Bill Cole is
no longer a spaceman. He leaves the psychiatrist’s office having been told that
his condition was in essence all in his head. Taking a job away from the space
port so as not to be reminded of what he had lost he moves on with his new life
making new friends and trying to fit in. Joe, his only close friend invites him
to dinner at his home. He figures he can make the entire trip with out ever
seeing the sky which terrifies him so accepts and enjoys the meal. Joe lives on
the thirty fifth floor but Bill finds that as with most of the artificial caves
we live in there is no sense of its location from the inside. Bedding down for
the night but leaving the light on to dispel the sense of boundless space he
tries to sleep. Having no success he resorts to a sleeping pill and falls into
a dream filled slumber.
He is
awakened by the sound of a kitten meowing. Trying to locate it he realizes that
it is outside the window. Bracing himself against the sheer terror this simple act
inspires he opens the window to see the kitten outside on a ledge four feet
down. He tries to reach it by hanging onto the window sill but it moves away.
He collapses back inside thinking that he can’t expose himself to this kind of
danger again.
As he is
sitting on the floor at the window trying to control his shaking he remembers
the trauma that had brought him to this juncture. He had been on the outer skin
of the luxury liner Valkyrie fixing the radar dish. The ship was rotating to
provide gravity for the passengers comfort so from his perspective all
directions were down. Having completed the repair he tries to return to the
inside of the ship only to find himself trapped and hanging by his hands with
all infinity below his feet. There is no rescue coming so he hangs on for two
hours until he finally falls. When he regains consciousness he is told that a
nearby ship had rescued him. He returns to earth with a severe case of
agoraphobia that prevents him from even thinking about space much less returning
to it.
But the kitten needs him so he steels his resolve and ventures onto the building’s ledge and rescues it. Making his way back inside he finds himself thinking how nice the sky looks and how far down the street is without feeling any sense of trepidation. He decides to go to the spaceport in the morning and sign onto a space bound ship.
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The only
true stories are ones that exemplify human emotion. Heinlein was a master of
this whether he was showing us hopefulness, compassion, greed, or as is the
case in this story fear. A human being without emotion is a robot and a story
without emotion is a technical manual. One of the greatest tributes I can offer
the producers of star treks TNG is that they understood that special effects
were of secondary importance to the human element. We all have things that we
fear. It might be poverty or loneliness or hopelessness or rejection or death
or sickness or even something as simple as reproach.
I will be honest here, heights scare hell out me. I don’t like skyscrapers or planes and I most certainly don’t like ladders. To give you some perspective on this I would like to share my ladder story.
My Ladder
Story
Some years ago, perhaps about 1993 I was
working on a house. My job on the project was sheathing. This involved the
somewhat awkward task of climbing a ladder while carrying a sheet of OSB,
(oriented strand board) placing it into position and using a pneumatic nail gun
to fasten it to the house. This particular day was mid march with ice and snow
still on the ground and whereas the ladder had ice cleats on the base I was
still nervous about its stability. I had just about finished, needing only the
topmost piece on the gable and, having cut the final piece on the ground,
proceeded to make my ascent up the ladder. I was at an indeterminate point in
my climb when one leg of the ladder slipped and it swung 180 degrees so that
instead of my facing the building I was facing away from it.
When I felt that leg slip I ceased to think. I
threw the sheeting away and wrapped both arms and both legs around the ladder
and PRAYED.
I have never embraced a person with as much vigor as I hugged that ladder.
After an objective time of perhaps three minutes and a subjective time of just
shy of an eternity my heartbeat began to slow and my awareness expanded to
include an area greater than just the right here and right now. Timidly I
looked down in preparation for my descent. I was only on the second rung from the bottom. Seriously folks, I have seldom felt such
sheer terror as when that ladder slipped.
Falling is
one of humanity’s primal fears and this story is a fine example of its potency.
Having had some small measure of it as I have related to you I can fully
sympathize with this mans plight.
And yet, one
of the things that makes us human is our ability to confront our fears. It is
the ability to make the choice “I will do this despite my fear”. One thing that
I do believe in is facing the fear head on and embracing its terror in an
attempt to conquer its hold on me.
When I was
eighteen I had a friend who was a skydiver. I thought he was nuts but willingly
ran the drop zone vehicle (that’s the guy who drives out to pick up the bodies
after the jump) for him and his fellow lunatics. Skydiving is impressive to
watch and the sheer exuberance displayed by its advocates is very appealing. To
cut a long story short they talked me into it. Not only did it promise to be an
adventure but here was a chance to face down that bogie man that had haunted me
since childhood (as if I were an adult at eighteen). The event was memorable if
somewhat painful.
