This is my post for #freewriters 2602 prompt save me hosted by @mariannewest
There is a small airport a mile or two from my house, several years ago someone started a skydiving business that now has grown where people come from all over the world to dive.
In the 1990s my kids bought me a ticket to skydive. When my husband told our fishermen friends, Tim and Devane, Devane said he knew how to save me. "We will need a mattress and one more person to hold the other corner" " and Tim says, "I can see us now, running around the landing field with a mattress, trying to see which one is her and trying to get the mattress under her."
About 5 or 6 years after moving here my husband found a parachute in the woods by our house. He returned it to the skydive business. They said it had been left in the sun for too long for anyone to use it but they gave him 35 dollars for the parts on it.
One day we had something hanging from one of the pine trees in our backyard. I tied a big hook to a rope and tossed it at the thing, I did it several times before hooking it. It turned out to be the pouch that goes first, it fills with air and pulls the parachute out.
Last summer my son found a parachute in the woods, it was a tangled mess and I would have sworn, it was no good. My daughter spent three days untangling it and wanted me to take her to the skydive place so she could get it back to the owner.
The people she talked to laid the parachute out and looked it over, they told her it was still in good shape and wanted to give her a coupon for dinner at their restaurant. She told them no thank you. They said they will try to contact the owner and he might want to give her a reward, she told him no, she did not want anything for it, and I am proud of her values.
These guys only fly when it is calm. Every time I see them I wonder who the first person was that said, I am going to put a small airboat engine on a chair and get launched into the air where a huge parachute held me up. I also wonder what happens when the wind catches them too far away from where they took off.
photos are mine