The Secret to a Long and Happy Life: Don’t Fall
’Tis the season to avoid making really bad choices.
“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment." ― Will Rogers
“Middle age is when you’re suddenly too old to climb a ladder, but young enough to still think you can.”
― Anonymous
“Up on the rooftop click, click, click, down thru the chimney with good Saint Nick.”
My brother-in-law is a doctor—an orthopedic surgeon, to be exact—and when people ask him the secret to living a long and healthy life, he has one answer: “Don’t fall.”
I’m not a doctor, except in Guam—long story—but I think I can improve upon that answer with just three words.
Don’t fall off the roof.
I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old the first time I got up on the roof, and probably younger.
The house I grew up in had a free-standing brick wall in the front yard that ran right under the bottom edge of a valley—the “V-cut” angle along the junction of two slopes of a roof.
By standing on the wall and placing one hand on either side of the valley, you could easily ‘pop’ onto the roof, a standard move to avoid being tagged during a neighborhood game of hide-and-seek.
“No fair, that’s out of bounds!” Trent Harker yelled as I scrambled across the shake shingles to safety.
However, there were scant legal grounds for his complaint.
Everyone knew there were no ‘out of bounds’ unless declared beforehand. And nobody dared deem higher ground off-limits because it wouldn’t end with the roof.
The Maytubby’s olive tree, the top of the Lytle’s camper, the roof of the Johnson’s garden shed, all these places and more would eventually be excluded from the game—and what fun would that be?
But the truth was, once you got on your own roof, you were almost assuredly out of reach, shielded from becoming “it” for the next round. To the rest of the kids, your roof was like a foreign embassy, whose perimeter they were loath to violate.
Sure, you’d never reach the safety of home base, but you didn’t need to. Instead, you could just straddle the ridge or perch above an eave, waiting the game out with diplomatic immunity until some terrestrial participant slipped up.
Occasionally, a kid from a different neighborhood or a visiting cousin—heathens with no respect for boundaries—would try to pursue you on high.
But this was your roof.
You knew how the valleys ran, where the dormers were, and how steep the rake was. So, while your pursuer gingerly tip-toed around the flashings and chimney saddles, you’d shoot across the wooden canopy like a prepubescent mountain goat.
Silly interlopers.
As I grew older, my visits to the roof became fewer, the allure fading along with the games of tag. I still went up from time to time to retrieve the odd basketball or frisbee, and of course, to put up the Christmas lights with my father.
And even after he died, long after I’d moved out of the house, each year, on the weekend after Thanksgiving, I’d stop by, pull out his old wooden ladder, and trim the roof with lights.
I was always comfortable on the roof.
I liked seeing the neighborhood from a different vantage point. I liked how far I could see on a clear day—the San Bernardino Mountains to the east, Saddleback down south, the old power plants to the west, and Newland Mesa to the north.
My mom sold her house in 2010, so I was 43 the last time I stood on her roof—the last time I was on any roof. I don’t remember it feeling any different from any other time.
I never thought about falling. It never occurred to me that it could happen. But it should have, because five years earlier I almost broken my back falling from a different type of roof.
There’s a scene in Jaws where Quint, played by the late Robert Shaw, tells a story about how his destroyer was torpedoed during WWII and how those lucky enough to survive the sinking were then systematically killed by a school of sharks.
He says he was most afraid between the time when they were spotted by a reconnaissance plane and when the rescue boats arrived. Just waiting to see if he was the next victim for the sharks.
Though not quite a life-or-death situation, in May of 2005, I was feeling similar to Quint as he bobbed up and down in the warm Pacific Ocean.
I’d sold my business of twenty years—a business I’d grown to hate—but had to wait 30 days for escrow to close. And the waiting was driving me crazy.
So I kept myself busy, diving into a myriad of projects both minor and major, all unneeded, and all designed to keep me from thinking about what would happen if the deal fell through.
One night, after everyone had gone home, I decided I needed to sweep the roof of one of the offices inside my warehouse, so I grabbed a 10-foot aluminum extension ladder and propped it up against the wall.
Three-quarters of the way up, a thought popped into my head.
Hey, I don’t remember anyone using this ladder before. I wonder why that is?
Right about then it shifted slightly, and I vaguely remembered something my foreman had said about the plastic pads on the bottom being too slick. How they wouldn’t grab on the concrete floor, causing the ladder to slip out from under when you tried to climb it.
At that point I was probably eight feet off the ground—much lower than my parents’ roof—but high enough to cause serious damage should things go bad.
They soon did.
As I was almost at the top, I convinced myself that going back down was the riskier move. I figured all I needed to do was take one quick step and I’d be able to grab the edge of the roof. That way, even if the ladder fell, I’d be okay.
That was the smart play. So I made my move.
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t the smart play.
There’s a moment that everybody over 35 has experienced.
It’s that moment when you swing the car door shut, and just before it closes—and locks—you spy the keys in the ignition.
Though the door is not yet shut, there’s too much momentum, and your brain is just far enough behind that—while you consciously know what you’re doing is wrong—you can’t stop your body from making a big mistake.
