The thing about families is that, in a perfect world, you can always rely on them. The caveat is that, even in a perfect world, relying on them doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll have your back in the way that you fancy.
This is the plight of TikTok‘s @mariabelmont on a multitude of levels. Indeed, she may not be able to rely on her family to join her for her birthday skydiving session, nor can she rely on them to be honest about the very apparent fact that they’re just cloudphobic cowards, but at least we viewers can rely on them to get a kick out of it all.
Going around the table, Mariah’s family serves up a smorgasbord of excuses to skip out on joining her in jumping out of an airplane with a parachute that could potentially not open. Heart issues and a fear of heights kick things off, followed by a No Coca-Cola policy on the airplanes, vertigo and an inability to balance, brain tumors, neck discs, not being old enough, and, of course, the perennial buzzkill that is a gluten intolerance.
It’s not until we get to the final family member that the veil is lifted, saying yes to Mariah simply wasn’t allowed here.
In fairness, a hefty chunk of these excuses were valid reasons to avoid skydiving. According to Skydive Tecumseh, cardiovascular conditions, neck and back injuries (which brain surgery and eventual brain surgery are both probably acceptable stand-ins for), and diabetes (even if that wasn’t necessarily the pain point regarding the No Coca-Cola rule) should all be accounted for if the skydiving itch strikes, which is to say that such an itch should be ignored if any of these things are part of the equation.
This is because skydiving is a far more physical sport than it may seem, and physical fitness/capability is a huge aspect of pulling off these sessions safely as you move through each phase of the fall. As Mariah is a cross-country runner, she can probably afford to regard skydiving as a leisurely activity. Most of her family, evidently, cannot.
What is apparent, however, is that her family is going to be cheering her on the whole way down, because a family being willing to join forces for a TikTok as cheeky as this, is quite obviously a sign of the unabashed love that they have for one another, regardless of their skydiving capabilities.