Rip-Cord

I am an only child and was lucky enough to grow up close with two of my cousins.  Bobby and Tommy are the sons of my dad’s brother Kevin and growing up they have been like my two older brothers.  When I was younger, this meant that I pretty much did anything that I thought would make me look cool or to show that I could hang tough with them.  I was about 11 years old, when we were at Worlds of Fun in Kansas.  The older brother, Tommy, really wanted to do the rip-cord, but couldn’t get anyone else to do it.  We were signed up to go an hour later and left to roam the park.  So, of course, I volunteered and my dad felt obliged to join us.  I felt awesome and like I was the coolest cousin ever… for about 10 minutes.  Then the fear started to set in.  We watched someone go and started to realize just about how terrifying it would be.  But, backing out would be extremely “uncool”, so I had to just bite the bullet. 

It was finally our turn to go and we returned to the rip-cord area.  As the three of us walked out onto the platform to get rigged up to the system, I thought I was going to pass out.  The platform is in the middle of a makeshift pond and they were hooking us up to a lifting device that would lift us about 15 stories in the air.  Once our feet had been lifted off the ground, I knew this was it and was horrified.  We were lifted 15 stories in the air with our stomachs parallel to the ground.  The minute before my cousin pulled the cord felt like a century.  Once he pulled the cord we were sent plummeting towards the water and ground at an extremely fast speed.  I was momentarily concerned that we would hit the ground and it would be all over.  All three of us were screaming and I’m not even sure if you could tell who was who at that point.  After we slowed down and finally came to a stopping point, they lowered us onto the platform and unhooked all of the wires.  It ended up being kind of an exhilarating experience, but also rather terrifying. 

I found out later that the whole time we were being rigged to the thing and lifted up in the air, people were down there simply aghast that someone was letting their young daughter do this.  My mom was hearing everyone saying these things and thinking “oh no, what have I done?” the entire time.  I’m pretty sure that she would have kept her eyes closed the entire time if we had not asked her to take pictures of it.  My dad will still bring it up to this day and I still think about how I went through with such a frightening experience just to impress my cousins and myself.  

Grandpa Newman

My Grandpa Hawkins is one of my favorite relatives.  He is my mother’s father and one of the best men I have ever had the privilege to know.  He is the only grandpa I had growing up and he is more than I could ever ask for.  My grandparents often babysat me when I was younger and we always went to the cabin with them when I was growing up.  His favorite thing to do is fish and when I was younger, he taught me how to fish, to bait a hook, to change a lure, and so much more.  When I was little I always used to like to ride around in the boat with him and play with the minnows in the bucket until he needed another one.  As I got older though, I would actually fish with him and still enjoy doing so every now and then. 

He always has the best stories about growing up and will remember every single detail when doing so.  Now that I am older, he will tell me more than he used to, much to the chagrin of my grandma at times.  I think it was a story involving hitchhiking and being so bored that he and his friends were smoking the grass on the lawn.  Most of the time, his stories are humorous, but there are also a lot of lessons to be learned from them.  He is big on hard work and everything, but he also emphasizes being thankful for what you have and getting the most out of life.  For him it is all about enjoying the simple things and not asking for more, which is something I think most people can learn from. 

He is also one of the most patient and kind people I have ever met.  He has an extremely even temper and I cannot think of one time in my entire life where I have seen him get angry.  This seems so strange to me that someone wouldn’t get angry every now and then.  I asked my mom once if it was just because he was older now or if he had always been this way.  She told me that she had only seen him get mad twice in her entire life and that both times were for good reason.  You would have to have an incredible amount of patience and control to only get angry twice in 50 years.  I cannot imagine what that would take, and can only commend him for that.  I aspire to gain even one tenth of the patience and kindness that he has for other people.  I am so lucky that I have grandparents that are in their late 70s and still very healthy both mentally and physically, so that I can enjoy many more years with them and appreciate our time together. 

