Summer of my freshman year, my grandfather provided me the opportunity to work along with him on a roofing job that would last roughly two weeks. He told me he would award me ten dollars an hour for at least six hours a day. This sounded like an exciting deal. Loving what I heard, I told him I would do it!

Around a week later, it turned out to be my first day on the job! When I was younger, I had been on roofs with my grandpa although  I never had to carry hundred pound scratchy shingles on my shoulder, while climbing a ladder thirty feet up high! This kind of job made me anxious. I often wondered, ‘I hope the ladder doesn’t break, and I fall to my death.’

After the first day, my grandpa reassured me that I would be fine. On the other hand, he could not assure me that I would smell good after the day ended. I often found myself smelling like hard working construction workers.  However, after the first week or so, I learned to get used to the heights and all of the heavy hoisting. This had good results although I became too confident and liked to test the waters by leaping off the lower ends of the roof into my grandpa's big red trailer. Looking back, I had smarter ideas because that’s where we threw all the old black shingles with pointy nails stuck to them. ‘You are lucky that you never ended up with a nail in your foot!’ my grandpa told me.

On the last day of working on the house, I decided to attempt a very dumb prank. I thought scaring my grandpa and his friend would be a funny, harmless prank. Well, he and his work partner were on the roof already, so I wanted to shock them by coming up on the other side. I decided retrieving a ladder would be the easiest way in doing so. I picked up the fifteen foot ladder and leaned it vertically against the big white house; the house was quite a bit taller than the ladder itself. I figured I would try my luck and attempt to climb it anyhow.

As I went to climb the ladder rung by rung like a firefighter, it began to feel pretty sturdy, so I continued climbing up. All of a sudden I felt the ladder slipping inch by inch beneath me. I had no clue what to do, no clue! I was twenty or so feet high up in the air, falling to my death! Out of nowhere the yellow ladder came to a complete halt. I was super shocked at what happened; I slowly lowered myself down, and once I reached the bottom, I noticed the craziest part. A pebble, not much bigger than my fingernail, had been wedged under the slippery foot of the ladder and the concrete. That had to have been the only object that rescued me from being severely hurt or even killed. I was so scared that everything was going by so fast, and I couldn’t fathom life at that very moment. I could feel my face tpurning paler than clouds on an overcast day. I never explained to my grandpa about what happened and just thanked God for watching over me in that moment.