I’ve always had a lot of anxiety and some phobias.

• One of my phobias is a fear of heights.

When I met my wife, she said that she was going to fix me. I laughed nervously, but she was serious. I told her things that I was afraid of like the HVAC system breaking down in the middle of the summer. I wished that I didn’t tell her that because she took me to a sauna and had me sweat it out with her for as long as I could handle and then some more. She said that was way hotter than I would be if my A/C system quit working in the summer. She said I had to toughen up and really embrace life. The next mission of hers was to break my fear of heights. When she said that we were going to go skydiving, I wanted to run away. She dragged me to the airfield and we got with the skydiving instructors. I told them that I didn’t want to go through with this but they assured me that everything was going to be just fine. The only thing that gave me comfort was that the temperature control settings were alright on the plane, that was until they opened the side door! It was a very scary experience but I was thankful when my parachute didn’t have any issues. I can’t even imagine what that would be like to go flying to the ground with no parachute, but I know you would die in an instant. At least if my HVAC system fails on me, I don’t have a huge risk of dying like having no parachute. The funny thing is, my wife’s phobia breakers ended up working for me.

Cooling specialist