Recently I spent a day on the roof of a fifty-story building in downtown Houston. My reason for being there, of course, was to shoot someone. Well, actually, it was to shoot a "replica" of someone. It was an action figure and I was using a camera. Let's bring the terror threat back down to green, ok?

For once, it was a cool Fall day in Houston and for the first time in something like 16 months I was able to wear a sweater. Houston is one of those towns that has summer through December 20th, skips Winter and Spring altogether, and starts the next summer on December 21st. But on this day, blissfully, I was working under a flawless, cloudless sky with a cool breeze that bordered on chilly. And I had one of the most spectacular views the city can possibly provide.

The particulars of why I'd been hired to shoot video of a set of action figures on the rooftop of a 50-story building are unimportant. Trust me. And I can't talk about them anyway (confidentiality agreements and all). But the gist is that I'd been brought in to assist another camera guy who did the majority of the work. Just the kind of gig I like. And it afforded me a chance to look around.

When I was a kid, probably no more than eight years old, my family used to cram itself into the largest available family vehicle and take twelve-hundred hours to drive to Louisiana to see the more distant of our relatives. I'm exaggerating about the drive, of course. It certainly felt like twelve-hundred hours. Then again, I was eight and had what at that time was known as the "impatience of youth" and is now known as "ADD." The drive took many times what my young brain considered to be "forever," and I generally spent the drive getting into bickering arguments with my younger brother about exactly how close he could come to touching me.

On some rare occasions, though, my family took a route that skirted the back-road paths that we normally drove and instead took us straight through downtown Houston to I-10. At the age of eight, brought up in the sticks of Wild Peach and never seeing anything taller than the enormous oak tree that bordered our backyard, seeing downtown Houston was like skirting the edge of Eden. I had never seen buildings that were as tall and overwhelming. I had never experienced concrete canyons or overpasses that allowed us to cruise over the streets below as if we were in a small airplane. The experience of seeing downtown was a marvel to me, and I would sit breathless, leaning against the window of the back door, fogging it up with the heat of my breath. When I think of "awe," the images that come to mind are those first glimpses of downtown.

I grew up reading Spider-man comic books. So of course, the skyscrapers and canyons of downtown Houston became the backdrop for my own fantasies of swinging from a web line, clinging to the side of some glass tower, and - above all - peering over the edge of the roof of one of these enormous concrete giants. And on this day, with a couple of action figures in hand and a roll of clothesline slung over my shoulder, I was as close to living a dream come true as I'd ever been in my life.

As the other guy was getting his shots, I was wandering around the edge, looking over it at the streets below. Sure, there was an amazing skyline all around me, but as I saw it that was the stuff you could see all the time. The real adventure was looking down at the streets and sidewalks. It was the "neat" part. I was looking down at people weren't much more than dots below, but still strangely "human."

It was surreal. I could see twenty or thirty blocks in every direction, but no matter how far I looked I could still make out individual human beings going about their individual human lives. I saw people at crosswalks, and people sitting on benches. I saw people getting out of their cars and going into the buildings of doors. And strangely, from my new station above it all, it seemed like I was catching a glimpse of something mysterious and intricate. The people below had no idea I was there. They had no notion that I was watching. And if they looked up, their chances of seeing me were far less than my chances of seeing them.

At one point, I watched a flock of birds - probably pigeons - swoop through the open lot where a building had once stood. They moved in unison, and as the fluttered over the streets and down the canyons and back around the lot in one big spiral it looked sort of poetic. It looked like synchronous dancing, like it had been rehearsed and practiced so often that the birds could now just do it on instinct and enjoy the moment. Which, in fact, was probably close to the truth.

As I watched the city below me, I felt this sort of giddiness that I haven't really felt since I was a child. It really was what I would have wished for, crammed in the back of a Chevy Van with my brother threatening to pee himself and my mother threatening to get a switch for both of us, even though I hadn't said a word in nearly three whole minutes. I was watching the world as if standing on a mountain top. And I was about to tie a clothesline to an action figure and toss it over the side, letting it swing and fulfill my youthful fantasies for me.

But now the shoot was finished, the action figures placed back in the plastic bag we'd hauled them up in, and the clothesline was neatly coiled once again. I threw my gear back over my shoulder and the other camera guy and I rode the elevator down to the lobby where we checked out and were ushered back onto the street. We had spent about five hours on the roof, on a perfect day, doing something I thought I'd only be able to dream of doing. And I realized that as we came back to earth, literally, I wasn't disappointed at all.

That came as a shock to me. How many times have you done something you always dreamt of, only to find it didn't live up to your expectations?

This morning, as I was getting ready for my day and thinking about the column I was going to write, I realized that lately my life has been just like that rooftop experience. I've come to a point where, though my life isn't perfect, I have all of the things I dreamt of as a child. I'm doing all the things I'd dreamt of doing. I've become what I had always hoped I would become.

My rooftop experience was cathartic, but this revelation about who and what I am came with a sense of euphoria! There are a few things in my life that still have rough edges, but for the first time I can look around and see a world that is everything I hoped it would be. It's forming from the clay around me. And I'm grateful for it.

But mostly, I think it's awesome that I got to be on the roof of a 50-story building and I was allowed to throw an action figure off of it. That's cool.

J. Kevin Tumlinson is the Editor for ViewOnline Magazine at www.viewonline.com. He holds a Masters in Education and has won numerous awards for writing fiction and non-fiction. You may reach him via e-mail at kevin@viewonline.com. He also dreams of the day when parachute pants come back in style.