As part of my process of worming my way onto the closed circuit
announcements I offered to take the camera crew rock climbing and
rappelling to impress them. They took me up on the offer and we were
off and up the canyon with too many people and the school's official
video camera safely in the hands of the AV club. The general rule
with dangerous things is that people should know what they are doing
or be closely supervised but most of the crew had never done any
climbing or rappelling and the expertise was spread much too thin but
I was to excited about impressing the older kids and I didn't reign
in the mayhem and luckily no one died, not that we didn't try. We had
set up a rappel on a wall that afforded a couple of camera angles. It
was not a safe wall and there were lots of fairly good sized loose
rocks at the top that required a careful start to the rappel to make
sure that none were dislodged to fall on the rappeler and the
spectators. The first couple down paid careful attention to keep the
rocks from falling but then there was a kid, whose name I cannot
remember, decided to go commando – face down – and throw caution
to the wind to impress the crowd and camera. His rappel went okay
then he landed, stood up part way and a rock the size of the softball
that had jostled loose with his rappel came within inches of hitting
him in the head and instead hit him squarely in the back after
falling fifty feet. He dropped to his knees wheezing and struggling
for breath. Everyone ran over to see if he was going to die and he
rolled to his back writhing from the pain. He pulled up his shirt and
we saw a rather rough looking welt and red spot that was going to be
a bruise soon and for a while. I was really scared that he was going
to be badly hurt and I kept thinking about what would have happened
if it would have struck his head. I was sick with the idea of killing
someone and that shocked some sense into me so I climbed up and took
down the rope and told everyone we were going to have to call it a
day. It was not the last time someone would almost die climbing with
me and not even the last time someone would be badly hurt by a rock
that fell on them because they forgot to clear the rope before they
rappelled but live and don't learn that is what I say.
