If all your friends...

Once upon a time I was one of the weirdos at a little Bible college in central Illinois. By weirdos I mean I was not preppy. I did not have big hair. I did not listen obsessively to DC Talk and Audio Adrenaline. I was not an early childhood major. I was not there in search of my M.R.S. degree. I was not your typical girly girl. I was a little strange by LCC standards. I liked alternative music (Pearl Jam, The Cure, The Pixies, Violent Femmes, Jane's Addiction, They Might Be Giants). I wore Doc Martins & had a hippy/skater/bohemian/goth (before we ever called it "goth") thing going on. I had long straight hair that I wore in odd ways (pigtails, braids, top knots). I wore dark lipstick. I was not really at home among the preachers' kids who seemed destined for ministry. After orientation I wasn't sure I belonged there at all. The only friends I really had were Swiss Miss and Grace's little brother.

One day I saw a girl walking through the dorm lobby wearing a Lemon Heads t-shirt. She looked oddly like me. I told her I liked her shirt & that was it. A few days later I found myself in a small group class with her and discovered we had a similar history with a boy (not the same boy). I also discovered she was one of the few people in the class who hadn't been brought up strictly with Church of Christ kids. We both had friends from all walks of life and all religious back grounds. From this we became friends and I got to know the small group of people I would spend the next year running around with.

They were all like me. They were all misfits in the small conservative college setting. We all loved the Lord, but none of us were really sure where we fit into the big picture. It was nice to have a group to identify with. As the year went by I made friends with the Preppies and girly girls and early childhood majors, but my strongest relationships were still with the "geeks and freaks."

Towards the end of the school year my Lemon Head friend (who was by that time my room mate), my friend from Belgium (a fabulous photographer) and a few others invited me to the rail road trestle. It spanned a river about 40 feet from the surface of the water. Being late April & weather in the mid 70's, the river was swollen and running nicely (not flooded by any means, but not shallow either). The plan was to jump off the trestle into the river...exciting, exhilarating, and our Belgium friend was going to take pictures. Some of them had done the same thing in the fall when the river was much shallower and they had a ball.

Lemon Head and I walked along the trestle until we reached the middle of the river. Our National Guard friend had waded out to make sure the river was clear of debris. He climbed ahead of us and made the first jump. His one piece of advice to me was, "Keep your legs straight or it's going to hurt when you hit."

When it was my turn, Lemon Head said, "Don't look down. Don't hesitate. Just run & jump. And don't forget- straight legs!" So I took a running start, jumped, and then closed my eyes.

Have you seen the Bugs Bunny show where he jumps into the pool only to discover much too late that the pool was empty? Yeah, that was my second thought once my feet left the bridge. my first was, "What did I just do?! I'm not sure I really want to do this anymore. Nope, I've changed my mind." After falling about 20 feet I thought I should be feeling water pretty soon. That's when the Bugs Bunny thing flashed through my mind.

About that time my feet hit the water. The impact was just enough to unlock one of my knees and bend it just a bit. That made the back of my thigh take most of the impact of my body weight on the surface of the water. OUCH! I went about 6 feet straight down into COLD water and began to kick for daylight/shore (which was what I was told to do upon impact).

What I wasn't expecting was the current that was sweeping me down river as I was kicking to shore. It wasn't particularly swift and I never felt I was in serious danger, but it was a little surprising and unsettling...especially when you're trying to swim in Chuck Taylor's. I reached shore about 25 yards down river from where I was aiming, climbed out and stood shivering from the cold (trust me, never go swimming in a river in April in central Illinois...no matter how warm you are when you leave campus), and rubbing the back of my very sore thigh.

I looked down at my leg to discover a welt about 8-9 inches long standing out about 1/4 inch from the back of my thigh. It was beet red but quickly turning purple. National Guard Guy wrapped me in my towel and said, "You did great! Way to go!" My friend from Belgium, who was photographing our adventure looked at me and said, "Can you do it again? I only got your splash." WHAT?!?! No way!

About 2 1/2 weeks later QM came to pack me up for the long drive back to Tennessee for summer break. We were loading up my dorm room when I bent to pick up a box and the back of my shorts hiked up a bit. I heard a shocked, "What happened to your leg?!?" Confused, I stood up and looked down at my leg and realized my mom just saw the 8 inch long bruise that was still lingering (and would for at least a month after the big adventure). "Uh...well...I jumped off a bridge..."

So my answer to the age old question is yes, if all my friends jumped off a bridge, I would too. Or at least I would have when I was 18.