Working with a live wire is similar to being a superhero. As Colossus tells Deadpool, “Four or five moments—that’s all it takes to be a hero,” or becoming a tinder-ash figure standing with a wire in your hand.
Electricity flows around and through us ever charging our psyches and firing our synapses. However, a 120-volt jolt of sudden electricity will toss you across the room. In the corner, you whimper and think about your near brush with death.
As a child, I shoved the bare wire ends of a 12-volt lamp into a 120-volt outlet. The wires fit into the holes, so why not?
Aside from the pop of the bulb, the smell of an electrical arc splitting oxygen atoms into ozone, and the rapid flight across the room, I learned alternating and direct current are very different.
This was moment four of at least five other moments of learning and results near death. I am surprised I lived to be 54.
© 2018, Michael Shawn Sommermeyer. All rights reserved.
