re: #256 The Vicious Babushka

Nope.
Just. Nope.
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OH HELL NO!

I’m notably afraid of heights. Balconies, rooftops, tall structures of any kind, terrify me. Strangely, I have been a pilot for 50 years but have never had this fear of heights in an aircraft, even in open cockpits miles above the Earth. I once asked an aviation psychologist about this anomaly. She told me it was not uncommon at all. Her explanation is that when you’re in an aircraft, it becomes the ground to your subconscious mind, while on a tall structure or a natural height of some kind, your subconscious still recognizes the ground far below and is duly alarmed.
My wife teased me about this when we visited the CN Tower in Toronto. The restaurant on top had a big section of glass floor that you (not I) could walk out on. There were children playing on it while I was a cringing mass of jelly six feet from the edge.
“Ha, little kids do what the shit-hot chopper ace is afraid to try!” she mocked.
I countered that I was also afraid to eat bugs or play in sewage while many little kids had no compunction about doing so. I also claimed that people who were afraid of heights were obviously more highly evolved, since those of our ancestors who lacked this useful precautionary instinct were likely to fall out of a tree or walk off a cliff before they could reproduce.