Here’s a story of the time I overcame a big fear and got a welt in return.
I was what you would call a “chicken” in my youth.
I was afraid of almost everything. Dogs, insects, public speaking, girls -you name it, I was probably scared of it.
But the thing that I feared the most was heights.
I was terrified of being up high. Even on the second floor of a shopping mall turned my Spidey Senses to the max.
Another thing that scared me a lot was this climbing dome at a park a few blocks away from my house.
One day after school, my uncle, who’s not really my uncle but was just a really close family friend who lived with us for a bit, took me and my friend to the park.
My uncle was babysitting me that day and he wanted to play tennis, so he dragged us with him.
No problem. I loved playing at the park even though we always went there.
My friend (Chris) and I went to the playground, went down some slides, and played some tag. Then, we got bored.
Chris, being the “smart” and manipulative guy that he is, suggested that we climb the dome.
He knew I was afraid of heights but he didn’t care. He wanted to play on it and insisted I go with him.
“Let’s climb the dome,” he said.
“Uhh, maybe we can do something else. Ooo, look, the swings are free,” I responded.
“No, let’s climb the dome. The swings are boring and they’re for little kids.”
We were little kids. But whatever.
“Ok,” I passively said.
We ran over to the dome and he started climbing it. I was hesitant and went up very, very slowly, making sure I had a tight grip on every bar I grabbed.
“Hurry up! Why are you so slow?” he screamed.
This bastard. He knows why I’m being so slow. I didn’t respond and continued to cautiously climb.
I got about three-quarters of the way and stopped. Chris reached the top of the dome, looked down at me, and suggested that we play a game on the dome.
“Hey, let’s play a game.”
“What game?” I asked.
“Let’s wet the bars and see who can climb up the fastest,” he said.
It was a horrible idea. “This idiot,” I thought to myself.
“Okay, how are we going to wet the bars?” I asked.
I know, I know. I was an idiot too. I didn’t want to look like a sissy and got peer pressured into doing something stupid.
Anyway, he said that we could get water from the drinking fountain and dump it on the bars.
So, we walked back and forth between the fountain and the dome as we collected water with our hands and dumped it onto the bars.
It took us nearly 15 minutes to wet the area we were playing on. After we were done setting up the course, the game commenced.
“You can go first,” he said.
“Me? No, no, you can,” I replied.
“No, you can go first. It’ll be harder for me if you go first.”
“Fine,” I responded without questioning why that was the case.
He counted me down and I started to climb. I don’t know why, but I was actually trying to go as fast as I could. Maybe my fear was momentarily overcome by adrenaline.
Regardless, I climbed that dome as if zombies were chasing after me. I was fast. I had this game in the bag.
“Haha, in your face, loser!” I thought.
But right after that thought, Karma bit me in the ass and I slipped.
As I tried to grab one of the wet bars, my hand failed to grip it and I fell. I tumbled down and banged my head as I fell from glory.
When I awoke -I think I blacked out for a couple of seconds- Chris was asking if I was okay and what had happened.
I didn’t know. But my head was throbbing so I poked it to see if I was bleeding and to check how painful it was.
“Ouch! What the hell?” I yelled.
“That’s a big bruise. We should go get your uncle and go home,” he said.
I walked over to the tennis court and looked for my uncle. Once I found him, I told him that I had fallen off of the dome and showed him my forehead.
“That looks really bad,” he said. “Okay, I’ll finish my game and we can go home. Go wait at the park.”
This guy, man. For all I knew, I could’ve been concussed. I potentially had a head injury and he had to finish his game before we left? God damn.
Anyway, he came looking for us a few minutes later and took us home.
I immediately ran to the washroom to see how bad my injury was. And it was bad. It looked like I grew a tennis ball in the middle of my forehead.
And it hurt. Every time I poked it, I just felt pure agonizing pain.
A few hours later, my parents came home from work and called for me. I was scared of getting in trouble for falling, so I hesitated to respond.
But my mom eventually found me in our family room.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I was at the park and I fell,” I said.
“Fell from what?”
“The dome.”
“Ay-yah, does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Come here so I could put some mint leaf oil on it.”
Mint leaf oil is a staple in Vietnamese families and cures everything.
Stomach ache? Use some mint leaf oil. Sprained ankle? Use some mint leaf oil. A cold? Use some mint leaf oil.
The following day, I was embarrassed and afraid my classmates were going to tease me about the bulge on my forehead.
Luckily, I had the stereotypical Asian bowl cut and just combed my hair down so it covered the bruise.
No one really noticed it other than my friends, who obviously made fun of me for being dumb.
But after about two weeks, the bruise went away (thanks to the mint leaf oil) and my forehead went back to its regular size.
After that day at the park, a little bit of the fear of the dome went away.
I learned that it’s not as scary as I made it out to be. I also learned that I shouldn’t fall into peer pressure.
But the most important lesson I learned that day was that metal bars can get really slippery when they get wet and climbing is not ideal.