johnmaconline

Lighthouses — cool structures, romanticized nostalgia, and a wealth of symbolism.  

Some of my earliest and fondest memories from childhood are of the Hatteras lighthouse on the outer banks of North Carolina. 

And over the years, I’ve climbed many in different parts of the country with little issue, so I had no idea that the one on Tybee Island, Georgia, would turn me into a whimpering toddler.

I’m lucky in that I don’t have a universal fear of all heights. I don’t actually have clinical acrophobia, but I’m easily reduced to a bowl full of jelly when just a few ingredients exist. 

• High enough that I risk injury. So probably over 15 feet.
• I gotta be able to see straight down.
• I don’t trust the safety equipment (railing, wall, cable, etc).

If you combine those things, my knees weaken, and my mind locks up. The lizard brain takes over.

Which brings us to the top of the Tybee Island lighthouse. As I emerge from the lantern room onto the catwalk, all three ingredients combine to rip any vestige of self-control away from me. 

It’s a lighthouse, so of course, I knew it was high, and I’d be able to see straight down. I’ve done it many times. But I had no idea the catwalk railing would come up only to the middle of my thighs! Usually, the catwalk railing is at least chest high and often reaches over my head. 

I’ve lost all trust in the safety equipment. 

Who’s that minuscule railing gonna save? Uh, nobody over 3 feet in height. What if you get startled, someone bumps into you, or you lean over just a bit too much while waving to the smart people below? Surely the remains of people waving to their much smarter family and friends litter the ground around the bottom of this lighthouse.

My lizard brain was having none of it. It locks up, and now I physically can’t move. I literally can’t move. 

Not only can’t I move, but now I find myself hugging the lantern room from the outside. Not hugging in the sense of “staying close to.” No. Hugging, hugging. Like it’s a giant teddy bear — arms outstretched, belly and cheek stuck to it. 

And I’m not the only one on this catwalk. Heck no. I got at least ten other people around to witness this public display of terror. Lucky me. 

At first, the others are mildly curious, like maybe I’m playing some kind of game. If only. But after a few minutes, they all know. My shame is public. How could it not be? I’m hugging the giant lighthouse 140 feet off the ground, and I can’t move. 

Well, here’s how it ends. After my friends and family take a few pictures of me for nostalgia purposes, my wife saves my ass. She tenderly takes my hand, looks me in the eyes, and says, “OK, don’t look anywhere else but at me. I’ve got you.”

And she leads me around the catwalk to the lantern room door and into safety. Finally, I can move again on my own. 

November 18, 2011 at the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall about an hour north of Beijing.

How was I supposed to know that to stand on that wall required a windy traverse over what certainly was a bottomless chasm on an old rusty ski lift? 

That part was not in the brochure.

But there I was with my coworker and friend George, somehow standing on the platform of that ski lift, waiting for the 1970s-era 2-seat, open-air death trap to come around the giant cog and grab my ass.  

I almost didn’t do it. Truly. I was sweating, shaking, and probably white as a ghost because I knew what would come after dropping the bar over my head. 

But I sat my butt in that chair, and now I was trapped.

We took off, rose over the initial crest, and the ground dropped away. I froze. Not from the early winter chill in the air but from terror. The wind picked up. All I could see was that rusty cable stretching as we bounced along 8 billion feet above the earth. 

How much more could it withstand?

I knew with all of my being that the cable on the lift was about to snap. I believed it with all of my heart. The only thing that kept me from outright weeping was my pride in front of George.

He, though, was apparently unphased — turning around, taking pictures, leaning over the bar, and making that itty-bitty seat bounce even more. So I closed my eyes, sat ramrod still, and let George do all the talking. Thank God he was talking. I couldn’t have choked out anything comprehensive above a grunt. 

Miraculously, somewhere between 5 minutes and 3 hours later, I found myself standing on that wall. What a payoff that was. 

And I would do it again in a heartbeat, even knowing the terror that I’d hoist upon myself again. The Great Wall is truly one of the great wonders on this planet. I’ve seen the pictures, you’ve seen the pictures, but the only way to appreciate its majesty is to stand on it with your own two feet.

If I’d succumbed to the fear, like I almost did right before the chair lift swung around that giant cog, I’d be kicking myself forever. 

Many of us have them. 

Irrational fears — spiders, snakes, needles, public speaking, the dentist, whatever. Various estimates put the number of people in the US with phobias from 20% to 25%. 

