Fear of Heights

August 27, 2009

If you're looking for the blog on how my son almost drowned because of my carelessness and stupidity, scroll down just a little.  If you've already read it, welcome to my Fear of Heights.

 

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  I’m afraid of heights.  And not just a little afraid, it’s a shit my pants kind of afraid.

I wasn’t always fearful. It started out small, a faint fluttering of butterflies in my stomach when taking an elevator or looking out a high window. But over the years it’s grown and then last year, for the first time ever, it affected an outing with my kids. We were at a local fair and I chose to wait on the ground with Son No. 2 while Son No. 1 and hubby went on the ferris wheel.  It was easy to do – Son No. 2 didn’t want to go on so I simply played my good mother card and offered to stay with him on the ground, outwardly rolling my eyes and pretending I was missing out, inwardly sighing with relief.  No one knew the real reason. 

Except me.

I knew.

Then this spring I took the boys to the CN Tower, an excursion we do every year.  Only this year, when the elevator doors closed, I started to panic.  By the time we reached the top - the longest 58 seconds of my life and yes I’m including when Son No. 1 was about to arrive via vacuum suctioning and my epidural machine ran out of medication - I was hot, flushed and my ears were ringing.  My recollection is fuzzy but I may have, just possibly, pushed the kids out of the way in my rush to get off the elevator and blamed it on the nice Costa Rican couple who didn’t speak any English. What can I say?  I panicked. No fue mi intención.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have gone up to the SkyPod but we had paid for it people! and they weren’t going to give me a refund! and really….how much worse could it be?

Turns out a lot.

It involved a kind elderly woman, hand holding, tears and two chocolate bar bribes.

So ya…I needed to do something about this before it got any worse.

But what to do?  Therapy costs money. Money that could be better spent on Lulu pants. And once you’ve had Lulu luon on your buttocks, you can’t go back. Luon is a miracle material and although I’m not 100% sure, I believe it’s made from cotton, lycra, kryptonite, that liquid metal stuff from Terminator 2, fairy dust and rainbows - the combination of which lifts bums making them all perky and happy when in reality they are sad hangy bums. 

So therapy was out.

I was still contemplating what to do about my Heighteous Frighteous (did you just read that?  Heighteous Frighteous?  That’s gold people!  Gold!) when we went to the Delawana for our vacation.  As we walked around the grounds, we came across this

 

The Delawana Adventure Course!  A light bulb went off in my head and I was all “I can do this!” And even better, I’d apparently be able to drag my husband up with me and bash him over the head with some sort of brightly coloured stick! It’d be like our honeymoon all over again!

Before I continue on, I’m placing a little warning here.  From this point forward there will be cursing. Because it turns out when I’m balancing on a rope fifty feet in the air with only a harness, some rope and a guy named Mac to keep me from plummeting to my death, my defense mechanism is to swear like a drunken sailor on a weekend pass.

I signed up the next day and decided to tackle the rock wall first as Mac, our trusty adventure course expert, used words like easy, beginner and Yes Sharon, I’m quite sure you won’t die.

And guess what?  Mac was right.  It was easy and because I was so busy concentrating on climbing and yelling over my shoulder at Mac to make sure he wasn’t letting go of the rope and could he please just pull a bit harder and help get me up to this next rock, I didn’t even notice I was thirty feet up in the air until he told me to ring the cow bell. 

And then I looked down. Fuck. I was 30 feet in the air!  What the fuck was I doing 30 feet in the air?  And how the hell was I going to get down? I momentarily considered living on the top of the wall like the brave woman who lived in the California Redwood Tree for two years to keep loggers from cutting it down but who am I kidding? It had already snagged my Lulu’s and there was no way I could drink wine with both my hands clinging to a cow bell so I had no choice but to come down. Which was when I discovered Mac had a sense of humour.

“Sharon” he called up, “let go of the wall, grab on to your rope and using your feet rappel down the wall”

I smiled sweetly and yelled down “You’re out of your fucking mind Mac”

But Mac was a true professional and over the next few minutes he convinced me that this was the only way I was going to get down.  During this brief period of intense negotiation, my ever supportive husband watched, listened, laughed and took pictures.

Man was I ever glad I was going to get the opportunity to bash him over his head with a brightly coloured stick.

To Be Continued…