Reminisce Thursday

We're gonna start something new on here.

We'll call it Reminisce Thursday.

This is where I'll tell you old, funny, probably embarrassing, possibly endearing (doubtful) stories about myself.

Cause I like to live in the past.

The other day, I dated a paper for school July 18, 2009.
Sometimes I have trouble moving on.

But for this first Reminisce Thursday, we're going all the way back to late, late, late 2007. 


Right after Christmas, my freshman year of college, my dad's twinsy, my aunt, and my cousins John, Jay, and Hugh came for a visit. Yes, this is the Jay of the one wedding to rule them all. (LOTR nerd alert. sorry.) But this visit was of his pre-Kelsey days.


Stephen decided to take the cuzes and me for a rappelling adventure. We went to a rock quarry. And Stephen set up shop. With lots of ropes and webbing and helmets and harnesses and doodads.

As our fearless leader, Stephen went down first.

Jay and John going down like pros.

And down goes Hugh too.


Then it was my turn:

Now there's a look of pure confidence if I've ever seen it. 
Okay. I know. I look like a weinie.


That's because I am. You'll see soon enough.


And don't judge the red pants. I'm sure I wanted to match my helmet. 
Even on a crumbly mountain, fashion must never be compromised.

First time rappelling and down I go. As you can tell, my emotions are under control. I may be a little scared, but still happy. And actually a lot scared but still happy-ish.

John, Jay, and Stephen all went down "Aussie" style as well. That would be face first. 


And when they kept saying "Aussie," I thought they were saying "Ozzy." And I had a really hard time figuring out why the heck a rappelling style was named after Ozzy Osbourne. He just never struck me as the outdoor type. But what do I know?

Stephen even went down without a harness. Brave soul.


Okay, here is where the story gets embarrassing interesting. And thankfully, there is no photo documentation of this.


The boys decide to send me down again. Not even "Aussie" style or harness-less. Just your normal ole rappelling. So I harness up and get clipped in. I start to lean backwards over the edge to head down. And out of nowhere, I lose it. Emotionally speaking, of course. 


This is why when boys complain about girls being crazy, I'll just simply agree. Because we are. I mean I had already been down once fine, but time number two, I just panicked. No clue why. I just decided I was gonna somehow drop myself and plummet to my death. Granted the rock we were rappelling on was a little crumbly, but still, dramatic much?


So I leaned over the edge, and go down like 6 inches-ish, still pretty much at the top, and I start bawling. Blindsided by the ugly cry.

Well, Stephen is at the bottom, yelling up at me to come on down. We yelled back and forth for quite a while, because I'm scared and want to go back up. Stephen kept telling me that wasn't possible (stupid gravity), and that I was fine and needed to keep coming down. And John and Jay were up top with me and kept being sweet during this whole emotional outbreak and tried to encourage me that I was fine and also gracefully ignored my begs for them to pull me back up.

Well, ugly cry continued. And with any good ugly cry comes the runny nose. But I had both hands holding the rope as a brake (even though you only need one to do that job, but I didn't want to risk it and plummet to my death, you know.) So here's the pretty visual image for you. The snot is pouring, and I can't even spare a hand to wipe it. So ugly cry plus snot pouring with me not even attempting to clear it. Definitely has to be one of the top ten most unattractive moments of my life.

And then John did something that is no doubt one of the top ten nicest things anyone has ever done for me. He actually took off his glove and used it to wipe the uncontrollable snot from my nose. That's real love, folks.

And I think that action plus the fact that I had been hanging there for several minutes and was still not defying gravity made me realize it was probably time to stop being a crazy person. And so I just rappelled to the bottom. And miraculously didn't plummet to my death.

I like to think maybe this experience will help John and Jay understand their new wives a little better. Sometimes girls are crazy, and we cry even when it doesn't make sense. And all a boy has to do to help is wipe some tears and snot. Well actually, Kelsey and Molly can probably take care of the snot themselves as it will be likely that their hands won't be busy keeping themselves from plummeting to their death. So maybe just hand them a tissue. But feel free to wipe tears. They're a little more sanitary.

And so you people know I'm not a complete pansy. Here I am rappelling down a way bigger cliff with a big ole overhang two years later. Gosh, I'm so hardcore.

Why did I decide to rappel again?
   A - Because after years of therapy, I got my confidence back.
   B - Because I'm an in-your-face woman. The antithesis of a weinie.
   C - Because I was no longer wearing my red pants.
   D - Because I was a camp counselor for a rock climbing trip and had just stood at the top of the cliff and told all my kids they had to be brave and go down and to not be a weinie about it. After all, I had rappelled before, and it was no big deal.