When I was two years old my dad took me sledding on top of a local mountain. The mountain itself is pretty tall, but most of the hills up there at the top is not very steep.
At one point my dad must have been momentarily preoccupied. Maybe he put something away in his backpack or something. In any case, while he was not paying complete attention, I started sledding down one of the hills. Little did I know that while the hill looked ok from my direction, there was actually a cliff awaiting me at the end of it.
It did not take long before my father noticed what I was doing, and then he came running after me. He managed to stop me in good time, but I lost my sunglasses as he grabbed me.
The sunglasses continued down the hill without me, sliding off the cliff, never to be seen again.
I’m not quite sure how much of this story I remember correctly, as I was only two years old at the time. I dreamed about the incident for years to come. But at this point it is just a memory of a memory.
I have never liked heights, and never speed either. As you can imagine, I can’t stand roller coasters. And while I do not have a problem being a passenger in any vehicle, I don’t really like driving myself. I’m really proud that I managed to go to the top floor of the Empire State Building when I was visiting New York with my girlfriend in 2014, but I was scared the whole time we were up there.
Now I can’t really be sure that the sledding incident had any impact on my aversion to heights and speed. It could be that I gained those fears from other incidents that I just don’t remember. But it seems unlikely.
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