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“Don’t worry. It’s been here since 1924 and hasn’t broken down, so we’ll be safe.” Or so my friends claimed. Their words of encouragement did nothing to calm my fear of heights as they dragged me into the never-ending line for the Giant Dipper rollercoaster at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which I predicted would be my final resting place.
“It won’t break,” they said. “ It’s not even that high up,” they said. “Stop worrying,” they said. No, it didn’t break; yes, it was, in fact, very high up; no, I did not stop worrying. You see, they left out a very important word in their bold declaration of safety: “It hasn’t broken down YET.”
“If it didn’t break for all the people who went on it before us, it won’t break for us.” I beg to differ. Each person who went on the Giant Dipper during its 100-year existence made the ride a little less structurally stable. The rollercoaster will surely break down eventually. The important question is: Will it break down while I’m on it? In my mind, the possibility of the rollercoaster stopping mid-ride, flying off the tracks, or crashing through the support beams was a good 60%. For my friends, it was virtually 0%. And maybe you, like my friends, see my fear of heights as completely irrational. It’s not. It’s perfectly justified. Let me explain.
Imagine you’re standing on one of those awful glass bridges suspended 1,000 feet above a forest. Maybe you would just step onto the glass without hesitation, but there are so many things you should consider first. “What’s the structural integrity of this bridge? What if the glass breaks under me? I’m not a bird; I can’t fly if I fall. If I fall from this height, I’ll actually die. Falling through the trees and hitting the ground would hurt a lot.” If you decide to ignore all of these perfectly logical thoughts and stand on the bridge anyway, your sense of self-preservation is absolutely abysmal.
Self-preservation is a completely natural and rational instinct. My being scared out of my mind as my friend shook the gondola chair was perfectly normal. My refusal to ride a Ferris wheel willingly is perfectly normal. The hour it took my sister to convince me to go on a rollercoaster with her was perfectly normal. Our natural survival instincts try to protect us from harm, so it makes total sense why I’m sometimes scared looking out the second-story window.
Through my flawless and incredibly factual arguments, you obviously understand that my acrophobia isn’t an irrational fear of heights but a natural response to heights borne out of ordinary, self-preservative instincts. My logic wasn’t able to get me out of riding the rollercoaster, nor was I able to convince my friends to see the validity in my acrophobia, but maybe you now understand the truth. Remember this: always be skeptical of the surface that holds you up. You never know when it will break and send you plummeting.
Categories: Humor