Alpha Male: F

Falling: I am afraid of falling. From great heights, I mean, not stumbling and landing on my butt. And I am not afraid of heights. I can visit the very top of tall buildings or mountains, so long as there is not the possibility that I will actually plummet from them.

For example, I can come to a party at your penthouse apartment in the Empire State Building but do not expect me to saunter out onto the balcony and gaze placidly over the edge. Do not, under any circumstance, expect me to walk over a high bridge, particularly one that carries vehicular traffic, thereby increasing the possibility that a car will nudge me over the side. After just a few floors, glass-walled elevators make me woozy and I will insist on standing right by the doors because if I am near or -- God forbid -- leaning against the glass wall, it will pop out and the last thing I will hear in my life is a loud splat, I just know it.

In Spring Green, Wisconsin, there is an amazing museum called the House on the Rock. It's this odd, former private residence of a man who created amazing sculpture and retained some of the most exhaustive collections -- dolls, carousel horses, antiques of every sort -- you'd ever expect to see. I've been there many, many times.

The last time I visited, in 1993 or 1994, there was a new attraction called The Infinity Room. Essentially, the Infinity Room is a corridor constructed of over 3,000 glass panels (top, bottom and both sides) that juts out 200 feet over a seemingly bottomless wooded valley. You can walk all the way to the end of the room and back, marveling at the 360 degree view.

You probably could. I couldn't. I walked out, and made the mistake of looking down. As nearly as I could tell, the only thing preventing me from a sudden and sharp plunge to the unseeable forest floor was a thin layer of glass. I panicked. I could not make myself turn around and walk back to the room's entrance. I could only look straight ahead and will myself to breathe.

After what seemed like an hour and a half but was probably only a couple of minutes, another brave visitor wandered out. Seeing what must have been a pale, stricken look on my face, he asked if I was okay. "I. Am. Afraid. Of. Falling." I said this to him, as evenly as I could.

"Well, if you weren't when you started out," he said, almost jovially, "you would be by the time you got here. I'm feeling a little queasy myself. What say you and I go back?" And with that, he took me by the arm and, keeping up a pleasant conversation about where I was from and what brought me to the area and oh-my-wasn't-the-carousel-wonderful?, guided me back to terra firma.

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