Vertigo

I’m not really afraid of heights, but every once in a while I think of myself in some situation as in this picture

and my body literally freaks out.  I shut down.  I can’t focus on it more than a few seconds (even if it’s just thinking about it in my mind instead of looking at a picture or watching a scene in a movie) before I literally shut off.  I get dizzy and my mind immediately switches to something else.

I think it boils down to a dream I had when I was eight or nine or ten.  I was doing something in it then – suddenly! – I found myself clinging to a slab of concrete outside the Empire State Building.  Outside! 

This may have had something to do with a Cub Scout field trip and a Cub Scout with an overactive imagination.

Note: This is a picture of two insane dudes repairing the antenna at the very tip top of the Empire State Building, something like 1,400 feet in the air.  What gets me most is that the picture was taken by a third insane dude standing outside on that antenna above them!