Mine is heights, and I share acrophobia with about 5% of the population. That means 95% of you are crazy and should think about therapy. 

Because our phobia is better than yours. Better in the sense that it’s real. Real in the sense that we will die if we fall from something high. It’s not some made-up fear like nomophobia or xanthophobia. 

I feel good and validated about my acrophobia. But still, even though I’m afraid of something real, unlike y’all with ablutophobia, I recognize that I must not let it get the best of me. Life demands it. 

So I test myself. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. I always pass with flying colors (if flying colors means freezing, running the other way, crying, or acting like a toddler). 

What follows over the next few days are stories about those tests. 

Oh, and if globophobia or optophobia has got you stuck in your house in the dark, you should dig in here. The nuggets of wisdom will be coming fast and furious.

If my ridiculous fails and antics can’t at least help someone feel less alone, then what am I doing here?

I’m alone in the dungeon, but I make it to the locker room door.

Shit! It’s closed and locked. My key’s down by the pool. This door is always locked. We’re in center city. Stuff happens.

Just as I’m about to wheel around and head back to the pool because now I’m committed to the locker room, the door opens and hits me. A guy runs out and says, “Get out, man!” And he’s off.

I grab the door before it closes. At my locker, I pause and look around for just a second or two. It’s empty, of course, but at no point have I smelled or seen smoke. That’s still true. The fire, if there is one, may prevent me from escaping, but here in this locker room, my life is not in immediate danger.

I can’t escape the vision of myself out on the busy city street in my jammers in ball-scratching cold weather. What would I look like? What would people think?

So I get dressed. Then I grab my bag and take off, not knowing if an escape route even exists anymore. If not, at least I’ll die with my clothes on.

Up the stairs, around the corner, through the big double doors, and out onto the sidewalk. With my clothes on.

Thank God. I mill about with the rest of the crowd and learn that this wasn’t a drill, but neither is the building on fire. A false alarm.

I chose well.

As far as I know, this is not a drill. The building is on fire. This is real.

The fire alarms blink and sound their klaxons. Is that smoke? I might be the last one left in the building. The “Fire!” guy is long gone. I don’t see anybody else.

I can, and probably should guarantee my safety by immediately evacuating. That means running up the two flights of stairs and outside onto the busy city sidewalk. I’m soaking wet, wearing only my jammers and a towel, and it’s 15 degrees.

And then what? The building is on fire. My clothes will be toast. Or, if not toast, who knows when I could get back in.

And then what again? What am I gonna do soaking wet without clothes? Walk the four blocks across center city in 15-degree weather? Walk into my office? Dude, I’m essentially naked.

Is this guaranteeing my safety?

Another possibility flashes into my mind. I can chance it. Take a quick duck into the maze of a locker room, which is just one floor up from the dungeon, and on my way out. At the very least, I can grab my stuff.

I decide to chance it. Really I had no choice.

Vanity versus death.

For a couple years, I worked in center city Philly — 18th and JFK. At lunchtime, I’d make my way past Love park to the gym at 15th and Arch. It’s an ancient YMCA building with a pool in the basement. 

Lap swimming is a form of sensory deprivation. Not in the total absence of senses, but in the inability to hear anything beyond the sloshing of your arms through the water and the inability to see anything past the radius of those arms, except some hazy, amoebic glow. 

Consequently, you find yourself retreating internally, oblivious to what’s happening around you. There’s really no other way. 

On this mid-winter day, deep in the throws of this sensory deprivation, I became vaguely aware of a flashing light. I stopped to pick my head up and look around. There it was — the flashing light came from the fire alarm on the wall. 

For how long? Impossible to know, but I wasn’t nervous. Because I, like you, have participated in hundreds of fire drills throughout my 50+ years. So I drug my annoyed self onto the pool deck, fully expecting to hide in the locker room until we got the all-clear. 

But something happened on my way to the locker room. A guy ran past me, yelling, “Fire! Get out, now!”

Uh oh.

There I stand, dripping wet in nothing but jammers and my towel. It’s 15-degrees outside. The building is on fire. I’m in the basement.

The250 is a project about stories. 

Specifically, how personal history colors the lens through which we remember and interpret those stories. Because ultimately, we see and understand the world around us through our collection of stories. They leave an indelible mark on what we believe to be good and true, whose side we’re on, and how we see our own role in this world. 

“People don’t believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves.”

