A while back I did a few posts about the biblical Herods, and I had intended to follow up with one about Herod Agrippa, the last of the biblical Herods, but I never got around to it.

If you ever watched the TV series I, Claudius or read the books that it’s based on, then you’re familiar with Herod Agrippa, who was a friend of Claudius from childhood, and as an adult gave him the following advice: “Trust no one.” Too bad Claudius didn’t heed it.

Perhaps I was following that advice, even though I had never heard it, during my Southgate days.

You know how those silly little fads sometimes sweep through a group of people and suddenly everyone is trying it?

I don’t know where it started, but it had reached the dorm in Mifflin Hall, and all our friends seemed to be trying the trust test, though I don’t know if it actually had a name.

The idea was that you stood in front of a person whom you trusted and you let yourself fall backwards in the belief that he would catch you rather than let you fall flat on your back.

Among those who tried it, it always worked. No one ended up flat on his back.

And so it reached us at our Southgate townhouse. Probably Carl and I had seen it during one of our visits to the fifth floor of Mifflin Hall.

So in their turn Perry and Carl and even Terry tried falling back with various people catching them. 

And the catcher always caught them.

Then it was my turn.

And I couldn’t do it.

It didn’t matter who was standing behind me, I could not let myself fall ball backwards. I always broke my own fall before I’d trust that anyone would catch me.

Not even when Carl, the person I felt closest to at the time, as we had so much in common, not even when he was standing behind me could I let myself go.

I don’t know why. 

Perhaps it had to do with my acrophobia, my fear of falling, although that usually only came into play at a very great height.

Perhaps it was something deep in my psyche because I had been betrayed by people I felt I could trust too many times, such as that time with my first pet rabbit.

Maybe at least subconsciously I thought it was all an elaborate con job that everyone was in on except me, and it was a ruse to get me to let down my guard so that I’d fall on my back.

Or possibly I had simply seen Lucy yank the football away from Charlie Brown too many times.