Suicidal Tendencies

It's puzzling why I travel on rugged roads instead of smooth ones. I guess it's just part of who I am. Although I rationalize it's about the road less traveled and the adventurer in me, I genuinely think it's because of my love affair with walking the tightrope of life....something I have been doing since I was seven years old.

We moved to Los Angeles in 1953, shortly after my father was discharged from the Air Force. He had been stationed at March Air Force base in Riverside, and on the weekends, he would go the sixty miles to LA. He fell in love with the city and asked my mother and me to join him.

Our first place was a two-story rooming house near 54th and Avalon. We rented two rooms on the third floor, and to my delight, outside my bedroom window was a skinny palm tree with large branches. Well, it didn't take long for me to find a way to climb out of the window to the tree, using the most prominent branch to maneuver to the lower part of the tree so I could jump to the ground. I did this to explore my new surroundings and escape the loneliness of living in a place with no other children. One day, my secret was exposed when I climbed a tree a block away from my house and panicked when it was time to come down. One of the kids got my mother, and she threatened to spank me when I came down. I refused to budge.

Consequently, the neighbors gathered, and finally, the firefighters came and rescued me. For days, all the talk was about me and the tree. But, the firefighters were not amused. They warned that the city would punish me if they ever had to come to rescue me again. To this day, I do not know why I was so angry, but I was. Early one morning, I set the tree outside my window on fire. When the same firemen came, they eyed me suspiciously while I stood there innocently, thinking, "Yeah, Motherfuckas!" After the fire, the city came and cut the palm tree down. I then started spending time at 51st Street Park, where I would climb the monkey bars and hang by my feet until I could feel the blood rush to my head. Sometimes, I opened my left hand and waved at onlookers while using the strength of my right hand to sustain my grip.

My parents were nervous every time I went there because they knew I would do things on a dare to prove a point. It was my way of being accepted. Many residents had migrated from the South and teased me about the "proper way I spoke ."So, I only talked when I had to. I became known as that quiet little girl with a sense of fearlessness. Thrill-seeking behavior continued through elementary school in Los Angeles when the guys in my block decided to let me their "gang ."We did numerous daredevil escapades in our neighborhood and others, but my mother had enough when we shoplifted black leather motorcycle jackets from the local Sears Department store. Both my mother and father were convinced California wasn't the place to continue to live, and we moved back to Denver. But my behavior continued after I went to Morey Junior High. I was constantly fighting boys, showing off for the girls. And for the rest of my teens and young adulthood, I sought situations that were both dangerous and exciting.

I calmed down until I moved to San Diego in 1975. One day, while on a break from classes at the University of California at LaJolla, where I was finally trying to get my degree, I saw some guys with these wings hooked to their bodies jumping from the cliff overlooking the ocean. To my amazement, they began waving their arms, mimicking seagulls until they were on the ground. Watching them glide for a few minutes, then drop to the sandy beach, I felt the adrenaline creep into my body. I waited until they were packing up and approached them. In the months that followed, they taught me the art of bungy jumping. I began regularly jumping from cliffs of beaches from LaJolla to Imperial Beach. I got bruised and had a couple of bad sprains, but I loved the rush. In that same time frame, I would drive my sports car at speeds considered reckless around the hilly streets of San Diego. Compounding the risk were the fifty-dollar cocaine packets in a Crown Royal pouch tucked inside the pockets of my jogging suit in case I saw anyone. When I got stopped by the SDPD, they remembered me from the few times I made television spots for the Black Federation where I worked as a media specialist. The job required me to be in the community and contact law enforcement agencies because of their policies of arresting blacks and browns without probable cause. I took advantage of the situation, "working" in both senses.

There were times in midlife and my sixties when I took on feats many would never try, even in their youth. I did a mountain bike ride on my 55th birthday at Rocky Mountain National Park in my beloved Estes Park, a river rafting adventure shortly afterward(I never learned how to swim). On my 65th, I went to Mesa Rim in San Diego for an indoor climb to see if I wanted to continue to learn to climb mountains in Colorado. The last adrenaline rush I experienced was zip lining at Top Of The Rockies Ziplining near Breckenridge for my 70th before celebrating with my family. Talking about excitement along with anxiety.... hanging on that line eleven thousand feet above the mountains was a blast. Any fear I had left with the first push off the deck. I was exhilarated, gliding swiftly on the cable with blue skies with puffy clouds seemingly whizzing by.