There were several interesting incidents in my childhood that could be pointed to as pinnacle or 'shaping' events, but probably none can top the time I electrocuted myself.
It started off with me at the age of six, alone in my room attempting to make a really excellent toy. I had come by the knowledge of how to make an origami craft that resembled the open mouth of a bird. When you pressed on a certain area the mouth would close only to spring back open when you released. I decided to make a sort of doll/puppet out of this creation. First I made a large one for the head and then I made two smaller ones that would be its hands. I used a couple of empty toilet paper rolls for its arms and legs and an empty paper towel roll for its body. I wanted the mouth and hands to open and close so I rigged rubber bands in such a way that when they were pulled they closed the hands and mouth. I strung the rubber bands from the mouth and hands through the body and arms, eventually ending together at the end of the paper towel roll.
This however was not enough for me because I wanted the puppet to work on its own, so I decided to animate it. I figured if I could attach the puppet to electricity this would cause a pull on the rubber bands which would close and open the mouth. Now I knew that electricity needed metal to travel so I first connected my slinky to the rubber band. The end of the slinky would not do because I knew that a plug had to have two parts to fit into the electrical outlet. I found I could link the slinky through the handle part of a metal pair of scissors.
There was just one problem, the tips of the scissors would not fit into the electrical outlet. I tried a couple of times, but they just wouldn't fit. I then found a bobby pin. Although I could not attach it permanently to the scissors I had a great idea. I would put the bobby pin into the outlet and then I could hang the scissors through the bobby pin and viola, my toy would have electricity.
(Now I must mention here that I was not a completely stupid child. I did however watch a whole lot of TV and just the day before I had watched an episode of "Land of the Giants" which was a show about a group of people who had been shipwrecked on a planet where they were tiny doll sized people and the regular humans were giant sized. They had all sorts of encounters with the giants and in the episode I watched they had managed to escape their captors by using a paper clip in an electrical socket which knocked out the lights, allowing them to escape. The tiny doll sized people did not have any kind of protection from the paper clip. They just grabbed one end, shoved it into the socket and viola - the lights went out and no one got hurt. They made it look very simple and straight forward. It was a show about space travel - these were advanced humans, albeit tiny, and if anyone should know anything about the proper safety required around electricity, it would be them... right?)
So, I bend the ends of the bobby pin back so it forms a vee shape and I stick it into the socket.
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| What it looks like when you are unconscious |
The next thing I know I am lying in my mothers arms and she is asking me what I have done. She keeps holding up the scissors and saying, "Did you put these in the socket?!?" I am very muddled and groggy, but I try to answer her. "No," I mumble, "It was the..." Here I pause because I am no longer holding the bobby pin. I look at my fingers and... no bobby pin. My two fingers are black from my finger tips to my second knuckle. I look at the electrical outlet and there is a black mark rising up from it. My mother keeps questioning me. I can think of what the bobby pin looks like, but I can't say the word. I can't figure out where it went. I can't figure out why she is holding me in her lap and why there is this ringing in my ears.
I eventually hear the rest of the story from my sister a few days later. She and my mother were in the living room when they heard a loud pop and saw a blinding flash of light from my room. My sister said in awe, "Mom jumped over the back of the couch and ran into your room." My mother found me lying on the floor, knocked out from the electrical charge and as she lifted me into her lap I started to come to. Apparently the bobby pin was vaporized by the charge and ended up as a black stain on my fingers and the wall above the electrical outlet.
Oddly enough I was not taken to the emergency room or even our family doctor. I think my mother might have called our doctor, but maybe not. After all, I came to and although my fingers were black they weren't even burned. She did keep me next to her the rest of the day and when my father came home she showed him what I had done. I had not even gone back into my room at that point but he called me in. "You broke it," he said, pointing to the electrical outlet and the black mark on the wall. I was afraid to come near it, which was a problem since this outlet was right at the doorway to my room.
My parents hardly said anything to me about it after that. I did not get punished for it, but they did not paint over the black mark either. They just left it there and that was enough to torment me for many months to come. I had an extreme fear of that socket and I would try to run past it to get into my room for fear it would reach out and zap me. From my bed, although I could not see the electrical socket itself I could see the top of the black mark on the wall and this bothered me greatly. It took a long time before I stopped noticing it. I never really forgot about the incident though. Sometimes when I would touch my index finger and thumb together I would get the echo of that electrical charge that had surged through my body and it would make me shiver.
Some people might be critical of the way my parents handled this event. They didn't lecture me and once they found out how I had electrocuted myself, they didn't talk to me about it again. Also, neither of my parents ever said anything like "Don't stick things in the electrical socket" to me after this event. I guess they figured if I hadn't learned my lesson from this there was no saving me. So far, their method has worked
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