Just look away

Did I mention I have a fear of heights? Well, I do...and these photos my SIL posted on Facebook haven't helped one bit. Last week I was at the store when he was hanging a light, and, as usual, the experience was harrowing. Admittedly, it was a small light that was easily carried up a ladder, but that did very little to allay my anxiety. I noticed a gigantic Sciolari chandelier on the floor awaiting installation and made a mental note not to be there when it went up.

Whenever he climbs a ladder while I'm at the store, I go into full-blown phobia mode: knot in stomach, heart in throat and creepy-crawly feeling on the backs of my legs. He's up and down, leaning and stretching, balancing on the top rung in all sorts of precarious positions. Despite his assurances that he's OSHA-compliant and that it's only my vantage point and my propensity for melodrama causing the distress, I keep repeating, "OMG, I can't look. I really can't look," to which he responds, "Then don't. Just look away." After putting up with a few rounds of my hand wringing and squealing like a little girl for him to be careful, he invariably asks me to hand him something, requiring me to A) grope my way in his general direction, my eyes covered with one hand and a pair of pliers held out to him with the other or B) look.

A couple of days ago, he hung the massive Sciolari. He had said it would probably be a two-man job, although I thought four sounded much better. Rather than wait for help, however, he decided to do it alone, without so much as a mother-in-law there to call 911 when he plummeted to the concrete floor. The captions below are his.

One man. One Sciolari. Fight!

Man wins.

If I had been writing the captions, they would have said "Perilously tall ladder. Terrified woman. Faint." and "My grandsons still have a father."