My Skydiving
Story
I was NUTS, that was the only possibility. I
had finally slipped my leash and was roaming free in la la land. The idea was
to get into a plane, ascend to three thousand feet and then voluntarily jump out. Okay, meaning no
disrespect to those who enjoy this sport it sounds more like an elaborate form
of Russian roulette. Gee I wonder if my parachute will open this time. I
expressed this to Rocky who was my jump master as he had survived this
temporary fit of insanity over seven hundred times. He tried to reassure me by
pointing out that more people die in their own bathrooms each year that from
skydiving. I assured him that as I had no intent of giving up using the
bathroom skydiving could only decrease my chance of survival. But I had decided
to do this so training began. This involved a lot of study on what could go
wrong and how to fix it followed by me hanging from the rafters in Joe’s (the
aforementioned friend who had only lost his mind about two hundred times)
garage and practicing. The only part of this I enjoyed was that the ground was
reassuringly close.
Comes the
big day. I board the plane making sure that I had everything I needed and more
importantly making sure I had left any vestiges of reason behind. We fly to the
site of the jump, open the door and then I sit at the edge with my feet
dangling three thousand feet off the ground. Now, in the Cessna we were using
the exit was in two parts. The first was to place your feet on the wheel
housing and lunge forward to grab the wing support then hang there until you hear
JUMP MASTER SAYS GO. Well that’s what I heard and as many times that I had
fallen off of things accidentally I found that it is more terrifying to let go deliberately
(Kind of like playing trust). But there is no getting back on the plane with a
hundred mile per hour wind hitting you in the face and besides at this point I
was just numb. So off I go, the parachute opens without incident and DEAR LORD GOD ALLMIGHTY WHAT A VEIW.
This was, I swear to God the single most incredible experience of my life, wow
and again WOW. There was no fear or anxiety or anything negative about it. So
there I was with my bird’s eye view of the world, beaming like I had just
gotten a date with the prettiest girl in school (sad to say, this never
happened) and I start playing with the steering toggles. The parachute steers
by two cords which spills air from one side or the other. This diminishes the
support surface but does no harm other than temporarily causing a more rapid
decent (more on this later). Despite the resistance of the parachute gravity
was doing its thing and my ride was nearing the end. I was coming down right
over the drop zone driver who in this case was Joe when I saw him jumping up
and down, waving his arm over his head and shouting something that I could not hear.
As I descended to about a hundred feet I was able to make out what all the
jumping and shouting was about.
The
paracommander parachute that I was using had a forward speed of about ten mph.
The wind on that day was about ten mph. That meant that had I been flying into
the wind I would have come straight down and landed as light as a feather. I
unfortunately was traveling with the wind and was about to slam into the ground
at twenty mph. Employing my extraordinary reflexes and disregarding all reason
(remember that I had left my reason behind) I pulled the right hand steering
toggle all the way down to my knee. The right hand side of my parachute all but
collapsed and I dropped like a rock. As I was close to the ground there was no
time to accelerate to a dangerous speed, so, had I chosen to roll as I hit it
still would have been a good landing. (Does anybody hear ominous music)?
A stand up
landing is self explanatory but is generally done by experienced skydivers
under favorable conditions which dropping like a rock does not qualify as. But
I had it in my mind that I was going to do a stand up on my very first jump. I
landed with my knees locked and felt a tremendous shock travel from my heels to
the top of head. Yet I had done it, yes sir I had done a stand up landing on my
very first jump. My triumph only lasted about three seconds as I collapsed to
the side making my second landing of the day. Whereas I did land on my butt,
unfortunately my butt landed on a prickly pear cactus, ouch!
So much of
fear is fear of the unknown. We have no true experience with the thing that we
fear so we anticipate the worst and create our own terror. As it happened I was
not afraid of heights at all. It was, as these stories exemplify, a fear of
falling which is healthy and sane.
Having
feelings is a part of what makes us human but we must make a sincere attempt to
identify the true source of those feelings so that we become their master for
otherwise they will master us.
Sincerely yours
The Rational Anarchist
Sean, I'm really enjoying reading your blogs. What you don't say in person you say in your writings and the "tru you" comes out. I am afraid of elevators and briges(especially ones over water). I don't consider it a fear of heights but a fear of falling. The two stories you wrote was one of facing your fear of heights by parachuting, The other was a story of fear of heights but was an accident.
Hope to hear more from you, love ya, Cathy
Posted by: Cathy | January 29, 2009 at 02:54 PM
Sean, you have more guts than I do.No way I would jump out of a plane,really enjoyed the stories.Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Sharon Hamm | January 21, 2009 at 02:23 PM