Free Falling
Carmen Ortega
ENG111-06
Jyly,7 2013
Personal Narrative
Free Falling
It was an early Sunday morning on Delta flight 6767 that departed Huntsville, Alabama at 07:20 on a sunny April morning when I made the decision to jump. Obviously I wasn’t considering jumping out of the short one hour and five minute commercial flight from Huntsville International Airport to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, but I had made up my mind. Quite a few months before this particular day, my friend had mentioned her desire to go skydiving. My response to her enthusiasm and set in stone decision to do such a thing matched the reactions I received when I told my close friends and family that I was at a Skydiving Center in Miami and prepping for a jump. However what made me decide to jump on this particular day was a strong feeling of claustrophobia, most people would sum this up to being on a 70 passenger aircraft, which is considered small in the airline industry, at least for a commercial airline it was pretty small. I though was feeling claustrophobic in the sense that I was being trapped by all these limitations, from which I was unable to release myself. Once we had landed in Atlanta, I pulled out my blue Samsung flip phone to send my friend a text message, and told her how I had decided I would go skydiving with her if she hadn’t already gone ahead and done it. I pressed send, and about five seconds later got a confirmation that the text had been sent, and twenty cents had been deducted from my AT&T prepaid GoPhone. With no surprise I never got a reply to the message, but I knew that if she did receive it we weren’t about to make arrangements to go right away and that it was going to be something in the, hopefully near, future.
The opportunity to skydive presented much sooner than I would have ever anticipated. Although I had decided to take whatever chance I was given to go skydiving, it wasn’t something that played in my mind constantly. To be
ENG111-06
Jyly,7 2013
Personal Narrative
Free Falling
It was an early Sunday morning on Delta flight 6767 that departed Huntsville, Alabama at 07:20 on a sunny April morning when I made the decision to jump. Obviously I wasn’t considering jumping out of the short one hour and five minute commercial flight from Huntsville International Airport to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, but I had made up my mind. Quite a few months before this particular day, my friend had mentioned her desire to go skydiving. My response to her enthusiasm and set in stone decision to do such a thing matched the reactions I received when I told my close friends and family that I was at a Skydiving Center in Miami and prepping for a jump. However what made me decide to jump on this particular day was a strong feeling of claustrophobia, most people would sum this up to being on a 70 passenger aircraft, which is considered small in the airline industry, at least for a commercial airline it was pretty small. I though was feeling claustrophobic in the sense that I was being trapped by all these limitations, from which I was unable to release myself. Once we had landed in Atlanta, I pulled out my blue Samsung flip phone to send my friend a text message, and told her how I had decided I would go skydiving with her if she hadn’t already gone ahead and done it. I pressed send, and about five seconds later got a confirmation that the text had been sent, and twenty cents had been deducted from my AT&T prepaid GoPhone. With no surprise I never got a reply to the message, but I knew that if she did receive it we weren’t about to make arrangements to go right away and that it was going to be something in the, hopefully near, future.
The opportunity to skydive presented much sooner than I would have ever anticipated. Although I had decided to take whatever chance I was given to go skydiving, it wasn’t something that played in my mind constantly. To be