Day 21

I asked a friend for something to do today and he recommended I go snowboarding. Unfortunately, the mountain is too far away to walk to and I didn't bring my corvette into town today. So instead I decided to try my hand at base jumping.

It's hard to find a building tall enough to jump off of in town, though. The tallest building here is 24-stories tall and would be perfect, but they don't let you go past the twelfth story unless you work there. I was escorted out by security for trying to break into the stairwell. Good thing, too, since I didn't have a parachute. My friend hadn't told me I needed one.

So I found a nice 5-story building on campus and jimmied the lock to the roof. There was another guy on top looking over the edge. He yelled at me a lot because it was "his roof and I couldn't stop him from jumping." I figured that would be fine because I was planning on jumping, too.

I looked over the edge and decided that jumping without a parachute was out of the question. The ground all around the building was paved and I would definitely hurt myself if I jumped without protection. I told the other guy on the roof this and he just laughed at me. I wanted to tell him not to jump until I got back, but I figured he wouldn't listen to me anyway.

I went downstairs and took all the cushions off the lounge couches and piled them outside under where I planned to jump. I then went inside and found some old mattresses in a closet. They added to my pile and made it high enough that I felt I'd be protected from the asphalt.

It was then that a crowd started to gather. They weren't looking at me, though, they were all pointing to the man on the roof who had come to the edge and was shouting gibberish. Everyone started yelling, "don't do it! Don't do it!" at him.

I was confused, so I shouted up instead, "no one cares! Now's you're chance!"

He must've heard me because that was when he lept off the building. My pile was in the right location that it caught him and completely broke his fall. I think he only sprained his ankle when he hit the ground, too. That was a good thing because public safety showed up right then and made him walk to a police car.

Apparently he was some professor who had lost his tenure and wanted to end it all. The police officers who showed up to escort him away told me I would get an award for saving his life and took my name down. Then they took all the cushions and mattresses as "evidence" and left me in front of the building.

At least one of us got to go base jumping. And my day didn't turn out to be half-boring, either.

Day 21 of 100 - Summary: Selfishness can save lives.