The Family That Goes Parasailing Together . . . : Mother and son throw caution to the wind in taking to the skies over the Ventura coastline.

It’s not that you are a total know-nothing about the laws of gravity and physics. It’s just that the ones you learned over the years didn’t exactly come from any textbook.

There’s that indisputable law, for example, that the impact of a falling quart of milk, dropped by a child’s chocolatey hands, will splatter over the same area as the Grand Canyon.

Or: The chance of the peanut-buttered side of the bread landing on your living-room rug will be directly proportional to how soon company is arriving.

And: The odds of sitting in your kids’ chewing gum, left on a chair at the breakfast table, will depend largely upon how late for work you are.

But these are trifles, you realize, compared to the one law that is now burnished into your brain, as you and your two young sons head outside the Ventura Harbor in a speedboat and prepare to be dragged through the air, 600 feet high, like helpless human kites.

As the boat idles momentarily in the choppy water, having stopped at the appointed spot to begin the adventure, you suddenly remember the most vital gravitational law of them all:

What goes up, must come down.

Unless, of course, you are the federal deficit.

Oh sure, Brett Perrin, until recently a Santa Barbara special education teacher and now the man behind the wheel of the boat, has assured you earlier that the whole thing is perfectly safe. Even for kids, Perrin says, if they weigh at least 70 pounds.

Perrin says he and his wife, Lisa, have been doing this a whole year now. They’ve never had an accident yet.

In fact, he says, the sport is so user-friendly that it could be done wearing a business suit without getting wet. It even has a name to repeat in polite society.

This, you think, is very good news. It won’t be necessary to explain to your children’s grandparents that you--along with your precious offspring--actually paid $48 per person to be cast up to the winds of fate.

You can just tell them you went parasailing.

“It’s kind of like sitting in a swing,” Lisa Perrin says, explaining that although it is against the law in California to parasail from a beach, taking off from the ocean is permitted.

The only restriction faced by the company she and her husband started in November, Blue Edge Parasailing, is that their platform-equipped, 28-foot boat be outside Ventura Harbor whenever launches take place.

“It’s virtually impossible to fall into the water,” Brett Perrin adds reassuringly, noting that all parasailers nevertheless are given a life vest to wear throughout the boat ride. “There’s a winch on board, and we just reel you back into the boat.”

With the boat now rising and falling in the waves--and Perrin motioning to you that it is time to be hooked up to the billowing parachute--you hope he is right. So does your barely 70-pound son, who grabs tightly to a narrow handrail and walks carefully with you to the 9-foot-square platform.

Karen Rich, who is on board to assist with the hook-up process, positions you facing the front of the boat. She then snaps two large metal rings onto your harness.

Your son then steps in front of you, the back of his head under your chin, and his harness is hooked to the same metal rings.

“Now, crouch down!” Rich says loudly, as the wind snaps at the neon-colored nylon chute unfurled behind you.

Both of you crouch instantly, as if an invisible chair has been shoved under you. The cords attached above your shoulders give a sudden jerk! and then, just as it often is impossible to tell at exactly what moment an airplane leaves the runway, you realize your four feet are dangling in the air.

Your remaining son, huddled in a corner of the boat, becomes smaller and smaller. You think you recognize the same forlorn expression he had as a toddler when you walked out the door and left him in the care of a baby-sitter, but soon you are too high to tell.

You wave, not from any deep sense of being a particularly wise mother at the moment, but to let him know you are still alive.

Only then do you realize that the son in the harness with you is screaming.

It is an unbridled cry of happiness, a shriek of wonder, a sound of unchecked joy that has not escaped from your own mouth in years. Not since you became, well, too sophisticated for such a display.

But as you look out over couples strolling on the beaches below you, see the shimmering sunlight on the water and feel the wind pouring like blue fingers through your hair, you too join his cry: an outpouring of freedom.

Danger jolts you from your reverie.

As the boat curves beyond the Ventura Pier--and you pass several hundred feet above it--you realize suddenly you are descending too quickly toward the water. The proverbial wind has gone out of your sails.

Does Perrin, at the wheel below, notice it? Your heart pounds and your arm tightens around your son. Ten more feet, you vow, and you will give him a pep talk about how fun it is to swim in the sea.

But the boat straightens out of the curve, and the parasail rises. You breathe again. Later, Perrin will tell you with a grin he did it for your benefit:

“Did you like free-falling?”

After that, you barely notice as you are winched slowly toward the small platform below, which calls to mind Bullwinkle the Moose diving from 500 feet into a glass of water.

As you descend, your son on the boat is now becoming life-size, and your feet--all four of them--touch gently down.

By the time your second son is snapped into your harness and trembles gently, you are experienced enough to pull him down softly into a crouch and prepare for another lift-off.

You put one arm around him and kiss him happily, reassuringly, on the cheek.

If Icarus had taken his mom along, you think, he would have been just fine.