Heights. When I was VERY young, my parents took my sister and me to Niagra Falls/Horseshoe Falls (from Detroit where we then lived). We rode a cable car over (I think it was) Horseshoe Falls. I was sitting in my father's lap. He crumpled up an empty cigarette pack and threw it over the side. I watched that pack fall, and fall, and fall...until it disappeared. Only then did I comprehend how far up in the air our little cable car was.
But that fear didn't last very long. Too bad, because then the height-related accidents started.
Worst accident I suffered while in Thailand in the USAF (1972). With logger's tree gaffs on, I was climbing up trees to replace spiral 4 data cable (that had been destroyed by a lightning strike). About 15 feet up my third tree, the tree snapped - turns out it was rotted. I fell... broke my fall by landing on my butt and right wrist. Double compound fractured the wrist. Both bones completely broken and dangling at a 90-degree angle to my forearm. Although in shock, I calmly sat down, unbuckled my gaffs and used one as a splint for my broken wrist. [I got no help from my comrades, however. Two threw up after looking at my wrist and the third was running around trying to raise anyone on our walky-talky.]
There were no US military/civilian medical personnel within 100 miles. So, after walking a mile through the jungle back to our crew truck, I was driven to a Thai field hospital about 20 miles away where two physicians' assistants shot me full of morphine and set the broken bones. They didn't do a good job, because the wrist has only about 20% flexibility in every direction. At the time, I never had my back checked out. Too bad.
After my discharge I went to local VA Hospital and requested they re-break and re-set my wrist. "We'll get back with you," they promised. Two months later VA sent me a letter congratulating me on being a disabled veteran. That was NOT the resolution I wanted.
My back gave me persistent, minor pain thereafter. But 40 years later, that pain became acute. I visited a spine specialist who said I required vertebrae fusion. And so they did - fused my L3-4-5 vertebrae together and into my S1. Basically, I now have a stick that begins with my hip bone and ends at my L3 vertebrae. Viola - no more pain. Of course, also no flexibility. Tying shoes is a real challenge, as is trimming my toenails.
All that as a consequence of not being warry enough of heights.
