Monday, January 31, 2011

Phibia Part II

Part I here.
Phibia:
noun. A childhood or long ago fear that you tell yourself you are over, until the ugly truth comes out.

Recently, Husband and I took the boys on one of those humongous ferris wheels. I mean, not the normal sized ones. This thing was HUGE. The boys were really excited, but I was less than amused. I don't do heights, but put on a brave face.


As we waited in line, I was in a hurry to get on that wheel. Maybe just to get it over with. I certainly didn't really want to get on it. At any rate, we were on it in about 10 or 15 minutes and slowly cranked up and back down.

And then, the wheel picked up speed. What seemed like a nice, gentle roll while standing at a distance now felt like pure horror. I found I couldn't manage to look up or behind me without getting dizzy. I noticed just how rusty some of the bolts were.

CREAK! CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAK!

Was it supposed to make that sound? Was I seriously putting my life in the hands of a stranger?

And if that wasn't bad enough, I then saw this under the roof of our little gondola:

But finally, slowly, the wheel ground to a stop so that the could switch passengers. And at the final stop of the wheel, we were at the apex, hanging there, a potential 125 foot drop above the ground.

What was that news story from years ago about the lady that fell from the ferris wheel, I wondered. How did that happen?

At last, our gondola came to the end of the ride and I was so happy to be on the ground again, where cautions about dropping weren't necessary.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

when told to face our fears, what we end up doing is climbing roller-coasters, eating mysterious foods, lifting granny's old trunk, getting operated upon, flying, driving, marrying, giving birth, going off to war, sitting thru a teenagers's driving test.