Hanging in there for dear life

When working on billboards you have to be cautious. You are always keenly aware of terminal velocity. And you are told to tie off at all times, or at least that's what you had to sign to in order to have the job in the first place. Somehow that document appeases OSHA more than safely built structures do, apparently.

There I was dangling 70 feet in the air wondering how life had come to this. It was generally understood that with enough time on billboards everyone got hurt, it was just a matter of when and how badly. The first two weeks you stay on the ground and observe while listening to all the stories of things that could go wrong, like the guy who broke both ankles from a 35 foot fall, or the guy who lost use of his arms from electrocution tapping a live telephone wire with a Plexiglas rod--a feat I nearly duplicated later on myself on the same billboard. If you still wanted the job it was yours. Yeah, swinging my feet to gain enough momentum to hook my leg safely back into the billboard at 70 feet, was not my first close call and would not be the last, so no, I wasn't surprised at all by this latest predicament, nor was I rattled, until the angle bar I was holding onto shifted down 4 inches. My heart was pounding. The whole of the old structure swayed and creaked in the wind. Trembling I carefully released one hand down to where I could reach my lanyard clipped at my waste, then thrust that arm back up clipping it securely into the hole of a sturdy brace. Arm over arm I moved across the angle bar to where I could swing my legs up into the board. Reaching back to untie myself was as difficult and as dangerous as it had been to tie off in the first place, but I managed.

What stymied me most wasn't the particulars of this day's events but my circumstances altogether. Did I really need this job? Unfortunately, the answer was yes. It paid decent. And I hadn't gotten a better position in my nine months since attaining my college degree, credentials I ironically had to downplay when I interviewed to hang billboards, or hang from them, as it were. Every day plans for obtaining a different job and a better life were becoming more urgent every day.