Ladders shouldn't inspire any fear

Ladders have never bothered me.
But now I’m beginning to wonder.
One summer during my college years, I found myself working on an electrical contracting crew. We were working on the installation of an automated system at a baking company.
Huge tanks of flour and other ingredients were housed in a three-story building above a concrete slab. Various funnels and pipes and tubes were connected to the tanks, so that the ingredients could get to the proper place for mixing in correct batches.
I had absolutely no idea how the thing worked. But, then again, I didn’t have to. My job mostly involved bending conduit and pulling wire through that conduit so all the correct electrical connections could be made.
If all worked the way it was supposed to, the finished system would allow an operator to turn a few dials and send just enough of the perfect mixture to another tank.
About a week into the job, my boss asked me if I happened to be afraid of heights.
As a college kid who didn’t want to appear an ounce less macho than my co-workers, I gave him my best answer: If you ask me to climb a ladder and work up high, I have no problem with that. But if you ask me to do that two weeks from now — giving me enough time to worry about it — that’s another story.
Good enough, he said. You’re our guy.
That’s when I found out everyone else on the crew — every single person — was afraid of heights.
For the rest of the summer, I was the guy on the ladder.
To give you some idea what that means, imagine an extension ladder that stretches up about two and a half stories. Then place that ladder against the curved side of a steel tank. In the side of the tank, there’s a hole about an inch and a half in diameter. A sensor unit about the size of a small trolling motor for a fishing boat is supposed to be affixed to the side of the tank. Rubber paddles are supposed to be squeezed through the hole, so they can detect how much flour is in the tank. To get the rubber paddles through the hole, they have been covered with some sort of slippery greasy material. The job is to climb the ladder to a spot about two stories above a concrete floor, carrying the sensor unit, then squeeze the rubber paddles through the hole and attach the outside of the unit to the tank.
Piece of cake, right?
All I can say is that it was a long, long summer.
Memories of that job came back to me thanks to a commercial that keeps popping up on places like ESPN.
It goes something like this: An older woman is sitting at home when her adult daughter comes in. The older woman says something about Dad being up on a ladder today to do some sort of home repairs or routine maintenance. (Maybe he was just changing a light bulb.) The daughter immediately suggests that it’s time to talk about an insurance policy to cover the cost of Dad’s funeral.
Now, I don’t know about you, but this particular dad found that a little creepy.
Note that the daughter didn’t worry about Dad’s safety. She didn’t suggest her parents get a handyman to handle chores like that. And she certainly didn’t volunteer her services to get the work done.
Instead, she wanted to make sure that old Dad’s burial expenses were covered.
How heartwarming.
So I’ve been thinking about ladders. The tall ones from that college years job in the past, the routine step-ladders every homeowner deals with, the ones that get harder to climb when your knees start to complain.
But none of them are as scary as the daughter in that darned TV commercial.[[In-content Ad]]