Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Fear of heights rekindles taste of failure by J. G. Fabiano As I lay on my back, looking up at the open rafters of the new room I was building onto my house, I remembered why I was so afraid of heights. I was very young and my father and my mother had taken me to a playground in Westbury, New York. The playground had many things I loved to play on like swings, spinning tops, painted animals on top of giant springs and all sorts of slides. All of this stuff was in what looked like a giant box filled with sand and funny-looking little cylinders that I later found out were old cigarettes. However, there was one piece of play-equipment that looked like the framework for the steeple of a church and didn’t look like it had any business being in a children’s playground. It looked like it hadn’t been quite finished because all you could see was the shiny steel skeleton that was supposed to hold it together. There were many other children playing on this thing, climbing on the outside and on the inside in the hope that they would be the one who made it to the top and become king of whatever it was in the middle of the playground. Attached to the ‘thing’ was a horizontal ladder held up by four metal posts. It was also made of shiny, slippery steel and had many children hanging from the rungs trying to pull themselves across to the other side. What pride they must have felt as they swung nimbly from one rung to another until they had conquered the abyss. A pride, I was to learn, I would never feel. For weeks my parents would take my sisters and me to the playground and push us on the swings or let us slide down the slides that sometimes scraped the skin off our legs. However, the feeling of letting gravity control our lives was worth it and, of course, the spinning tops where you had to hang on for dear life while parents took turns pushing it around as fast as it could go, sending one child after another flying off into the sand and cigarette butts. God I loved that playground. Then, one Saturday afternoon, my father decided to introduce me to the steel skeleton thing in the middle of the playground. He carried me over and pointed to all the laughing children who were climbing to the top or swinging across the steel ladder that was held up by four tall posts. I, on the other hand, couldn’t help but notice all the crying and embarrassed children who were not quite as nimble as the others who climbed and swung like monkeys. I watched them cling, trembling, to the steel bars hoping they wouldn’t be stepped on by the faster, more aggressive children who didn’t hesitate to climb over them to get to the top. My father put me down in front of the steel frame contraption that now looked as big as Everest and told me to climb. I didn’t want to climb. I wanted to run and find my mommy but I knew if I did that I would forever lose the respect of the most important person in my young life. So I did what every brave, young and stupid child would do. I tried to climb the beast. At first it was pretty easy. I just had to put one foot in front of the other and, at the same time, reach out and grab the slippery steel bars. I actually began to think I had this thing beat when I heard somebody directly behind me. It was a big kid. Not just your normal, everyday big kid but the biggest kid I had ever seen. He clambered quickly up the climbing frame without regard for anybody in his way and, literally, blew me off the side. It was the first time in my life I discovered the sensation of falling was followed very quickly by the pain of landing. It wasn’t so much the spitting sand out of my mouth that bothered me; I’d done that before at the beach, it was the taste of those cigarette butts. I should probably have thanked that giant kid because those butts tasted so bad I have never been able to have a cigarette anywhere near my mouth ever since. My father dug my head out of the sand and brushed more sand and cigarette butts out of my hair and off my clothes and I heard him laughing. I was incredulous. What was he thinking? Had he forgotten he was supposed to catch me as I fell before I hit the ground? The next day my father took me back to the playground. He said something about getting back on the horse. At the time I remember thinking that I was going to get a horse for a present but found out later that was just an analogy. Except I wouldn’t have recognized an analogy back then if it had bitten me on the butt. To my absolute dismay he took me back to the middle of the playground, back to the evil steel pyramid that had almost killed me the day before. I immediately tasted the grit that had permanently become etched into my gums and looked up at my father wishing him to think of something else for me to do. It didn’t work! Instead, he took me to the giant horizontal ladder that was held up by those four steel posts, lifted me up and told me to grab onto the first rung. I did as I was told and then, to my utter disbelief, he let me go. There I was hanging from the first rung, swaying in the wind, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do next. I looked around and realized my father was not the only person watching. It seemed to me that everyone in the playground was watching. At the time I thought everyone in New York was watching. My father then told me to swing over to the other side. I stared straight ahead while my arms felt like they were being torn out of their sockets because of the excess weight my mother had put on me with all those big meals she lovingly prepared. Suddenly, I was in a giant tunnel with a tiny speck of light at the other side. I heard my father telling me it was easy and I would enjoy swinging back and forth like a monkey in order to get to the other side. At that moment I wondered if my father was disappointed I was a human being instead of a chimpanzee but, as the good son I hoped to be I let go of one of my hands and reached out for the second rung. To my surprise I caught it and now hung like a Christmas ornament that was held to the tree by two strings instead of one. I thought I had just started the process of tearing myself in two. My father then told me to let go of my other hand and have it catch up to the first. I thought this sounded pretty good but within that split second of decision I forgot which hand was which and let go with both of my hands. The sand tasted a little better then it did the first time but the little brown cylinders in it had nothing to do with cigarettes. All I could think of was the little dogs and cats that used the playground as their personal litter box. As I lay on my back at home, looking up at the open rafters of the new room I was building, I remembered why I was so afraid of heights. If you don’t like the taste of failure you have to make damn sure you don’t fall! The End.
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