On the first night we slept here in the new house, we heard what sounded like a sheet of metal being banged against a wall all night long. The wind was howling, so we figured someone had a sheet of tin lying against their garage or something like that. The sound did not repeat the next night, so we forgot about it.

Last week, the wind picked up again, and once more, we heard the banging. Thankfully, Lisa can sleep through damn near anything, and I was so exhausted that even I was able to put it out of my mind for the night.

Then two days later, we heard it again as we were turning off the television to go to bed. Only this time, the sound was not coming through the window, but down the chimney in the fireplace.

A look outside confirmed it. It was the chimney itself.

While the gas fireplace in the living room was converted from a wood fireplace, the one in the TV room is a later addition, so instead of a brick chimney rising from the roof, it's one of those tin cylinders. And something has either broken loose, or it was never attached properly in the first place.

All well and good, and it really shouldn't be too costly or difficult to fix. Just a matter of finding out precisely what needs to be done by examining it closer.

Which requires climbing onto the roof. The roof of the top level of the house, which rises some thirty feet above the backyard.

Have I ever mentioned my problem with heights? That's because I don't have a problem with heights.

I have a problem with falling.

I was never a big climber as a kid. Not because I was scared to go up, but because I was never certain of my security while up in the air. I could scale a tree no problem as long as the sturdy, easily-climbed branches held out. As soon as I got to the little bendy ones, I was out. No clinging by my own strength was permitted or possible.

My elementary schoolyard had one of those big hemispherical monkey bar sets that you never see these days, the PC-crazed school boards having decided that something that rises 15 feet in the air over a sand pit is a death trap for children. The coolest kids would climb up and sit on the very center at the top. I never could, because I would have to trust my balance rather than trust the strength of the bars.

In the CN Tower in Toronto, there's a chunk of Plexiglas floor that you can stand on and look straight down between your toes 500 feet to the ground. No problem. Stand on the edge of a roof with no railing and look down the same distance? BIG problem.

Give me anything to trust other than myself and I'm fine. A tree, a railing, a rope, whatever. Something I can grip or lean on, something I can have faith in to keep me from plunging.

But trust myself? Trust the strength in my arms, or the balance in my head or my sure footing? No way. No how.

It's not even that I've let myself down before. I've had surprisingly few injuries in my life, and not a single broken bone. But I've always felt clumsy and out of proportion, a lumbering oaf in a world of landmines. I walk into a store with fine china and crystal and suddenly my elbows feel the size of sledgehammers and the aisles shrink down to barely larger than my shoulder width. Hand me an egg and my brain holds my hands extra rigid in the fear that I will A) crush it, or B) spontaneously fling it off towards the horizon.

The few times I've actually climbed onto a roof, I've felt like the slope suddenly increased from a gentle 20 degree incline to a precipitous 75 degrees, and that the only thing keeping me from sliding to my death was pressing my whole body against the shingles doing my world-famous starfish imitation.

So what do I do? I'm sure Dad will be more than willing to climb up for me, but I'm going to have to do it myself eventually. Those gutters are not going to clean themselves, and I'm certain that badminton birdies and the like will make their way up there once we have kids. And Christmas lights! Our new house simply MUST have Christmas lights!

I'll feel like a doofus having to phone Dad all the time. "Uh, Dad? Can you get my Frisbee off the roof?" It would be another one of those times when I give him thoughts of 'How did I go so wrong?' like when he gave me his old red toolbox and I filled it with stage makeup instead of tools.

Crap. I guess I have to.

Dad's out of town this weekend, but plans on bringing over his big ladder the following one. We'll go up and have a look and get that damned chimney squared away.

If you don't hear from me in two weeks, it'll be because I'm still stuck up there, clutching to the ExpressVu satellite dish for dear life.

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Tracked on March 9, 2005 10:00 PM