Feel the Fear. Lauren Child
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33
How Ruby decoded Claude’s touch code
‘Fearlessness is often regarded as one of the keys to freedom. But does fear not serve a purpose? Is this deeply primal emotion not there to guide us, to help us sidestep danger and prompt us to take a safer path?
The question should be asked: is it always a positive quality to be fearless?
Why do we fear fear?’
DR JOSEPHINE HONEYBONE, founder of the Heimlich Good Emotion Institute, from her thesis, The Worthy Emotion.
ONE BRIGHT SUNNY DAY IN OCTOBER, a woman looked up to see a five-year-old girl wriggle out of a tiny fifteenth-storey window. As far as the woman could make out, the child was lured by the desire to reach a yellow balloon that had become snagged on the ironwork of the building’s fire escape. The girl seemed unaware of the life-threatening drop that yawned beneath her and, without concern, edged forward on hands and knees. She paused when she encountered a hole in the rusting metal walkway – then put her hand through it as if to make sure the gap was real.
The woman on the sidewalk held her breath.
The child reached out across the void but could not quite grasp the long pink ribbon that tethered the balloon, and it gave a mocking nod, turning to reveal its printed smiley face. The girl, who was attending her cousin’s birthday, wondered if the balloon had floated in from some other celebration. Because this balloon was different from most: attached to its string was a brown paper tag, like an old-fashioned luggage label. The child began to wonder if the tag was a message, a greeting from some far-away place.
What was it trying to tell her?
All at once the little girl stood up quite straight – then she confidently stepped onto the metal beam that had once supported the fire escape floor, her fingers almost within touching distance of the balloon now, but not quite. For one whole minute the child stood completely still and then, very slowly, she took her hands from the safety rail, spread her arms wide like a tightrope walker might, and continued to pursue the balloon by stepping one foot exactly in front of the other along the narrow iron strut that jutted from the building.
The woman on the sidewalk gasped, unsure if she should call out, or if her cry might cause the girl to lose her balance and fall. She could neither run for help nor warn the child – so she just stood there rooted to the ground, waiting for tragedy to play out.
The girl, unaware of the woman’s dilemma, was interested only in the label tied to the balloon’s string. What did it say?
She grabbed for it but as she did so her foot slipped, she toppled forward and, with yellow balloon in hand, fell towards earth.
The woman on the sidewalk covered her eyes and screamed and a man walking his dog froze.
As the child fell she thought about Agent Deliberately Dangerous and his amazing floating cloak – a gravity-defying garment that always brought him safely back down to earth. She thought about what she had eaten for breakfast: a bowl of Puffed Pops and two whole glasses of banana milk. Was this enough to make the difference between floating like a leaf and plummeting like a stone? She thought about what noise she would make when she hit the sidewalk. Would it make a boing sound like that Looney Toons dog, or would she land, cat-like, on her feet?
And just as it seemed she was going to smack down hard on the tarmac, something amazing happened. A truck drew up – it belonged to the Twinford featherbed company – and the little girl landed with a puff, plumb-square in the middle of it. Of course all of this happened in the space of 3.2 seconds but it played out in cartoon time.
A couple of blocks away, when the truck stopped at a red light, the child climbed out unnoticed and walked back to the party, balloon in hand.
When she got to the street corner she paused to examine the tag. Disappointingly, there was no message;