What would your reaction be if your friends hooked you up with a ride in a no-joke supersonic fighter jet? We’re not talking an airshow cruise, we’re talking the full suit, the g-lock training kind of ride that will make even the most macho man go night-night like a sleepy kid when the pilot gets down to work. Would you go through with it? Does the thought of going from zero to R-rated expletives in eight-tenths of a second sound like a blast to you? Well, to one 64-year-old man from France, that was more like hell on earth. But that’s what happened…his co-workers somehow managed to get him into the second seat of a Dassault Rafale B fighter on a flight that they all thought he’d enjoy last year that they had arrainged as a retirement gift for his work as a defense contractor.

He certainly didn’t enjoy it.

Apparently, from the moment the candles were lit, our poor Frenchman’s condition was somewhere between “Je pense que j’ai chié mon pantalon” and “Oui, merde définitivement mon pantalon.” With the jet pushing past 2,500 feet off of the deck, the poor gentleman reached out for a handle to hold on to…and then unwittingly fired off the ejection seat and blasted himself directly into the wild blue yonder, the forces of the action tearing his unattached helmet and mask off of his head. You have to wonder if his compatriots on the ground were aware of what happened. Maybe the jet was already far away from the airport. Or maybe they heard panicked and bombastic swearing, as a wide swath of the countryside probably did as he fell back to Earth, safely parachuting to the ground still sitting in the seat. One thing that is known: his watch (we assume smart-watch) recorded his heart rate when he arrived at the airfield…his heart was racing when they got to the airfield. He later told investigators that he went through with the ride to be a sport. He had been given a rushed examination and at best, a cursory look-over before the canopy was closed. He could’ve refused the flight at any time, but didn’t.

As for the Rafale’s pilot, other than what had to be a five-second Wile E. Coyote “what the hell just happened?!” moment, he and the plane managed to land, although he had to be undergoing a bit of nerves as well…normally in a Rafale, if one ejection seat gets triggered, both seats go flying. Imagine trying to land a plane worried that you’re about to be blasted out of it like you’re a piece of some really effed-up form of the classic game Perfection. You just don’t know when that timer is going to go off and you’re going to blast off like a model rocket.

Enjoy your retirement?