Another true story


More story to come, just felt like adding this piece to fill some space.

When I was younger, I ran around with a crew, getting into all sorts of adventures late at night. There are dozens of these, each more difficult to believe than the previous, so just take this at face value. I was there, it did happen, it was even documented in newspapers later.

On one adventure, we took an elevator to the top floor of a parking garage, then walked the ramp up to the rooftop. Looking around, there was nothing unusual, just a 4 foot retaining wall on all sides, so cars didn’t just go flying off on the very top floor. One of our group said, “goodbye cruel world”, and jogged towards the front wall. We all stood wondering what was next. He vaulted the wall with one hand placed on top and yelled “aaaahhhhh!” as he disappeared from sight. Half of us panicked and rushed the wall to look over. And there he was, squatting comfortably on a concrete pad that extended way past the wall. Everyone had a good laugh, and some of us took a seat on the edge, dangling our feet in the air about 7 stories up. A woman on the ground was walking towards the garage, heard the calamity, and looked up to see us. “Daredevils!”, she yelled, and shook her fist disapprovingly. That really set us off and everyone was wheezing laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

Our group learned the wall jumping trick, and some of us would splinter off into other groups, taking them there and repeating the joke. Sometimes on the west side (front), sometimes on the south side.

Would have been cool to stop there, but another group that we didn’t even know also went up there months later, repeated the trick, but on an abnormal side. There was one problem. There was no concrete pad on that side, only on the other three. Someone jumped the wall not knowing this, and flew 7 stories down to the sidewalk below. It made the newspapers in Oklahoma City.

Needless to say, we felt that death had cursed the site and we never went back; maybe once to say farewell and jump the west wall while recanting the newspaper story.

The parking garage is still there. We left a symbol carved into the aluminum divider between the glass panes on the west side elevator exit, maybe the 5th or 6th floor.

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