Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

My ribs after their rough encounter with the side of the tunnel I recently went to the wind tunnel in Raeford, North Carolina to perfect (ha!) my skydiving skills.  In classic Bobbi style, I not only do not arrive the proscribed thirty minutes early, I am over an hour late for my booked ten minutes, ten minutes I have been informed will be used by someone, not me, although I will be the one paying, if I'm not there, STAT!  So I run in, late and flustered, and get debriefed on the way in to the tunnel.  I struggle with my ear plugs as I shrug on my jumpsuit and then put my helmet on, yes, backwards at first as always.  Knee pads are in place and I have no idea what Greg is trying to tell me, something about crossing my arms, falling in, and grabbing the net once I get inside. Thank God I begin to doubt my ability to comprehend Greg's charades, and I ask him to clarify about grabbing the net.  Apparently, I am NOT supposed to grab it; he smacks my hands as a reminder. I

"Death Will Find You" Bridge Death will find you. The question is, where? Hiding in your bed at 9 p.m., cholesterol free?   In a flaming, mangled car at 3 am when you grew tired and drifted left of center?   Or perhaps in the claws of an angry bear on the Blue Ridge Parkway?   Tumbling down the 100-foot rock face you’re repelling down when your equipment fails, or more likely, you fail at using your equipment properly?   Under water, where you’re trapped when your kayak hits a streamer in unexpected white rapids for which you are too inexperienced?   In your bathtub, water hot, tears steaming, a bottle of wine and a bottle of pills…Or a rush of hard ground? Wherever death finds us, it is sure to do so.   I choose to live my life in the here and now, day by day, sometimes hour by hour, rather than either trying to hide from death or passively waiting for it.   Do I seek death?   Absolutely not.   Do I fear it? Less and less since childhood, when I made friends on my si