Seth Godin

And we’re squarely focused on exploring that last line: what we tell ourselves. 

Our stories are about the memory of emotions, sometimes to the detriment of the memory of facts. We often twist, embellish, or create “facts” to match the memory of those emotions, which is why the passage of time is the enemy of an eyewitness in the judicial system. 

But we’re really good at remembering the emotions attached to a moment and our personal context in that moment. What was happening in our life at that time? Who was there? How did we think of ourselves? What change did that moment bring about? 

As our journey continues, we add more context, personal history, and outcomes. With a proper mindset, we can and should reinterpret and even change our stories. 

We always believe what we tell ourselves. This here is the uncovering of the stories I tell myself. 

I totally believe that authorities can coerce false confessions, and I’m thankful for those who work on behalf of the victims. I believe it because it almost happened to me right here.

I almost confessed. I really did. But to what? I hadn’t done anything other than keep my mouth shut, but I just wanted it all to stop. Right now. I would’ve said just about anything.

But I stuck to the truth, probably because I just didn’t know what else to say. The next time I got coherent words out, it was something whiny like, “I didn’t. I really didn’t. But I knew some people were.”

“OK, who was it?”

Wait, was this a glimmer of hope? Throw somebody else under the bus, and maybe you’ll be free!

So, I did. I gave them Derek, and then I couldn’t stop the gusher. It was like an out-of-body experience. But I guess it worked. If that’s what you want to call it. I walked out of there with nothing but a deep wound on my soul.

And that’s when I knew they were just fishing, and I was a live one. Maybe somebody had given them my name (like I had Derek’s), or maybe they just pulled me in because of my friendship with Derek (who they already nabbed). They were just soaking me for information and using fear as the mechanism.

I get it. I understand why authorities do it. It works.

But I also understand how this authoritative intimidation can lead to false confessions. It left a deep impression on me. Every time I see something about questionable confessions, I wonder.

Now standing in the security office in front of several stern-faced adults, I was shaking. I’m sure my face read like a book because I knew what this was about — it was about the system.

And this was the reckoning.

Even though I knew about and had seen the system in action first-hand, I was too afraid and prudish to have tried it myself. I hadn’t stolen a single dollar. Even if I had thought about trying it, fear and guilt kept me on the sidelines.

I hadn’t done anything wrong other than not squealing (yet), but here I was.

Mirrored sunglasses, staring directly at me since I walked into this chasm of hell, cuts right to the chase, “We know you’ve been stealing from the cash register. Now’s the time to come clean. If you do, we’ll go easy.”

Somehow, I choke out a feeble, “Um, no, I haven’t…”

“Bullshit! We’re way past that. We know you have.”

At this point, the dude-perm starts waving his finger at me, “Every dollar you put in your pocket comes right out of my pocket!”

This, coming from the guy who’s currently wearing 80’s style athletic short shorts that not only didn’t have a pocket but weren’t exactly concealing much else.

I just blinked and stammered. I wasn’t being smart, or coy, or playing any sort of game. I couldn’t even think. Had I peed myself?

People are clever and clever people who think they can’t get caught get careless.

I made a couple of friends working at the burger and fry shack that summer. One of them was Derek. He was cool. A year older and already driving; longer hair; metalhead like me. I had no idea, of course, that this friendship would eventually land me in the security office shaking like a leaf.

A week or so before my call down to the office, Derek let me in on a little secret, although, as it turns out, it wasn’t really a secret. He was lifting money from the cash registers, and “it was a foolproof system.”

Not only was he doing it, but several people were. Someone else had shown him. And now he was going to show me.

We sold three things at our stand: burger (with or without cheese), fries, and soda. Each priced a nice round number like $1.00 or $3.00, plus we had a “meal deal” where you got all three for $5.00.

Most customers ordered either a single item or the meal. Almost no change and easy math.

“Gimme a fry. Here’s $2.” Or, “Gimme two meals with cheese. Here’s a $10.”

And since they’re not getting any change, they grab their grub, wheel around, and off they go. They’re not looking at you or their money. As the cashier, just peek behind you to ensure no manager is watching and hit the “no sale” button. The cash drawer pops out, but with some kindergarten sleight of hand, that $5 or $10 misses the drawer and lands in your front pocket, and the cash register and daily reconciliation are none-the-wiser.

The system was foolproof.

But here’s the thing about clever people, they really like to show others how clever they are. What good is it if you can’t take credit?

More people. Less foolproof.