The Sears tower has added retractable compartments on the 103rd Floor. Yeah I know I once stood in the frame of Windows on the World for a better view but this thing would give me the mother of all panic attacks.
I hate standing on the edge of a cliff, but I like to climb trees. I don't think I could do the glass floor, but I love flying and flight simulators, and swooping in with Google Earth.
I work on the 25th floor looking down into a construction site, but that verticality bothers me less than looking straight up at the building from ground level.
I'm also afraid upon entering an elevator while carrying keys, papers, cards, that they will fall through the crack and be lost. Hasn't happened yet, though.
Why do we seem more afraid of things that are highly unlikely to happen and readily accept risks with rather obvious (and headline making) dangers? This must be some sort of survival mechanism. (And there are probably several books about this.)
Houndentenor
"Get the trash off the street and back on the stage where it belongs." -- Bette Midler
I have an ex who dropped his keys down the elevator crack!! And when we got to the bottom (via the stairs), I guess the elevator had already made the trip down and bent his keys ALL out of shape. He had to replace all of them! I had a key to his place, but not to his car, his locker at school, his locker at the gym, his parents' house, his mailbox, etc., etc. Hang onto those things!
One Friday evening, I was stepping out of the elevator in my building with the keys to my apartment in my hand (I was carrying bags of groceries, and did not want to have to set them down another time to take my keys out of my pocket when I got to the door of my apartment) when they slipped from my hand and fell through the gap between the elevator car and the building floor. I eventually got them back thanks to the janitor, who fetched them from the well of the elevator shaft, but that had to wait until the following week. For the time being, I had to get a locksmith to let me into my apartment. Since then, I always leave my keys in my pocket until after I have stepped out of the elevator car.
Baritonobasso
"The students are overstimulated. Willie, remove all the colored chalk from the classrooms!"
In grad school, I dropped my keys in the crack at the elevator entrance. Fortunately it didn't take long for me to find maintenance and they were able to fetch them for me.
the whole floor of the CN Tower is glass. It's stronger that way since glass is a liquid (well, technically an amorphous solid), it flexes better in high winds. When it first opened they had it all uncovered but no one would get off of the elevator so they covered most of it with carpet, leaving only the 15 sq m uncovered that's up there today.
I'm not even afraid of heights, but damn! That thing is terrifying! I say this to you with much shame, even years later: at the age of 25, I had to sit down on the (carpeted) floor and tentatively put one FOOT out over the edge first, just to really, really make sure, haha! There were little kids scampering all over it, and there I was, clinging to the carpet like a drowning kitten. The shame!
I grew up in Atlanta. When I was about five, my family (mom, dad, my sister, and me) went to the tallest building in Atlanta to eat dinner in the restaurant on the top floor. I don't remember the name of the building, but it has a glass elevator (like this one) on the outside of the building. We rode up this elevator, and my sister wasn't scared, but I was terrified. I grabbed my mother's skirt, buried my face in it, and held on for dear life. I think I might have been crying, too, but I was too frightened to scream. I was literally frozen in terror. (I actually have a memory of this moment, although it's somewhat fuzzy.) The rest of the story, though, I remember from my mom re-telling it.
When we got to the top, my parents had to pry me away from the total stranger, wearing the same color skirt as my mother, to whom I was clinging desperately. I had grabbed the wrong skirt, and I wouldn't let go. I think it took them about five minutes to get me off the elevator. I don't remember how we got down...
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