The teenage girl lowered knotted bedsheets out her second-story window.

I sat in the shadows of my balcony, enthralled by the “show” at the apartment building next to mine.

When the bedsheets reached the ground, one of two boys loitering on the lawn wrapped the end of the sheet around something that I couldn’t discern. The girl gingerly pulled the object up to her, trying not to let whatever it was clang against the window of the apartment below her.

It was a few minutes past midnight. Old people like me are supposed to be in bed by 8, but I couldn’t sleep that night.

I rocked quietly in my chair on my balcony.

Like an angler with her catch, the girl reeled in the bedsheet line, the contraption tied at the end occasionally clattered against the brick wall.

Suddenly, the object unfurled. A rope ladder with metal steps.

The girl froze. Then quickly whisked the latter inside her window.

The night went still for a while. I rocked in my chair in the dark and waited.

After 10 tense minutes, the girl reappeared. She fastened the fire escape ladder to her window and lowered the metal rungs. Slowly. Carefully.

When it reached the ground, the teen swung a leg out the window. The rest of her followed. She descended, glancing now and then at the lighted window of the room next to hers.

As soon as her feet touched the ground, she and the two boys sprinted for the sidewalk and disappeared into the dark.

I tried to picture myself pulling such a stunt when I was 17. Then I remembered when an elderly neighbor volunteered me to help him patch the steep roof of his barn. I froze at the top of the ladder. I dug my fingernails into roof shingles.

The old guy climbed over top of me so that I could — with eyes closed and breath held — work my way back down the ladder. I haven’t been off the ground higher than I can jump since.

It wasn’t fear of heights so much as it was a distaste for the sudden stop at the end if I did tumble. Heights need to stay where they belong — above me.

Plus, I grew up on a small farm out in the country. If I had descended a ladder out my bedroom window, where would I go? The barn? Certainly not into the woods. I knew that there were no wolves or bears in our part of the country, but did the wolves and bears know it?

If ignorant beasts were lurking in the dark, all I had to ward them off was a dart gun — with rubber suction tipped darts. When the bears and wolves fell over laughing, I could escape through the gales of growly guffaws.

With nowhere in particular to go if I slid out of the second-story window, I stayed in bed. I might have been a boring teenager, but I was a boring teen without fang marks gnawed into broken bones.

I rocked and wondered if I could hook a rope ladder off my balcony. Possibly, but I live alone. Why risk a broken neck on a fool stunt when I could just open the door and go down the stairs and go anywhere I want?

There was nowhere I wanted to go at… 1 a.m.? Way, way past my bedtime.

The kids came back. The girl gave one of the boys a quick hug. She scurried up the ladder and through her window. The boys waved and dashed.

The ladder was withdrawn through the window. Rapunzel had pulled her hair back inside the castle tower.

My exciting night over, I shuffled off to bed, wondering where I had misplaced my adventurous spirit. Then I remembered I had two doctor’s appointments coming up next week — far more chills and thrills and scary scopes and probes than I cared to navigate in my advanced years.

When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of ladders I could hook to the windows of the medical center to escape a flurry of white coats. Heights or not, it’s good to have an escape plan.

Have an adventure with Cole — as long as he gets to stay on the ground — at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.