The Hamster's Wheel

Just a flow of my thoughts. A humble attempt to convey the theme that much of life is like a hamster's wheel, not all of our decisions are life-altering. Most of them don't really get us anywhere, but they're just fun.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Thumbs down for electricity

How many of you have ever been electricuted? I don't mean a little shock from an electric guitar or something little like that. But really got your ass lit up by electricity? I have, several times. First of all, I believe I have some kind of wierd electric current in my body because I ALWAYS get static shocks. Every time I touch metal, be it doorknobs or silverware or my keys, I never get away without a shock. I've even been struck "down there" when it comes in contact with my zipper, talk about being completely immobilized! And not just the little blips you're probably thinking of, I get static shocks that literally cause me to shout "AH!!" and I have to stop and recover for a few seconds. They're really loud for static shocks, and whenever people are around they always remark about how loud that shock was. Last week, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and when I touched the doorknob, I got such a bad shock that my roommate actually saw the light flash up in the dark room and asked, "What was that?" I was still kind of rattled but I said, "I got shocked again." And of course, he was amazed, "Dude! That lit up the whole room!"
But that's not the extent of my problem, I've been electricuted in the past. I lived on a livestock farm and we have all these electric fences to keep the animals in. Sometimes my dad would reroute the fences and not tell me. And they're just thin little wires that you don't really notice if you don't know they're there. So I would go walking along and walk right into the fence, and get shocked, once to the point where I vomited. The worst was probably the time my cousin unplugged a street light. I don't know why he did, but I tried to plug it back in. The outlet was in the dark, so I had to hold the plug and poke around. The last thing I remember, I saw a flash of light, but my cousin said a huge spark erupted, I jumped up and then stumbled around for like ten steps, and then fell. I passed out and then woke up about a minute later. I had this wierd twitch thing going on that lasted the next hour or so and for some reason, I had the worst metallic taste in my mouth, like I had a mouthful of pennies. It made me spit and gag uncontrollably. So that was a pretty bad one. But on Tuesday, I got another big jolt. I was in my room, just took a shower, and tried to turn on my stereo, but my roommate had unplugged it to put in his phone charger. You're going to think I'm just an idiot and that I'm sticking my fingers into the outlet or something, but no, I assure you, I'm very careful about electricity. Louie the Lightning Bug taught me well, if you guys remember that old cartoon public service. I had to reach behind the drawers to unplug the charger, and when I went to plug in the stereo, I got such a shock and such a surge of pain that I lost my balance and stumbled back, knocking over a laundry hamper. As I was already pretty much on the floor, I sat down to recover and my nose started bleeding really bad. It was wierd, I've never had a nosebleed before. So as you can see, I have had more than my fair share of close calls with this stuff. I've never met another person where electricity is a major recurring problem in their life. Does anyone else have this trouble?

2 Comments:

At 5:30 AM, Blogger KR said...

Wow, I am just really sorry that you get shocked all the time. I hate the static shocks in winter enough, but to get a nosebleed? Sheesh, that really had to suck.

I used to have a little neon yellow eraser with Louie the Lightning Bug on it. It was my favorite eraser growing up; I'm happy other people remember him, too.

Take care, KR

 
At 11:08 AM, Blogger Donna said...

Not being familiar with old Louie, I googled him. [hint]What a great opportunity for getting in a link! [/hint]

 

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