Whenever I fell as a teenager or young adult being an electrician starting at age 12 summers it was because I was trying to work too fast or didn't have the proper equipment. I remember doing some tree trimming in my late 20s while I was a landscape contractor in places like La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe and realizing that I was just working too fast when a branch I was cutting off with a small gas chain saw got caught in my arm that had the small chain saw in my hand. I switched off the chain saw with a finger before the branch took the chain saw into my leg. But the chain was still moving while I was in the tree and so the chain saw slowed down in my jeans and leg. This was because my partner wanted me to work too fast and I told him I was never going to trim another tree working with him after that. and I didn't. So, I might still have the scar of the chain saw in my top right thigh from where it stopped finally in my leg after cutting through my jeans and drawing blood.
Another time when I was 16 or 17 and working with my father in his electrical business he had to go away to buy material and left me alone at a Clothes cleaning facility he was wiring. But, I had the wrong ladder which was a metal aluminum one instead of the standard wooden or fiberglass ladders to prevent shocking through metal ladders. I wasn't shocked but the aluminum ladder has a spring to the legs and when I reached up about 14 feet into the T bar false ceiling to mount flex conduit in Los Angeles County the ladder sprung on me and threw me through the ceiling into a pile of lumber where I had the wind knocked out of me and couldn't breathe for a few minutes but finally my lungs re-inflated and I could breathe once again.
My father also fell about 30 feet off an extension ladder when I was about 5 years old and was off work for about 6 weeks one time with a broken wrist. But, both of us always knew how to fall and to roll out of it to prevent major damage to our bodies.
Unless you really know how to fall like an acrobat you have no business at all being up any distance on a ladder because sooner or later you are going to fall if you spend enough time up on a ladder. So, you always need to be prepared to roll out of your fall no matter how high you fall from. Otherwise you are usually just dead or mortally wounded if you fall from high enough off a ladder or extension ladder.
But there are all sorts of tricks to help you like running one arm through the ladder which helps you stay up there if you tie off your ladder to something. But, if you don't tie off the top of your extension ladder to something it just means you are doing something that might kill you too. Tying yourself to a ladder isn't usually the best idea because what happens if the whole ladder falls down it might kill you. But, throwing a rope across a roof and tying the rope to a tree or a truck can save your life sometimes if you are working on a roof. But, you have to tie the rope around yourself and it has to be in some way it can save you. If you just have slack and then you fall off the roof onto the ground that's no good because by then you have broken something like an arm or a leg or your back if you weren't expecting to fall when you did. If you see a fall as unavoidable and it's only a story usually you can grab the edge of the roof on your way down so you can at least land on your feet if there are no obstacles below.
All my uncles and I and my grandfather learned how to fall like this by the time we were all young teenagers to stay alive while working with our hands on ladders and roofs. This is why Rock climbing seemed pretty natural to me as a teenager and young man until my son was born and I wanted to stay alive to raise him.
My Dad's favorite saying was :"A miss is as good as a mile" so like if a car, truck or bus just missed you by 1/2 an inch he would say something like this: "A Miss is a good as a mile" and if you think this way you can keep right on going because you refuse to get upset or shaken up about most things you have to do that are physical. it's one way to keep on going no matter what.
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