After
thorough investigative research, I have found the 10 most common fears are (in
ascending order):
10. Fear of commitment (commitmentphobia)
9. Fear of spiders (arachnophobia) and/or
snakes (ophidiophobia)
8. Fear of rejection
7. Fear of failure (kakorrhaphiophobia)
6. Fear of dying (thanatophobia)
5. Fear of intimacy
4. Fear of the dark (nyctophobia)
3. Fear of heights (acrophobia)
2. Fear of public speaking (glossophobia)
1. Fear of flying (aviophobia)
I
learned two things from looking over this list (also in ascending order):
2. Apparently
I’m not very ‘common,’ as I only have one of these 10 most ‘common’ fears.
1. The one common fear I have is not my
fault; it’s hereditary.
Let me expound on the nine I don’t have:
10. I
married my high school sweetheart in June of 1977. We remain married to this day. I’ve run every day since November 30, 1978. Color me committed (it’s a reddish brown; you
might even call it ‘auburn’).
9. I
had a pet boa constrictor my freshman year in college. I never knew if it was male or female but it
didn’t really matter, seeing as I named it ‘Alice’ after my favorite rock band
at the time, Alice Cooper.
8. I played one season of Little League
Baseball, one season of middle school football and one season of junior varsity
basketball. There was a reason I decided
to quit after one season of each. Besides
the fact I made three coaches very, very happy with my decisions, I discovered
rejection to be the least of my fears.
7. I
tried running 100 miles through the Sierra Nevada mountain range in 2004 with
virtually no trail-running experience to my name. I tried running 135 miles through Death
Valley in the middle of July in 2003 without ever setting foot there. I asked Dolores Ruiz, the best-looking girl
in Moanalua Intermediate School to go steady with me the first time I ever talked
to her. Any questions?
6. Thankfully
the jury is still out on this one. But I
do realize that every day is one day closer to finding and now that I put that
thought in writing it’s going to stick in my mind for—hopefully—another 30
years or so.
5. All
of my close, long-time running friends know everything there is to know about
me, inside and out. I can say the same
thing about them. Ask any long-distance
runners if they have a fear of intimacy and they’ll tell you the same thing.
4. I
love the dark. I’m either sleeping or running when it’s dark, two of my
favorite things in the whole wide world.
Once in a while I can do both at the same time. Ask any long-distance runner if they can
sleep and run at the same time and they’ll tell you the same thing.
2. There
is nothing I like more than to get up in front of several hundred people and
talk…as long as the material is (a) light in nature, (b) about running or other
topics I enjoy and/or (c) supported by audio/visual aids. I’ve been fortunate to speak to hundreds of
people under those conditions on several occasions. Do you know what would have made those
speaking engagements even better? If I
were (d) paid for them.
1. The
simple fact I flew a total of 40 hours round-trip to South Africa and back is
all the evidence I need to prove I don’t have a fear of flying. The simple fact I will never fly 40 hours
round-trip to South Africa ever again is all the evidence I need to prove I
have a modicum of common sense. The
simple fact I used the word ‘modicum’ in a sentence is all the evidence I need
to prove I don’t care if any University of Georgia graduates know what I’m
talking about.
Now,
about that one remaining thing I do
have a fear of…the one that causes me to uncontrollably break out in a cold
sweat…my pulse to double in the blink of an eye…my a** to (Editors note: This
passage was deemed unsuitable for the PG13 rating the author was targeting,
therefore it was removed.)... Yes, THAT
one…the one I skipped over in the list above.
Number
3: Fear of heights.
The
first time I noticed I was predisposed to acrophobia was when I was nine years
old. We were on a family vacation in
France and had the opportunity to visit the Eiffel Tower. We had the option of climbing the stairs all
the way to the top, but my dad was satisfied with stopping on the first level;
that was as far as he was willing to go.
I had mixed feelings at the time, as I was disappointed we didn’t make
it to the top yet at the same time relieved that was as high as we were
going. I couldn’t explain those mixed
feelings at the time, but several years later when we visited the Empire State
Building and my dad refused to go to the top, I was totally on board. I realized then and there: Heights creep me
out.
I’ve
run the Jacksonville River Run several times.
The course crosses the St. John’s River twice: Early in the race over
the Main Street Bridge and then again late in the race over the Isaiah Hart
Bridge. The Main Street Bridge isn’t
particularly high, but most of it is grated so if you are looking down you can
see the water of the St. John’s beneath your feet. You would be right in assuming I ran that
section of the race pretty hard. The
Isaiah Hart Bridge, however is high.
