I don’t like to fail at anything, yet I have failed at many things over my lifetime.

Yet those failures to be the best learning situations I have encountered along the way.

When I went to Jump Master School at Fort Bragg, NC many years ago I found out just how demanding it was and how incredibly high the standards were.

If you gradutad, you would hold the lives of many soldiers in your hands.

In this picture, (photo remoevd) the student is checking to make sure there are no other aircraft behind or below his plane that could hit Paratroopers when they jumped. This isn’t checked only by instruments. You have to lean outside the aircraft yourself and physically search the sky to make sure since there can be many other planes nearby.

The school was tough, but I did very well right up to graduation day. That day you had to do a total parachute inspection on a soldier in 30 seconds. When you have many soldiers on a jump, time is very important.

My test went 34 seconds and I failed the course.

Yes, only by 4 seconds.

Some people would complain that that wasn’t fair since I passed everything else in the course.

I am glad they kept the standards high. I didn’t meet the standard. It’s just that simple.