Would it be considered “unmanly” of me to hire a guy to come change a lightbulb for me?

Does it change your opinion if I explain that said lightbulb is about 20 feet up in the air?!

Either this house was originally intended to be occupied by one or more members of The Harlem Globetrotters or I’m in a bit over my head here … pun most definitely intended! The latest challenge that I’ve been faced with recently in our quest to get settled in our new home is changing the burnt out lightbulb outside above our front porch.  Just one stupid, little lightbulb – that’s all it is, and yet here I am at my wit’s end because there’s physically no way for me to get up there high enough to actually change it!

Sure, we’ve got a ladder that our landlord left behind that gets me part of the way, but even violating good ladder safety and standing on my tippy toes it’s still not nearly high enough to even touch the fixture, much less actually be able to open the thing up and swap out the bulb inside.  And yes, I could simply buy a new ladder that would thrust me even further into the stratosphere, but before we throw a parade and hoist up the “Mission Accomplished” banner too prematurely, lest I remind you of one other important factor to consider – I’m a gigantic wuss when it comes to heights.

I’m not afraid of a lot of things – a few things, maybe, but I think overall it’s a good, healthy number with reasonable justifications for each and every one of them.  Rollercoasters – if I really wanted to tempt fate over a quick adrenaline rush, I’d buy a motorcycle.  Deep water – where do you think that sharks live?!  A dark, empty house in the middle of the night – might as well just paint “Come rob me!” right across the front door!  Then again, with my porch light not working right now, I guess any prospective robbers wouldn’t be able to see it anyways…

Regardless, though, heights is definitely the worst of them that I have to contend with, which normally isn’t too big of a deal because it’s a rare occasion when I find myself without both feet firmly planted on good, old reliable ground.  Even around Christmastime I seem to muster up the courage to scale a relatively short ladder in the name of holiday decorating, but this – in truth, I’m probably just as likely to scale Mt. Everest as I am to climb to the top of the 20-foot ladder needed to shed some light on this particular predicament.

How that simple peasant in Jack and the Beanstalk did it, I’ll never know!

The way I see it, I really only have a couple of other options here:

  1. Learn to live without a porch light, although it makes coming home with groceries tough, and I’m thinking trick-or-treaters may not be too thrilled come Halloween, either.
  2. Hire a Mountain Sherpa to help guide me safely up the surface of our house, or maybe even see if for a few extra bucks he’ll just change the thing out himself.
  3. Rent a helicopter to hover over our front lawn in the evening hours, though admittedly this might not make us very popular amongst our new neighbors.

Of course, if I happen to have any 20-foot tall readers out there who might be in the neighborhood anytime soon, what better way to show your appreciation for my hilarious commentary every week than by using your freakish mutation to help me avoid confronting one of my darkest fears?!  In the meantime, I’m going to go ahead and start pricing out mountain men and helicopter rentals, but if you feel like stopping by, my house should be pretty easy to find – it’ll be the one with the burnt out porch light…