Partners in...climb?

Brad is a rather cautious person about certain things, so when he asked if I was afraid of heights I was like, “Psshh? Please.” I mean, the guy thinks he’s going to fail math, but he has like a 99.9 in the class. Whatever it was couldn't possibly be that dangerous.
We were over at Sherry’s house helping her fix it up to sell. In my machismo, I conveniently forgot that Sherry’s house is tall. You’d think that someone as uncoordinated as me would develop a healthy, adaptive fear of dangerous things like balancing high above the ground. When I saw the area of the roof we would be pressure-washing I did feel a little red flag flapping around in the back of my head (not a clump of hair! Come on now). However I had already committed myself fearlessly and I kind of had a reputation to consider here. When I said I’d only really held a pressure washer once, Brad looked slightly concerned. When I asked if he'd gone up the ladder yet and tried this, he looked green. He had indeed climbed up and didn’t seem to have liked the experience. Hmm. These observations were troubling. But what the heck, there was a ladder to cling to after all. I started ascending with the pressure washer nozzle in hand. This was not helpful and in fact slippery and cold, but it had to come along.
In a ladder I tend to like stability and in the ground the ladder is resting on I hope for a smooth, even quality. I had neither, but I did have Brad holding the ladder. How reassuring. It was a nice gesture, but we both knew that if the ladder broke or I blasted myself off of it with the hose (infinitely more likely), I was not going to fall neatly into his arms. I would probably careen off the side of the house, bounce off a couple trees, and fall to my death, so who were we kidding? Oh! The ladder. You see, the ladder thought that if it shook constantly and violently enough it just might get away with tossing me quietly into the bushes to my doom. So that’s really why Brad was there. That and to turn on and off the pressure washer – or in other words, decide when I would die. You can tell I had finally realized with some annoyance that Brad’s fears were founded.
The top of the ladder was quite a bit more wobbly than desired, but strangely this was the least of my concerns. I was holding the hose above me and attempting to clear little clumps of moss off the roof. This was all very satisfying and glorious when the chunks flew off, but I was (literally) under a lot of pressure. Counter-balancing the inner city pressure required most of my skills at once. I managed to blow some moss off the roof, but by now my left leg had inexplicably started to shake. Yippee! This merely fueled the ladder’s lust for broken bones. At least there was only going to be one person around to see me break my neck, since it probably wouldn’t be a very cool-looking death. Everyone else was painting or doing something else constructive or possibly chuckling quietly from the dormer windows.
As you can imagine, we weren’t the most proficient pressure washers out there. In fact we didn't even come close to finishing the job. Brad went back up again later and really tempted fate – I am not strong enough to control the ladder at all, but he didn’t have to know that, right? Somehow we are alive and the bloodthirsty ladder is (I think) safely resting somewhere without a person on it.