2008
Swan Dive Mary
When I was in high school I was part of the band. One Saturday we had to go to solo ensemble festival. Jim B., Keith, Mary, Kelli and I all met at the school. Jim needed to go up to his locker to get his music folder and since we had a little while to wait the rest of us followed him. The standard outfit for our band was this: boys in black uniforms with white shirt and bowtie, girls in a plain black uniform dress. All of us had our uniforms neatly on. So, we decided to go to the third floor with Jim. We all walked up the three flights of stairs to the senior hallway and proceeded to his locker where he grabbed his folder. We headed back down to the stairs and entered the stairwell with Mary being the lead, Jim, Kelli and myself. Keith decided to take the long route back (he was notorious for goofing off). We entered the stairway and Mary started descending the stairs. Her dress was a bit long for her height. As she was stepping down she got her foot twisted into the hem of her dress. She lost her footing and began to descend mid-air down the stairs. We all stopped and watched as she tumbled down. She didn’t hit a single step on her way. She bounced off each wall but never stopped. When she got to the bottom she looked up. We all screamed to her “are you okay?” She said she was fine, got up and said she would meet us in the band room. We all went down and met her. We couldn’t help but to laugh and talk about how hilarious she looked in her descent. Even Mary busted out laughing about it and said that she must have looked very ridiculous. Jim even made a silly remark about seeing her underpants and the color of them. She didn’t even have a scratch. Jim said to her that it was like she was a swan floating on a lake. He said it was such a serene fall. So….we nicknamed her Swan Dive Mary and it stuck with her the rest of our years at school. I still see Mary every now and then and I still call her Swan Dive. I have even leaked the story to other co-workers as she spent a stint at the bank I work at.
