Today's e-mail revived a memory from my childhood of a time before I literally had the fear of falling...
When I was about eight years old, we lived two doors away from the elementary school. My siblings and I used the playground like it was our backyard. A fence enclosed the swing area, and unlike today, the surface of the playground was made of concrete.
The fence, four feet high at best, had a large hole in it, leaving a rusty, exposed bar of steel transversing over it. I used to sit on top of that strip of the fence, letting my legs dangle freely. One day, I thought of how fun it would be simply to let go of the bar and let myself fall backwards, really fast, with so much momentum that I would make a full reverse circle and end up in my original position. I gave no thought to the concrete less than four feet below. My heart beat incredibly fast, but my desire to have that feeling of freedom, of falling and having blood rush into my head and just as quickly rush out, prevailed and I let go. What pure exhilaration!
That was the first of an uncountable number of times of doing the "backwards reverse circle," as we came to call it. I returned to the playground a few years later. The fence still had the gaping hole, but I had no desire to do the backwards reverse circle. In fact, I looked at how low to the ground that shaky, rusty bar actually was and wondered how I ever had had the desire, let alone courage, to do the backwards reverse circle. I had come to learn danger, and thus, to know fear ...
Debra
The fence, four feet high at best, had a large hole in it, leaving a rusty, exposed bar of steel transversing over it. I used to sit on top of that strip of the fence, letting my legs dangle freely. One day, I thought of how fun it would be simply to let go of the bar and let myself fall backwards, really fast, with so much momentum that I would make a full reverse circle and end up in my original position. I gave no thought to the concrete less than four feet below. My heart beat incredibly fast, but my desire to have that feeling of freedom, of falling and having blood rush into my head and just as quickly rush out, prevailed and I let go. What pure exhilaration!
That was the first of an uncountable number of times of doing the "backwards reverse circle," as we came to call it. I returned to the playground a few years later. The fence still had the gaping hole, but I had no desire to do the backwards reverse circle. In fact, I looked at how low to the ground that shaky, rusty bar actually was and wondered how I ever had had the desire, let alone courage, to do the backwards reverse circle. I had come to learn danger, and thus, to know fear ...
Debra
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