Five Times I Shouldn't Have Used Stilts

I’m just a modern woman with a career and a family—and the urge to stand above it all

Sophie Kohn

1 At the annual convention for people with a paralyzing fear of heights

I will never know what possessed me to waltz into the National Acrophobia Convention on three-meter stilts, other than the fact that I’m straight-up jazzed about my stilts and never, ever want to remove them, not even when I sleep. Okay, so I didn’t exactly “waltz.” The very first bullet point in any stilt owner’s manual explicitly says, “Good luck ever waltzing again.” But however I entered Conference Room B, I’ll never forget the shrieks of white-hot terror that greeted me as convention-goers watched their greatest fear not-waltz into the room and openly mock their one common vulnerability.

2 At the conservation farm for endangered insects