‘I love being silly out there in free fall with all my friends.’

Larry Pearlman of Van Nuys teaches fifth grade at Pacoima Elementary School. Last summer he was one of 120 sky-divers who set the world record for the largest formation jump. He jumps every other weekend to keep sharp. Saturday he jumped out of a plane for the 2,000th time.

When I was in elementary school, there was a garden shed next to a sandbox, and I was one of the few kids who would climb up to the top of the shed and jump off into the sandbox. For years and years I was having dreams of flying. If I pressed my elbows to my sides, I could levitate off the ground. My dreams were very realistic. I could see the wires go by and the tops of trees. Once I started sky-diving, all those dreams stopped.

Sky-diving is mostly psychological. It’s not physically difficult to do, but you have to be very cool out there. You’re out there flying fast and thinking ahead. It’s like dancing. Dancers would be good sky-divers, because they are able to remember choreography, perform intricate maneuvers, and they are able to ignore an audience. That’s what sky-divers do. Instead of the audience, we ignore the fact that we’re falling toward the ground. It takes a lot of body control and awareness and being able to remember a lot of formations.

I’m able to get out of a DC-3 toward the end of the exit order and dive to the formation as fast as anybody. You put your hands to your sides, straighten your legs, put your head down and dive blind toward the formation. It’s a very smooth feeling, and if you let it go long enough you’ll reach 200 m.p.h. To slow down when you’re above the formation, you bring your arms out and grab air.

The wind is a real physical force out there. By using it properly, by twisting your body this way or that, extending you hands or legs, you can move into any position in the formation you want.

A lot of sky-divers hold themselves in awe because they sky-dive. They think that because they do this extraordinary activity that they are extraordinary people. But I don’t think that way at all. I think sky-diving is a cute little trick that we’ve learned. We’ve had to overcome fear that a lot of people don’t ever have to face, but once you get past that fear it’s nothing special. I’ve accomplished a lot of other things in my life that I think make me a more special person than jumping out of an airplane.

I am an elementary school teacher. That’s what I do for excitement. Sky-diving is what I do for relaxation. Teaching is what gives me the most pleasure. Over the years the experiences I’ve had help me a lot in teaching reading, history and social studies. I use sky-diving, scuba diving, all my sports activities, as lessons. In spelling we do a lot of work writing sentences utilizing each spelling word. Every chance I get I throw in a sports example. “Terror, I was filled with terror when I made my first parachute jump.” Of course when I explain the sentence to the children I can act it out for them and they get the picture.

When I was a child, an elementary teacher I remember most played piano at a bar at night. He would tell jokes and stories, and his life seemed fascinating to me. I remember him because this was a man living his life. He wasn’t just going away from school at 3 o’clock and disappearing into nowhere like the other teachers. This man did something. It stayed with me through the years. I even remember his name, Robert Given, and this was in Chicago in the sixth grade.

If talking about sky-diving and bringing in parachutes helps a child relate to me more as a person and makes them really look at me and respect me more, maybe they will listen better and learn more. I hope that being a more active and exciting person will help them learn. It helps me teach.

As long as my body and my desire to jump holds out, I intend to keep jumping. I don’t feel 48. I don’t feel any different than when I was 28, when I started jumping. It’s still as much fun. I love being silly out there in free fall with all my friends. That’s where age just doesn’t seem to have a bearing.