Jump

I have discovered the utter beauty and magnificence of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. 

I imagine a giant peanut butter cup on the floor. Its upper chocolate layer is soft. Out of the fridge and been sitting in a warm kitchen for half an hour type of soft. So soft that if you touch it, a warm sticky thread of chocolate will threaten to come away with your blessed finger but will just restrain itself.

I imagine myself climbing a ladder and standing on a diving board high above the ground. I prepare myself; I jump. Right into the peanut butter cup. I break the chocolate surface in one smooth easy motion and reach the sweet-salty peanut butter centre. I float, I dive, I swim. I stay in the peanut butter cup for a whole day until I have eaten it all at which point a crane comes and hauls me away to my untimely yet immensely satisfying grave.

This is perfection.

So I went to Dubai this week. The only thing better about the trip than my discovery of peanut butter cups was skydiving. Maybe I should have lead with that. I WENT SKYDIVING!

I, of the crippling fear of heights variety, who cannot look out a 10th floor window without experiencing involuntary tightening of all nether regions and quickening of breath, jumped off a plane 14,000 feet above the ground AND I FLEW. I made for the most shocked and awkward bird ever, but flew I did.

It was a tandem jump which means I was strapped to an instructor throughout, who in my case happened to be a lanky blonde boy who shone brighter than the sun. He was Belgian, was around 7 feet tall, spoke with a darling accent, and was nice enough to look away from me every time he rolled his eyes at my terrified teeth-chattering. Him and his peoples joked around, good naturedly bullied me for being nervous and casually fell out of the plane before I could fully grasp that I was about to fall away into a void. But once we actually jumped, it was glorious. The sheer shock of just falling from the sky made me want to scream but we were falling much too fast for me to get any real sound out. So I just fell, silent and open mouthed and wonderstruck and so thoroughly happy. And then there was a parachute. I hovered above the earth lazily, drifting down slowly, looking at the map of Dubai spread out under me, strapped to the cutest man to ever emerge from Belgium while he gently laughed and welcomed me to "his office".

I'm so happy I did this. I cannot wait to do it again.