Our Cat Spook

When I saw the blog topic about a favorite pet, I knew exactly which one I would write about.  I love animals and all of our pets have been great, but there is definitely one that stands out in my mind.  I never considered myself to be a ‘cat person’, until our cat, Spook, came along.  When I was about 10 years old, my Grandma Lee got a tiny little Russian Blue kitten.  She wasn’t quite sure what to name him, but after several incidents in which he scared her two dogs and even once, where he scared himself, she settled on the name Spook.  I fell in love with this cat immediately and loved playing with him when I would visit her house.  He quickly went from being a tiny kitten to an increasingly large cat.  A few months after my grandma had gotten him, she passed away.  She had two cats at this point and they needed homes.  My aunt and uncle took her other cat Molly, who weighed about 7 pounds and my parents and I took Spook, who was about 20 pounds at the time. 

Losing my grandma was extremely difficult for everyone in our family, but in a way, we still had a piece of her spirit in Spook.  I grew up babying him and often pushed him around in a stroller, which he didn’t object to.  He quickly became my cat and tolerated much more from me than anyone else.  It has been 10 years since we inherited him and he is still alive and well.  He still weighs in at about 21 pounds, but the vet says he is extremely healthy. 

Spook is anything but an ordinary cat and often acts as if he is either a dog or even human.  He gives a whole new meaning to the phrase large and in charge and is definitely the boss of the household.  Even our 60-pound border collie/ lab mix, Suki, knows he is in charge and does what she can to stay out of his way.  It’s like he realizes her fear of him and can often be seen doing things in order to intimidate her or show her who’s boss.  He often sits on her bones and even attempts to chew on them in front of her until she squirms and whines enough for someone else to take it from him.  She has never tried to take it from him, just in case he retaliates.  He has also taken over the dog bed in my parents’ bedroom that is made for a large breed dog, and Suki has moved elsewhere.  His most recent entertaining story was when I was home for Christmas break and I was feeding them both.  They were both sitting in the room, when Suki took a drink of water out of Spook’s bowl.  The cat then proceeded to use his paw to dump the water out of the floor until I took it to the sink to empty and get him new water.  My mom says that this has been happening a lot lately whenever Suki tries to drink out of his bowl.  It’s as if he wouldn’t dare to drink out of the same bowl as the dog. 

He is extremely entertaining and intelligent and I miss him a lot when I am at school.  I love when my mom calls me with stories about our animals and lets me know how they are doing.  I feel like one of the things I miss about home is being able to have animals to come home to, which you can’t do here in the dorms. 

My Favorite Vacation Spot

My great-grandfather built a cabin in Nevis, Minnesota over 70 years ago.  Our family has been vacationing at the cabin ever since and it is one of my favorite places to go.  In my 20 years of life, I have only missed two summer trips to the cabin and it was not for lack of wanting to go.  Driving down the highway you can’t even see it; all you see is rows and rows of trees.  The turn isn’t marked and aside from the old faded mailbox, it simply looks like a path back into the woods.  It’s not until you make the turn and drive slowly around the curve, that you find the cabin, as if it were placed in the midst of this meadow by the lake. 

Everything still looks the same as it did when I was three years old running around feeding peanuts to the chipmunks on the deck.  The furniture is still the same, the cabin is still the same color, and the same Piggly Wiggly board game still sits in the cabinet.  Year after year, it is a constant and no matter how my life or I have changed, it is still the same.  One of my favorite parts of going to the cabin is the silence.  There is no phone, no Internet, and no TV, which sounds crazy, but when you need a vacation from everything else going on in your life, it is fantastic.  A lot of my friends ask me what we do up there if we don’t have any of that and it makes me laugh.  I get to spend time with my family; we play games, do puzzles, go fishing, go for walks, and all kinds of other things we don’t think to do while we are at home.  When I am there one of my other favorite things to do is read, whether it is out by the lake or up in the loft.  It gives me the opportunity to just read and think. 

I hope that I can make a trip up there soon because I have missed it so much.  It makes me stop and think about how I probably took it for granted when I was younger and could afford to go up there for a couple of weeks at a time.  I think that everyone should have some place where they can go to escape the stress and fast pace of life just for a little while; somewhere they can just rest, reflect, and think.