that its peak jutted up above the rainforest canopy.

From an observation deck at the floor of the rainforest, I again watched the spectacle of lunatics jumping off the platform at the top of the arch, plummeting down toward a large pond, reaching the end of the cord, and then gently bouncing back up and down until they finally came to a stop, at which point they were lowered downward by the workers at the top of the arch, and helped into a boat sitting in the pond.

I never considered jumping. The mere thought of standing at the top of that arch and looking down was enough to terrify me.

Over the course of the next five weeks, I stopped in to watch these lunatics several more times and then at the beginning of my final week of vacation I thought It’s time for me to conquer my irrational fear of heights. I need to do this.

The next morning I stopped to watch again. But I could not will myself to take any action.

The following morning I attempted to climb the tower to the upper observation deck, but only got about halfway up before fear took over and I had to cling to the railing to descend back to the floor of the rainforest.

The third morning I tried again and finally got all the way up to the observation deck.

The fourth morning I once again got to the observation deck and this time I stayed longer, watching daredevils take their leaps. I forced myself to spend some time speaking to the guys whose job was tying the bungy cords to the jumpers ankles and giving them instructions on how to jump. They were an outgoing bunch of guys and assured me that bungy jumping was fun and easy and that none of their customers had ever been injured.

“You should try it,” one of them insisted.

“Now,” said another.

“Tomorrow,” I responded. “I’ll come back tomorrow and do it.” I just wasn’t ready.

The next morning I told myself This is it. I’m flying home to America tomorrow and this is my last chance to overcome my fears. I drove to the bungy jumping arch, parked my car and walked up to the outdoor counter where the company’s clerks collected the jumpers’ money and helped them fill out the necessary paperwork.

All jumpers were required to fill out a detailed ID form, not so much for safety but so that the company could match the jumper with the action photos it included in the package price. The bored young woman at the counter was filling it out my form and the conversation went something like this:

“Last name?”

“D-E-Y-O-N-G.”

“First name?”

“James.”

“Weight?”

“One seventy-five.”

“Color of shorts?”

“White.”

“Color of shirt?”

“Gray.”

“Hair color?”

“Brown.”

“Too late,” she said dryly. “I already wrote gray.”

Bitch. My hair was obviously the same reddish brown it had been since the day I was born. Thanks to her I hadn’t even made it to the first step of the tower and my day had already been ruined.

Paperwork completed and ego completely crushed, I climbed the tower with confidence. I got to the top of the platform, looked around and thought, What the hell was I so worried about? Piece of cake. No problem. No sweat. I can do this.

Want proof? Just look at the photo below. You can see the confidence radiating from every pore of my being, can you not? My face is painted with a cocky smirk. I am invincible.

There were probably a dozen people in line in front of me. One at a time they jumped and I crept closer and closer to jumping platform. Finally it was my turn.

“This is easy,” the young instructor told me. “We have your ankles secured. I want you to step out on the edge of the platform. I’m going to count ‘One! Two! Three! Jump’ and you jump when I say the word. I want you to dive straight out toward the island out there on the horizon. Just one rule: Keep your eyes on that island and do not look down.”

Being the moron I am, I completely disregarded his simple instructions. I stepped out to the edge of the platform and immediately looked straight down into the depths of hell. My testicles did a perfect impression of the French army and went into an immediate, rapid retreat. I was terrified.

“One! Two! Three! Jump!” he hollered. My body swayed outward, but my feet stayed planted on the platform and my hands never left the railing. I didn’t jump.

The instructor laughed. “Let’s try that again,” he patiently instructed. “You jump when I say the word jump. One! Two! Three! Jump!”

Again my feet and hands declined to cooperate. I stood anchored to be tower.

The instructor sighed heavily. I could tell he was very disappointed in me.

“Do you speak any other languages,” he asked.

“A little Spanish,” I said shakily.

“Then let’s try it in Spanish this time. Ready? Uno! Dos! Tres! Hump!”

I laughed but I didn’t budge.

He looked me straight in the eye and attempted to reassure me. “You have nothing to worry about. We’ve never had anyone get hurt. You can do this.” He stepped away and bellowed, “One! Two! Three! Jump.”

I was frozen in place. Completely immobile.

The instructor had clearly had his fill of my cowardice. He came over to my side, put his arm around my shoulder, leaned in closely, and spoke quietly enough that no one else would hear his words. “Hey, buddy,” he said with a bit of disgust in his voice, “Look at all the people in line behind you. Do you see the old ladies? The little girls? They’re all going to step out here and jump off this platform with no problems. Do you really want to embarrass yourself in front of all these people?”

I gulped.

“Now I’m going to count to three and say jump,” he said in a near whisper. “And when I say jump you’re going to jump off that platform. Understand?”

The son of a bitch was a master psychologist. He’d tried all his tricks and finally figured out that I would have no choice if he merely challenged my masculinity.

“One! Two! Three! Jump!”

I jumped.

As I recall from my dismal experience in high school physics, acceleration is equal to 9.8 meters per second squared. Or something like that. In other words, you go much faster every second that you’re falling than you did in the previous second.

I have a similar, self-devised formula: Terror is also equal to meters per second squared — which means the farther you fall and the closer you get to the ground, the scarier it becomes. You are absolutely convinced the bungy cord attached to your ankles will fail and that you will crash into the ground and die a horrible, bloody, disfiguring death.

Except that didn’t happen. After a couple seconds of sheer terror, I reached the end of the cord, it held, and I began decelerating. And then almost magically, I was able to slap the surface of the water before I began rising back up toward the platform. Gravity is a miraculous thing. It slowed everything down and each bounce was less pronounced than the prior one. It was all over before I knew it and I found myself being lowered into a boat sitting in the pond below.

I felt like Superman. All the fears and doubts that left me frozen atop the platform were immediately replaced by an incredible exhilaration. I could have done it again immediately. I wanted to do it again immediately. I couldn’t wait for that little boat to get me back to shore so I could rush to the check-in desk and get my photos, the ones that would show the world how bravely I had conquered my fears.

I looked at the photo immediately above and beamed. What a freakin’ stud, I thought to myself. Look at that remarkable, perfect form. If this were Olympic gymnastics, the judges would surely cheer and whistle and give perfect 10 scores for my Iron Cross formation.

And then I noticed one horrifying detail — my butt. The photo clearly demonstrated that far from being unafraid, I was so damn scared that I had puckered up and sucked my shorts right up my anal cavity.

I am pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. And now you have photographic evidence.