A Bridge Too High

by Julie Miller

It started when I was very young and my parents drove an old Volkswagen Beetle. At Christmas time we'd drive up through central North Carolina into Virginia and then over to the coast to spend the holiday with my grandparents. They were stationed at an army base there until I was about 4 years old. Unfortunately, this trip involved a Bad Bridge. The Bad Bridge made Bad Noises.

At the time, I wasn't aware of what sort of bridge we were traversing to get to Granny and Grampa's house. I knew only that it was long and loud and scary. Now I know that it was just a big suspension bridge--the kind with the metal bands on it that cause a sort of loud humming sound as you drive over. The loud humming really freaked me out when I was little. I would crouch down in the car and put my hands over my ears and scrunch my eyes tight shut until it was over.

Luckily for me, Granny and Grampa moved back to North Carolina during my fifth year, so I didn't have to make that particular trip anymore. In fact, I hardly made any trips that involved big bridges for quite some time after that. The only traveling I did for years was the annual family vacation to the NC coast, and that didn't involve any scary bridges--just little drawbridges that forced you to wait and wait for the intracoastal waterway boat traffic to pass through before you could get your turn to drive across to the beach.

As I got older, my family's favorite vacation mecca gained more and more popularity with both NC and non-NC residents. This influx of more and more beach-bound tourists to the North Carolina barrier beaches created a need for both better roads and better bridges in the area. No happy Midwestern family wants to sit for fifteen to twenty minutes waiting for the drawbridge to close so they can cross to the island after a twelve-hour drive. It was annoying enough for us at the end of our measly one-and-a-half hour drive!

Obviously, the reason there were drawbridges to begin with was that boats had to get through. Some boats are nice and small, but a lot of them are quite tall. There are commercial fishing boats and cargo barges and shrimp boats with high masts that have to clear the bridge. Because of the height requirements, the bridge builders couldn't just put in nice standard highway type of bridge. Oh no. They had to build arches. And I'm not talking about nice, gently sloping, picturesque little arches. I mean serious arches--arches along the scale of the St. Louis Arch. Rainbow bridges! These suckers are structures that only happy little bluebirds and leprechauns should be thinking about crossing. Surely no mere mortal in a standard earthbound four-wheeled vehicle should be attempting them!

Alas, some engineers figured out that these things were safe for motor-vehicle traffic. You would think they'd at least put some comforting decent height side-rails or even some twenty-foot high walls reinforced with steel beams and festooned with caution lights. But no--that might spoil the view! Granted, the view is quite spectacular from what feels like about 3000 feet in the air, but I'd be fine with some wire mesh between my car and the empty air over water. Instead, I'm left with tiny concrete railings that appear to be only about two feet high. This has to be an optical illusion. My husband assures me it is. I've tried a few times to look at the rail height in relation to the other cars on the bridge, but I can never focus long enough to properly evaluate it.

It's hard to focus when your eyes are scrunched as tightly closed as you can get them and you are doing your best to control your breathing.

My first trip across one of the new bridges to the NC barrier beaches was my first experience with a Very Bad Bridge. Not to be confused with a simple Bad Bridge, a Very Bad Bridge doesn't just assault the senses with sounds and a little swaying. It constricts the lungs, accelerates the heart, and banishes any grasp of rational thought.

Clearly, I have a phobia. I don't have a name for my phobia (although I'm sure some Latin scholar could manufacture one for me). It's not a normal sort of phobia like claustrophobia (enclosed spaces), hydrophobia (water), triskaidekaphobia (number 13), or agoraphobia (crowds). It's not even really a fear of heights. I could stand on the balcony of the tenth floor of my ten-story dorm and not freak out. I mean, it's not like I felt like standing on the railing or anything, but I didn't feel like I would faint. I don't panic when I'm looking out of the window of a flying aircraft. I have a realistic and healthy discomfort of being exposed in high places. But somehow bridges are different.

As an adult, I thought perhaps I would have gotten past my fear of the Very Bad Bridges. I thought my rational brain could keep the silly irrational fear under control and let me pass over the bridges without incident. Silly me. I still panic every single time. I still have to close my eyes. I'm somehow utterly convinced that the car will drive off the side of the bridge and plunge into the water at any moment.

I've tried driving it myself to see if the control factor would help me. That was nearly a disaster. I've tried talking to the other people in the car to relieve the stress. That helps a little, but not much. Mainly, I prefer to ride with my eyes closed until it's over.

Unfortunately for me, some years ago I moved away from my native North Carolina with its gently rolling piedmont and flat coastal plains to the river-infested area of central Ohio. This creates two bridge dilemmas for me. The first is that with all the rivers in my area, it is basically impossible to drive anywhere without having to cross one of the rivers on a big bridge. And all the big bridges have the low sides so you can see the beautiful river view. My strategy is typically to stay in the inside lane and look straight ahead until I'm over the bridge. I just breathe carefully and whimper when the traffic forces me to sit on one of the bridges for any length of time.

The worst of my local bridges is on my way to and from work each day. It's a flat, straight highway bridge that crosses a wide river and a four-lane highway on one side of the river. This makes it an extremely long bridge (from my perspective, anyway). This bridge is actually much better than it used to be a few years ago, since they widened it to three lanes in each direction. Now I can drive right down the center of it and not have to see out over the river at all. I've gotten so comfortable with it that most days I'm just on autopilot as I cross it and don't even think twice about it.

I had a nasty wake-up from my autopilot one day a few weeks ago, however, when some insane police officer felt the need to pull a speeder over to the side of the road--right in the middle of the bridge! It's impossible to avoid glancing at a patrol car with flashing lights as you approach it. This compulsive glance forced me to become aware of exactly where I was--right in the middle of the bridge! I nearly hyperventilated.

The second bridge hazard of moving to the Midwest is that I now have to drive through the Appalachian Mountains a number of times each year to get to and from my parents' homes for visits. The Appalachians aren't really that tall as far as mountains go. They're quite ancient and worn down--not young, mighty and pointy like the Rockies. But they're high enough to require some doozy bridges.

My husband and I take turns with the driving when we travel back to North Carolina so that neither of us gets too tired on the long trek. But we don't just change at random times. No, sir. I have a very carefully mapped out route of where I will and will not drive. It lets me avoid the nasty high-speed curves on the West Virginia turnpike. But more important, it enables me to close my eyes when we cross the Hideous Bridge on I77 south in southern West Virginia. That one nearly gave me apoplexy the first time I realized I was crossing it.

Thankfully, this sort of pre-planning and knowledge of where all the worst bridges I have to face are located allows me to go on enjoying my trips home and to the coast. I'm grateful that I don't have the sort of phobia that prevents me from going about a normal life or enjoying all sorts of activities. The fear is not severe enough to prevent me crossing a bridge--it just makes it uncomfortable if I'm too aware of the bridge.

Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's irrational. Yes, it makes me look like a whacko sometimes. But that's how phobias are. Never scoff at someone else's phobias. You might just find out you have something Very Bad lurking out there for you.