Why am I deathly afraid of edges and high places?

"It all started when I was a little boy ..."

I am going to give you, my reader, the title of Psychiatrist and I am going to recline on an imaginary couch and spout whatever comes into my cranium.

I repeat "It all started when I was a little boy ..."

We lived in The Bronx and every Sunday we traveled by subway to my maternal grandparents in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My father had a habit of placing his right foot on the very edge of the elevated train platform and raising his left foot in the air as he peered down the tracks to see if the next train was coming. I was 6 or 7 years old and I would scream, "Daddy - come back!"

That, ladies and gentlemen was the cause of my present neurosis. Actually, my grandfather, Isaac, was a "roofer" and he scampered roofs like a monkey. Why was I cursed with acrophobia?

If in a movie there is a roof-top chase with a lot of jumping and standing near edges, while the camera pans down on the street below, my palms start to sweat. This is accompanied by a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach and general feeling of malaise.

I can take movie car chases till the cows return home and it troubles me not one whit. Posses chasing outlaws on horses do not affect me at all. But, go to the edge of a skyscraper and I become a nervous wreck.

I am also not sure that this is not an infectious, transmittable disease that requires isolation and guarantine. My wife and children used to laugh at me in my agony, but now they have confided to me that they are starting to have problems about heights.

Elevators are wonderful! As long as I am completely enclosed I feel safe and secure. I can fly at 35,000 feet on a plane with the best of them. Caves are non-threatening.

Do not, I repeat, do not take me to the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon or any depression in the earth that has a meager fence to protect the tourist.

Driving a car along a mountain road with no guide rails is also a no-no. I drive at six miles per hour and my tires are distributed evenly on both sides of the yellow line.

I appreciate your listening to my ongoing mental problem with heights, my reader. However, I do not have much confidence in your ability to cure me.

Please send any homemade recipes and any old-wives tales to me and I promise to try them all.

Thanks - Just send me the bill!

E-mail Shgreenbug@aol.com. or Syosset Jericho Tribune, c/o Stanley Greenberg, 132 East Second Street, Mineola, NY 11401.