And for a split second, you have the horrifying realization that what’s about to come next is something you’ve fully brought upon yourself.
That was the first thought I had as the ladder slid out from under me and I began to fall.
Next was, I’m a fucking idiot, followed by, I wonder what I’ll hit and how much damage it will do.
I did the math, hoping to get off light with just a sprained ankle or wrist, but the odds said I was probably looking at a broken arm or leg.
Then I realized that, due to the angle of descent, my head was definitely in play, and I pegged a cracked skull at even money.
Would the side or the back of my head hit the concrete? I wondered. And which would be better?
Hah, better? I thought. As if there was a better.
I remember thinking that no matter what happened, I had to retain consciousness long enough to crawl into the office, dial 9-1-1, and unlock the front door. Then I could pass out, and with any luck, the paramedics would get there before I bled out.
At some point mid-fall, I thought about how pathetic it would be if I died this way. How for the rest of their lives my family and friends would have to explain that I died from falling off a ladder.
At least Quint got eaten by a shark. That’s cool.
The idea of a broken back didn’t even cross my mind until the moment my torso connected with the ladder, now lying flat on the concrete floor.
Immediately, an electrical shock went down both my legs—or at least, what I imagined an electrical shock would feel like. Then they went numb. Not fully, but enough that they became extremely weak.
I’ve broken my back, I thought. I’m paralyzed.
I wasn’t, but I could have been. An inch one way or the other or another foot up on the ladder and who knows what would have happened.
These days, I don’t have to get on the roof to put up Christmas lights. Our house has a low roofline, mostly reachable from the ground. However, there is one small area where I need a stepstool, and another—even smaller area—where I have to use an extension ladder.
It’s the same ladder I fell from, but now the pads dig into earth, and it’s buttressed at the bottom by a cinderblock wall.
I’ll be going back up that ladder in a few weeks.
Last year we had a lot of rain in SoCal, and because November was colder than normal, the local mountains had snow at levels lower than we’ve seen in decades.
After I put up the Christmas lights, I thought it would be fun to get up on the roof and look at those mountains, but when I got to the top of the ladder, where I had to transition onto the roof, I suddenly froze.
What am I doing? Why am I doing this? How do I do this?
I told myself I’d forgotten how to get up on the roof, but the truth is, I never knew how to get up on the roof.
I just did it.
Now I was thinking about it, and it was freaking me out.
I remembered a tragic story I’d seen just a few days before about a 39-year-old man who fell to his death while hanging Christmas lights.
His wife said she didn’t see what happened. She just heard him up on the roof, then a loud noise, and came outside to find him lying on the concrete, asking for help. He died later at the hospital from head trauma.
He was a father of two and everybody in his community said he was a great guy. Always happy, always laughing, always there with a smile on his face.
And during the holidays he ran his own business—putting up Christmas lights.
Jesus, I thought, what chance do I have on the roof?
“I didn’t see what happened,” I could see my wife telling the local news anchor.
“I just heard a loud noise, like somebody kicking themselves. Then I went outside and there he was, laying on the concrete, asking for a beer.”
I suspect that most of the folks who fall off ladders, and roofs, and other unadvisedly high places are men.
Older men.
They say this is because as we age, our balance and sense of equilibrium deteriorates ever so slightly.
At first, not enough to notice during everyday activities, but enough to make a difference when it matters—like when climbing a ladder or getting on the roof.
And when we do notice it during these activities, we brush it aside because we’ve been climbing ladders and getting on roofs for decades.
We know what we’re doing. We’ve been doing it since we were ten.
Which is why, despite my uncertainty, despite my body’s lack of muscle memory, and despite the specter of a professional Christmas lights installer slowly dying on the pavement still rattling through my head, ten-year-old Brian told me I was going on that roof.
So, I stepped off the ladder and onto my tile roof while simultaneously making a mental note that slip-ons were perhaps not the best footwear for this type of activity.
Figuring a low center of gravity was the best way to defend against an unwanted plummeting, I bear crawled all the way to the top. I steadied my Vans on either side of the peak and stood up to take a look around.
It was cloudy and I couldn’t see the mountains. There were no balls or frisbees, and as kids these days very rarely throw their iPhones on the roof, there were none of those either.
Nor was anybody running through the yards and out into the streets desperately trying to reach home base.
And just as it had in days past, the roof lost its allure.
Coming back down was more perilous than going up, so I crab crawled the whole way until I got to the edge of the soffit. I couldn’t see the ladder, so I dangled my feet along the way, trying to locate it.
When I did, I felt a sense of relief, knowing I could now get down off the roof, and that I’d never go up on one again.
Still, until I finally reached the ground below, with each descending rung I silently repeated the sage words of my brother-in-law.
Don’t fall…
Don’t fall…
Don’t fall…
The average person can read about 250 words per minute.
If you made it this far, you’ve taken a ten minute break from an increasingly chaotic and unhinged world.
Come back here next week and we’ll do it again—or stay on break and check out The Best of ‘The Anecdote.’
I’m glad you survived your last roof adventure!
Brian you have a gift for writing. I always enjoy my Saturday morning and coffee ritual. Appreciate the work you put into it..