There is only one thing that truly scares me—being in high places. This is no small aversion; it’s a major case of acrophobia. I can look over a balcony, but get me close to the edge above the 6th floor and I have issues. My heart races, I lose equilibrium and breathing is difficult. Put it this way: I’d pick Disneyland’s Tea Cup ride over the Matterhorn.

I began to think about fear of heights the other day when I pitched the trapeze story, which you are hopefully enjoying, to my NYC24.com cohort. For the record, cognitive behavioral therapists say humans are predisposed to certain fears because, evolutionarily, it was helpful to be afraid of heights and spiders and saber toothed tigers.

Imagine my distress when a classmate cheerfully said, “You know you can’t do the story properly without flying on the trapeze yourself.” Unfortunately, my professors agreed that in the interest of journalistic integrity, I needed to jump off a platform the size of a stamp and swing by my knees from a trapeze bar.

So, for the sake of The Story, I tried it. Watch the audio slide show to see what happened.