Fear of Heights

Fear of Heights  (E) Contest Entry for What a Character 438 Words #2165476 by Chris Breva

438 words

I have always been terrified of heights. One day when I was a young man the wind blew so hard that it tore a large section of shingles off of the house in which we lived. The house was a huge house with not one but three floors and a basement. So my brothers and I took a ladder to the balcony on the second floor and set it up to climb up and fix the shingles. I had never climbed before aside from climbing a few trees and that had never bothered me. So I quickly went up the ladder and got out onto the roof, nearly four stories in the air. I made the mistake of looking down because I had to throw a rope down to bring some equipment up on it. When I looked down I became paralyzed with fear. My brother who was a natural born climber saw the expression on my face and knew we had a problem. He said "Oh my God. Marvin has frozen up. Now our repair job just became a rescue effort."

He was absolutely right. There I was paralyzed by fear out on the roof of that four story house. My brother did everything he could to talk me down but I refused to budge. I was stuck and had a death grip on the rope we had tied off around the chimney. My brother talked to me for at least twenty minutes trying to get me to walk the two feet to the ladder and go down it. I began to scoot along the edge of the ledge we were on until I was back to the ladder but then I could not get myself turned around to back down the ladder. My brother again coached me and at last I took hold of the ladder, turned around, and started down it. "There you go", he said. "One rung at a time and you're almost there."

"But I want to help you," I said. "That's what I came up here for. I don't want to let fear stop me."

"You can help me," he said. "I need somebody to be my aide on the ground. You can send up the equipment I need when I ask for it."

I agreed and continued descending the ladder. Finally I was back on the balcony and went into the house to collect myself. As my brother had suggested I did the work required on the ground. I even carried packs of shingles up the ladder to him but I did not get off the ladder and onto the roof.