Extremely high, in fact. So high
that there is always a strong breeze, regardless of what might be happening at
sea level…way down below. The majority
of the runners will stay close to the guardrail at the edge of the bridge, the
shortest possible route and therefore the wisest route to run if you’re looking
to run the tangents. I, however always
chose to stick close to the large cement median in the center of the bridge. I didn’t want to take any chances of a sudden
gust of wind blowing me over the guardrail at the edge of the bridge if I
absent-mindedly decided to run the tangents.
I also didn’t want to look down.
It’s hard to believe this was the same person who asked Dolores Ruiz to
go steady in the sixth grade…
So
today at work I decided to see if I could summon the strength to try out for
the JV basketball team in the dark with a snake in my pocket.
I
asked Tim, one of the employees at my warehouse to take me up in a cherry
picker (it’s like a forklift, except the operator elevates with the forks as it extends upward). I put the safety harness on and in the blink
of an eye we were a couple feet away from the 32-foot ceiling. I didn’t bat an eye, my pulse didn’t quicken
and I could actually look straight down without wetting my pants. Everything was fine… until Tim decided it
would be fun if he ‘rocked’ the platform we were standing on from side to
side. That’s when heredity kicked in.
The
chances of a 136-pound man rocking a two-ton cherry picker side-to-side and
causing it to tip over were about the same as me winning the lottery when it
reaches the $500 million mark. But today
was the day my life would be changing: I’d pack up and leave and move to the
Swiss Alps and live the rest of my days in my $20 million dollar mountain home
overlooking the most luxurious ski resort in Switzerland. In other words, today would be the day the
cherry picker would be tumblin’ down.
Once
I managed to summon enough saliva to articulate ‘take me down now’—and then got my feet back on the
ground, I put a spider in my other pocket and decided to board a plane for
South Africa.
‘Isn’t there a hatch that leads to the
warehouse roof?’
Tim
led me to a mezzanine in the middle of the warehouse and asked me to follow him
up the perfectly vertical ladder—all 10 rungs of it—to the hatch allowing
access to the roof. I noticed the top of
the hatch was about four feet higher than the last rung of the ladder, so a lot
more physical effort was required to get to the roof than I thought. Or psychologically planned for, either.
‘What if I can’t get my 59-year old body
over the top of the hatch, slip and fall straight down? As far as I was
concerned, the Isaiah Hart Bridge seemed like small potatoes compared to what I
was now facing.
With
a death grip on the sides of the hatch I pulled myself over and onto the
roof. Tim was already standing by the
ledge, looking straight down and encouraging me to come and take a look. Tim wasn’t aware how large the spider in my
pocket had grown or that I was now in my 30th hour of flying on an
airplane.
‘This is as close as I get.’ I was at least 10 feet away from the
ledge. My feet had a death grip (if that’s
even possible) on the roof. I recalled
the time I went to the top of the Sears Tower with a group of friends. I exited the elevator that runs directly up
the center of the building when we reached the top floor, only to realize I was
surrounded by glass. You could see
Chicago in every direction. I stood with
my back against the enclosure around the elevator shaft with my palms glued to
the wall; a reverse-spread eagle, so to speak.
I never took one single step
towards the glass. In any direction.
So
instead Tim walks over to me. The
b*st*rd starts jumping on the roof. I
notice the roof is bouncing as he jumps.
I immediately begin assessing the situation: If a 136-pound object
repeatedly strikes a load-bearing roof from a height of six inches, at what
point does the roof become compromised?
I
head for the hatch, dreading the four-foot drop to the top rung of the
ladder. I slither like a boa constrictor
over the top of the hatch until my left foot strikes pay dirt. Now if I can just…get…my…right…foot…
I’ve done it! Just nine more steps and I’ll be home free!
Nine
slow, agonizing, meticulously taken steps later I’m back on terra firma
(loosely translated from Latin to mean ‘Thank
you sweet Jesus’). Safe and sound, although now I’m wearing a
shirt almost completely drenched in perspiration from a fear-induced and
panic-stricken cold sweat. But let’s
focus on the ‘safe and sound,’ shall we?
While
I can’t say I’ve conquered my fear of heights—it ain’t easy overcoming
heredity, folks—I did face it as best as I could. Or maybe I should say I faced it as much as I
wanted to.
Or
ever will again.
No comments:
Post a Comment