I was very curious about all of that. They were older, so naturally, I assumed that they knew more than me. Their secret pact intrigued me. So, I got the notion to climb up in their treehouse to see what it was like.
I negotiated each of the wobbly boards carefully as I ascended to the pinnacle. They were rickety so I was nervous about climbing up. I kept my eyes skyward toward the treehouse platform. It didn’t occur to me to look down. When I got to the top of the tree and slid onto the platform of the treehouse, I turned around and looked outward and eventually downward. The world began to spin around me. I got really dizzy. I couldn’t move. I was petrified. That’s my first encounter with my fear of heights.
I decided to make the best of it while I was up there though. I found their secret pact in its tight hiding place and I opened it up slowly while checking all around me to see if they had spotted me yet. That secret pact was a bunch of gibberish that I couldn’t understand. I just thought that those boys were stupid to make such a fuss over something so unintelligible.
The real problem arose, though, when Mother called us to supper. I couldn’t get down. I’d try with all my might to reach my little foot down to the first step. It would move downward and I’d scrunch back up to the platform. I did this several times before I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to get down without some help. I began to yell for Mother to come help me. She sent the boys. Wonderful! Now they were going to know that I had gotten into their exclusive club treehouse.
They did come to my rescue, but only after chastising me for getting up there in the first place.
Several weeks later, I got brave again and thought I’d climb up the smaller tree to their other hideout. I discovered that my brothers had taken off the bottom step so I couldn’t reach it. So, I just got a lawn chair and it gave me enough height to reach the second step. I took my doll and slowly climbed up to the treehouse. I thought that I’d reached the sky. This tree was much smaller than the other one so I was not nearly as scared. I played there for what seemed like hours, then I climbed down and went inside.
When they got home from school, they scrambled up to their treehouses only to find that I’d left evidence behind that indicated that I’d been there. They discovered my doll. Since they knew I was afraid of heights, they conspired to take the top step off of the treehouse ladder. That way, I couldn’t get down once I got up there.
The next day, I scrambled to the top of the second treehouse to play again. It was a really long ways from the existing step to the treehouse platform, but I didn’t really notice that the top step was gone. Again, I pretended to be in a lookout for bad guys until nearly time for them to get off the bus.
That’s when I discovered (much to my dismay) that I couldn’t get down. No matter how far I reached my little leg down the tree toward the remaining top step, I just could not touch it. I stretched and stretched and nearly fell. So, all I could do was begin to beckon Mother to come and get me. She said I’d have to wait until the boys got home and one of them would come up and help me down. I began to cry. If there was one thing in the world that those boys couldn’t stand, it was my crying. Well, one did help me down and I was in trouble with both of them. They scolded me again and told me that the next time I climbed up to their treehouse that they wouldn’t get me down.
Because I was so naïve, I believed them. I never climbed into their treehouses again for fear of living out the rest of my natural life there.
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