What is your response?

[JohnMitchell 14]

DanG

Q: How do you tell you're at a party with a new skydiver?
A: Don't worry, they'll tell you.

Q: How do you know you're at a party with an old skydiver?
A: You don't.

Eventually you learn to stop talking about skydiving because answering the same five questions over and over gets really annoying

Esp. love the 2nd one.
Over the years I took a bit a guff at my FAA job for being one of those "nylon nitwits". No big deal, just kept my weekend activities to myself and listened to everyone's fishing stories all week long. A few coworkers sought me out over the years to make tandems, etc. and it was fun to help them get in the air.

One day, sitting at my radar scope, my facility chief was escorting David Grizzle, the new head of the FAA, on a tour through the control room. All of a sudden I hear her say "This is John Mitchell. He skydives!" Turns out the head of the FAA used to fly jumpers back in his college days.

He parked himself next to my radar scope and chatted with me for several minutes about jumping, flying, etc. Very cool guy. I could tell my boss was behind schedule and wanted to keep moving, but hey, this guy's the head of the FAA. I'm not gonna make him run along.

So I'm gonna say most people realize that our sport is pretty amazing/exciting/thrilling. But human nature is that they want to hear about themselves most the time, not how many adventures you're having each weekend.

[JohnMitchell 14]

jonstark

I usually reply... "You may be right!" and "It's not for everybody."
If they persist on calling me insane the conversation is over. If they're curious we can talk. If they're interested we can really talk.

Sounds kind of like the course I like to take.
I once got quoted in a newspaper, covering one of our demos "You don't have to be crazy to jump out of a plane, but it makes it more fun." I said it just an aside joke, but they sure as heck heard it.

[SkyDivesAreUs 0]

I have yet to tell anyone besides my closest friends that I started skydiving because I figure most people wouldn't get it or understand, but I work with family and they tell literally everyone as soon as there's a pause in the conversation.

So far only one guy was pretty interested in it and wanted to hear about it and now he might even want to come to the dropzone with me and do a tandem

Other then that, it's always the same exact same questions/statements so far "Your crazy" "What would make you want to jump out of a perfectly good plane" "Aren't you afraid the parachute will fail and you'll die?" "There's no way I'd ever do that"

If they tell me I'm crazy I just say "so I'm told" with a smile. If they ask why I'd want to jump out of a plane I tell them "believe it or not I'm more scared of being in the plane then I am jumping out of it, plus it's one of the best things I've ever done" lol which is true, I never flew in a plane before skydiving and the feeling of being inside one was so freaky to me I couldn't wait to just get out of it, for some reason my biggest fear every time I go is getting in and being in the plane even though I'm pretty well equipped if something were to go wrong in that moment but once I'm actually out of it, I'm perfectly fine , usually they just respond by saying they'd never do something like that. If they ask if I'm afraid it will fail I just tell them that's why there's a back up and that I started off studying everything about skydiving religiously so I can (hopefully) be prepared when that time comes and act accordingly.