My Bid for a Darwin Award

He's climbing a ladder to heaven

A cot, an easy chair, and a view to die for — which I damn near did. Note the bladeless ceiling fan top center.

It was a blissful night watching lightning bugs along the tree line and listening to the gentle rain before closing my eyes. I’d just reclaimed my screen porch sleeping space.

I had to shut it down for the duration, while the white pines dispersed their pale-yellow pollen. The pollen — with its yellow dust clouds — started around Memorial Day and finished last week. It took me a couple of hours with a battery powered leaf blower and shop vac to make the huge screen porch habitable again.

While I was at it, I removed the delaminating ceiling fan blades — coated with 35 years-worth of dust and pollen — and tossed them onto the burn pile.

It was a perilous job, perched on a 20-foot extension ladder, trying to coax the fan blade screws out without stripping the heads. All the while I fantasized that, if the ladder should slip, I’d have the presence of mind to grab onto the fan housing long enough to let the bouncing ladder settle, then hang-drop 12 feet to the floor. Perhaps escaping unscathed. Or with a broken ankle or two.

It occurred to me that I should have set a video camera up on a tripod and captured the event. If, for nothing else, to document exactly what I’d done to earn my place among recipients of the Darwin Awards.