Learning To Fly (told by Rainbow Dash)
So you want to hear about the time I learned how to fly, huh?
Alright, but before I tell you guys about that, I'm gonna have to tell you about the first time I TRIED to fly.
It all happened when I was one year old, and my parents took me to see the Wonderbolts for the very first time.
It. was. AWESOME!
They tore through the sky, doing triple back flips with their eyes closed, barely missing each other every single time they did a maneuver! They had to be the coolest pegasi in all of Equestria. I mean, they still are. You’ve seen them, right? No one can match them. Well, except maybe me, heh heh.
Anyways, after the show was over, I was excited, very excited. I wanted to be just like them, and I wanted to do it right away, so that very night, I climbed to the top of my roof and prepped myself just like they did at the show, then I jumped as hard as I could and started flapping my wings.
But they weren't strong enough to hold me up yet, so I fell. We had a two story house back then, so it was pretty bad. I broke two of my legs. I had to go to the hospital.
It's kinda hard to admit this, but ever since that day, I was scared of flying. It made me shiver just to think about it, so I never learned how to do it the normal way.
See, normally a pegasus learns how to fly at like two or three years old, when their wings are strong enough to hold them up, but I didn’t do that. I was so scared of flying that I didn't even want to try. I kept telling everypony that flying was uncool and stupid, but I didn’t really feel that way. I felt jealous and ashamed. All of the other fillies and colts in my neighborhood knew how to fly. I was the only one who didn’t.
I stayed that way until I was five years old, and my Dad had finally had enough.
He decided that it was high time for my little flank to start flapping, so one day he sneaks up--oh, our house was very close to the edge of the clouds, by the way. Our back yard was like twenty feet of cloud and then a straight thousand foot drop to the ground--so anyways, I'm hanging out in the backyard with some wonderbolt action figures being all depressed, when my dad sneaks up behind me. He taps me on the shoulder, which scares me, so I'm like
"Dad, what the hay!?"
Then he just stares at me with a completely blank face and says
"Little D it's--"
He used to call me "Little D" because he thought I looked cute or something, anyways he says to me
"Little D, it's time to soar."
Then, without any warning, he grabs hold of me with his two front hooves and HURLS me into the air off the edge of the cloud! Before I know it, I'm falling straight towards the equestrian earth at like a million miles an hour! The wind is blowing all over my face and I'm screaming my little head off! I have to do something fast, or I'm gonna die, so I start flapping my wings like crazy!
Now, in case anypony here isn't a pegasus, flapping your wings like crazy does NOT equal flying. There's a certain technique to flying. You have to flap your wings in the right direction to make it work. Usually a pegasus does this by instinct, but at the time, I’ve still got a really bad memory of flying, right? I remember breaking two of my legs by flapping the right way; there’s no way that the “right way” could work at all, so I keep flapping the wrong way, and I keep falling.
By this time, it dawns on my Dad that throwing me off the edge of a cloud might not be the best way to teach a scared little filly how to fly. He panics and dives after me, but it’s way too late to do anything; he’ll never make it to me in time.
The ground is getting closer and closer and closer. I’m so scared that I start curling myself up into a little ball. But then, at the last second, I make a decision. I think to myself
"If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna be awesome doing it."
I put my front legs forward and my back legs backward and open my wings wide, and right before I hit the ground, I--swooooosh--go SOARING UPWARDS!
I was alive!
And I was flying! I was really flying!
I started flapping my wings, this time the right way, and I soared upwards toward the clouds.
Now, by this time, everypony in the neighborhood had come out of their houses to see what the hay was happening, so they were all watching me as I did this. They had also all heard about the little filly who couldn’t fly, so when they saw me finally pull up into the sky, they cheered.
You know that feeling that I had when I first saw the Wonderbolts? It came back; it came back like a giant anvil crashing into the heart of Equestria because, all of the sudden, I had an audience,
and they LIKED me!
When I heard them up there, cheering for me, ME, the little filly who was scared of flying, I made another decision. I thought to myself
“If I’m gonna fly, I’m gonna be awesome doing it!”
I dove down toward the earth, and everypony watching me gasped because they thought I was falling again...
...but I wasn’t.
Just before I hit the ground, I pulled up and did three loop-the-loops in a row. Within seconds, they all started cheering again, and that feeling came to me again, that high of awesomeness--I think it’s called natural magic or zen--it came to me, and I wanted more. I leaned to the left and did five barrel rolls in a row, then I leaned to the right and did three barrel rolls, finishing it off with another loop-the-loop, and they kept on cheering.
The cheering got louder and louder and louder, so my maneuvers got bigger and bigger and bigger. After doing a triple back flip followed by three barrel rolls I turned toward my audience and screamed “Yeaah!” as loud as I could.
Then I CRASHED, face first, into a single tree in the middle of a field.
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All of the cheering that I had earned became laughter, and after a few seconds of hearing it, I blacked out.
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And that, my little ponies, is how I got the name “Rainbow Crash.”
