Up on the Rooftop

"OK slide on up there and I'll pass the shingles to you. Careful now, this part of the roof is pretty steep," my dad instructed me.

I shuffle my body across the roof, while laying flat on my stomach. Being the smallest in my family and least afraid of heights, I am elected to re-shingle the roof. So far it had been enjoyable and exciting being up so high, but now that the roof was no longer flat and easy to walk upon, the dangerous side of my task finally hit home. The roof that I now climbed up had about a 70 degree angle and my first project was to shuffle myself all the way to the edge in order to replace the shingles there.

I successfully make it all the way over there with only a few scares from missing my footing and sliding inches down the roof. Whew! This isn't gonna be that bad. Then I made the grave mistake of looking over the edge, 40 feet down to the ground. If I forgot and just leaned over a few feet, my body would be a mess right there, all over the ground. This was not fun anymore. Immediately I paid extra care to where I placed my body and made sure to think through everything in order to not make a mistake. After about 20 minutes though of working on the steep roof, I began to relax and enjoy the thrill of the experience. I took some time to look around and view how differently the world looked this high up. It may be just me, but being up that high makes me feel so free and alive, like I could do anything.

Luckily, I didn't have any problems or accidents and we finished the roof with record time. It was an amazing experience and having some bonding time with my father only added to the memory. I would give climbing on a steep rooftop a ranking of 8.