Back when people lived in the country, they developed a saying, “It’s as easy as falling off a log.” Unless you have experience with logs, however, you may not realize just how easy that is. Take it from those who know: it’s easy.
You would think that falling off a ladder might be easy, too, but it’s really not. If you’d spent as much time on logs as I have, you’d have countless times in your memory of losing your balance and having to dismount suddenly. But I’ve been climbing ladders and/or working from ladders on a daily basis for over thirty years now, and I’ve only fallen twice. Ladders are much better than logs.
Ladders do have an intrinsic shortcoming, though, and that is their habit of being underneath people who are high off the ground. Logs tend to be under people who are low to the ground. When you fall off a ladder, even if you only do it at fifteen year intervals, it can rearrange your life, not to mention your skeletal structure.
I knew of a Christian minister who had such an accident around 1977. It crippled him up pretty noticeably, but he recovered. He still limps a little. Through the grapevine he eventually learned that a fellow minister in another state had fallen off a ladder on the very same day as he, and also sustained serious injury. This moved some wag to refer to the two of them as “ladder day saints.”
The first time I indulged in this diversion was about twenty years and fifty pounds ago. I was frolicking around on a drain job, running up and down the ladder like a squirrel with my usual zest for life, and the ladder disappeared somehow and I suddenly found myself up in the air like Wile E. Coyote. All parts of me hit the driveway, but my head was last. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I had a headache for a week.
That accident did not make me more careful. To be honest, I’m not sure of what went wrong. The ladder may have given way and bent. But I continued my standard methods of setting up the ladder and judging when it was safe enough to climb. That worked fine until three weeks ago.
On Jan 27th I misjudged my situation. I set the ladder on an old red brick patio (smooth) covered with old wet leaves (slick) and leaning up against an old rusted out rain gutter (ready to collpse). Then I sent an old fat plumber (me) up to clean a sewer through the roof vent.
As I began to step off the ladder onto the roof, the gutter collapsed and the jolt caused the feet of the ladder to lose any grip they had on the brick patio. After that, I quit paying attention, so I can’t be specific. I do know that I found myself in one piece with no broken bones, but the side of my right thigh was badly injured from, apparently, having struck a short brick wall that formed a flower bed. I had numerous other minor injuries. It also lowered my self esteem.
Although I could barely walk and the injury eventually laid me up for a couple of weeks, I did manage to climb back up on the roof, finish the job, load the truck, and go home. You gotta be tough to be a sewer man.
From this I have learned that I must do better. Despite the fact that I have successfully judged the safety of my ladder habits for thirty years, those habits are insufficient. They nearly got me killed. That’s a fact.
You can search for “ladder safety” and get all the specifics you need. I’ll just summarize my personal perspective. How do you fall off a ladder? By overconfidence. Let me explain by a couple of examples:
Every responsible gun owner knows that “them things’ll kill you.” We handle guns very carefully. We follow strict rules that inexperienced onlookers might consider excessive. We refuse to keep company with anyone who handles a gun unsafely. Otherwise a mistake would be easy to make and the results would not be pretty.
To a lesser extent knives have to be handled with strict care. I knew a very experienced farmer back in the ’80s who put a knife through his leg and nearly bled to death. When I asked how it happened, he said that he had gotten careless while cutting a plastic drum open and the knife had slipped. That’s usually how it happens. I’ve always taught beginners to ask WHEN this knife slips (not “if”), where will it go? If the answer involves some part of your body, stop! Change what you’re doing and assume a safe position. Knives slip; that’s the way of the world.
A ladder fall can maim or kill you. Don’t think it won’t. My first fall didn’t interrupt my life, but this last one has cost me a couple of weeks of work/income and will continue to cost me as I am currently declining jobs that are too hard for my limited capacity. I’ve probably done permanent damage to my leg, although it won’t keep me from living and working normally. But had I hit the patio a little differently, I could easily have been killed or, worse, paralyzed.
Easily.
As easy as falling off a log.