A Would-Be Gravity Defier

   Even though I broke both wrists jumping backwards off a backstop, it didn't stop me from jumping off of things when I got older.

   Attached to the back of our house was a screened in back porch with a nearly-flat roof (it had a slight slope to keep rain from accumulating up there).  I would climb up on that roof and sometimes just sit and ponder things.  I was smart enough to know that since I wasn't born with wings, I probably wasn't going to fly by flapping my arms.  But holding on to something and gliding down and/or parachuting off the roof was another thing.
   Since my adventure with wearing two casts at once left a bad taste in my mouth for breaking bones (oh, had I only known Future Me!), I did the smart thing (for a kid, gimme a break!) and dragged a mattress out into the yard for a landing pad.  That was if I miscalculated, I would at least have something softer than the ground to break my fall.
   At various times I tried various ways of jumping off the roof:  Sheets, cardboard "wings" taped to my arms, cardboard wings attached to wooden frames (bad idea, but no broken bones at least), a sheet of plywood (ouch!  splinters and the board hitting me on the back of my head when I stopped before the board did), a big stiff piece of cardboard, umbrella (I think Mary Poppins must have had a special umbrella), standing on piece of plywood and jumping before it hit (I got the idea from Bugs Bunny - unfortunately, I wasn't in a cartoon), and probably some other creative ideas.
   None of those things worked, although the sheet parachute came close because a gust of wind caught it just as I jumped and it kinda deployed before I hit.  The safest way to get off the roof, I decided, was to climb down.  Boring, but I got down unscathed.
   However, there was one other thing I tried after seeing enough action sequences in movies and on TV.  These guys would hit the ground and roll to slow down their momentum.  After a bit of practice, I got to where I could jump, hit, and roll and I didn't need the mattress.

   I guess the big question is why would I need to jump safely off the roof when I climbed up there in the first place?  And now that I'm older and supposedly wiser, my answer is:  I don't know.  Maybe it's a guy thing.