Fingerprints Part 4 —Pride Cometh Before the Fall (Quarter)

This is the fourth part of a series. Click here to catch up on previous entries.

“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.” —Soren Kierkegaard

How close to the flame could I go and how long could I stay there? Fear, anxiety and teenage testosterone combine to make an uncontrollable personality exponentially worse.

A particular incident from my childhood stands out in my mind these days, more so now than when it occurred. I was about 8 years old and school was out for the summer. This meant that I was home alone all day while my dad went to work at a plumbing supply warehouse and my mother worked at a coffee shop.

Fingerprints — Part 1

This is the first part of a series:

“Fingerprints” is a term that bridge workers use to describe what happens as we instinctively reach out and grab the nearest solid object we can hold onto when we unexpectedly slip, slide, or fall on the bridge.

We say that we grabbed the bridge so hard that “we left our fingerprints out there.”

This memoir will trace the path that led me to becoming an electrician and eventually leaving my “fingerprints” on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.

“Man, like the bridge, was designed to carry the load of the moment, not the combined weight of a year at once.” —William A. Ward
Photo © Allan G. Smorra, All Rights Reserved

 Prologue

I originally set out to write a novel over the course of 30 days by joining the National Novel Writing Month event (NaNoWriMo). By writing 1,667 unedited words a day I would have 50,000 words at the end of November and have a novel under my belt to edit and do something with.

After two weeks of planning and outlining a story I realized that I was lacking a plot, a necessary ingredient for a novel. I had characters and situations but I lacked a good reason for anyone to read it. As it turned out, I had a revelation three days before the start of the challenge.