Friday, May 22, 2009

You Couldn't Pay Me Enough!

While I was out taking pictures for the latest installment of the Belltown Challenge, I paused at 6th & Lenora, looked up and was horrified to see this:

See the guy way up there hanging from that thin, thin rope? That just makes me want to holler. Heights and I do not mix well. This is why I live on the second floor of a three-story building. To be honest, the third floor might be too high for me. I look over at all the high-rises with their balconies and I wonder just how anyone can stand it. I would go insane within about half an hour and I wouldn't even have to be looking down or out or anywhere. That's how much I hate heights.

OK, it's true that my view lets me look up at everything. That's OK. In fact, I'm so low to the ground that I can actually smell people going by. And they don't even need to be shouting nonsense about the cops stealing their lungs or Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro being the same person.

Even though I'm unemployed, I wouldn't take a job as a window washer. If I was starving and it was the only job in town, I still couldn't do it. Even if they let me wash windows with the tears of gypsy orphans, I would still refuse. Just knowing that one small error on my part or the failure of a single piece of equipment could lead to me decorating the sidewalk is enough to send me far in the other direction. Because, you know, it's not the height itself that bothers me. Oh no, heights themselves are not the bad guys here. It's the thought of falling from that height that makes my palms sweat and my knees buckle.

Anyhow, window washers have my respect and admiration. They do what I cannot. But in general, do they have phobias? I mean, is there a prevalent phobia among window washers? Should I even be asking that? Does that endanger their safety?

1 comment:

Jim said...

That building is so ugly, there seems to be little reason to wash its windows. Don't you want the people inside to be just as depressed as those who have to see it from the outside?