ACT Reading Practice Test 29

PROSE FICTION: Extreme Dad

As I was growing up, each autumn brought with it the excitement of a new school year and new friends. However, I did not look forward to the inevitable question young boys pose to one another: “What does your

Line 5 dad do?” Some people cannot remember being asked that question in school, but it bears special weight for me. My father is recently retired from his career as a Hollywood stunt performer. When I was a child, he would do more death-defying tricks in a week than I’m

10 sure I will ever do in my lifetime. My father’s extreme career and energetic lifestyle made him the coolest dad in town, and I had to live up to him. For American boys, no piece of plywood is safe; it has “ramp” written all over. We would prop some

15 plywood up on a cinderblock and see how high it could launch us on a bike or skates. That was sufficiently fun for years, but eventually my father’s reputation caught up with me. Soon, my friends wanted to go bigger with the idea of a homemade launch pad. They urged

20 me to seek my father’s help. At first, I resisted, since I didn’t want to start a trend of hair-raising stunts on my neighborhood street. Who knows what the old lady across the street would think? As it turned out, my father was more eager than

25 I was to introduce some stunts to my group of friends. Instead of building a giant ramp, he suggested, why not build a platform high in the ponderosa pine tree out back from which we could rappel to the ground? It sounded crazy to me, but I yielded to my father.

30 He loved the cliché appeasement, “Trust me; I’m a professional.” So, that afternoon, my friends, father, and I piled in the truck and headed for the lumberyard. By this time, I was starting to warm to the idea of a rappelling platform in my backyard. My friends could

35 hardly contain their excitement. After all, they were about to do something crazy under the supervision of a real stuntman! My father cruised the aisles at the lumberyard with amazing deftness and efficiency. As he waited for some

40 plywood to be cut, he filled his cart with all kinds of materials that little boys love: nails, screws, glue, chain, cable, nuts, and bolts. This would be the first time my friends and I had built anything out of shiny, new parts. No doubt this would be the most awesome

45 stunt in town! When we returned home, we unloaded all of the supplies near the base of the tree. Looking up the trunk, my friends and I realized we had a lot of cool building materials but no way to get them up the tree.

50 At that moment, my dad emerged from the garage. “Here’s the last piece.” He held a climbing harness and rope in his hands. “Now I’m going to go up there and build the structure, then two of you can come up and help with the rigging.” For the next hour, we sat

55 in stunned silence. My father threw one end of his rope around an upper limb, secured it, and started the slow process of drawing on the two mechanical ascenders. Before long, he had reached the notch in the tree, braced himself, and sent down a length of cord to us.

60 “Put a quarter-inch bit in the drill and send it up,” he cried. We prepared the drill and tied it to the line. My father hoisted it and bored the boltholes into the tree. We repeated this process with two-by-fours, bolts, nuts, and finally the plywood square that would become

65 the platform. My father built it with lightning speed. One of my friends gaped at how quickly my father could drive screws. Before long, Dad called down saying everything was finished and ready for “preliminary testing.” I didn’t know what he meant by that. “Stand

70 back, guys,” my dad called. We hastily obliged. My father, already standing on the platform, looked strangely comfortable so high in the ponderosa tree. Granted, he was still in his harness roped to the tree, but nerves have a funny way of ignoring appeals to logic.

75 Satisfied with his handiwork, my dad began bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. The platform didn’t budge. Next, he started jumping up and down violently. This shook the platform and made the tree sway, but everything seemed soundly built and tightly secured.

80 “All right, now we learn to rappel.” My father slid down his rope and called us to join him in the attic of the garage. I had only seen what was up there a few times, and it mostly bored me. Behind an old armoire, though, was a dusty black trunk that

85 I had never seen before. My father began pulling ropes and harnesses from it, then carabiners and rappelling devices. We eagerly grabbed the equipment and took it to the backyard. My father fit us for the harnesses and began an impromptu lesson on the critical safety rules

90 of climbing and rappelling. In a few hours and after a little practice off the roof of the house, we were all ready to tackle the huge tree in the back yard.