Electricity Can Be Frightening
The history of my hating electricity happened when I was a grade school-aged kid maybe ten or eleven. I came home from school for lunch with my younger brother, Joe, who would have been 8-9 years old.
As I opened the drapes against the window at the far side of our long and narrow kitchen, my brother checked for food our mom might have left in the oven or fridge at the other end of the long kitchen.
He held the metal oven door to peek in at the same time he grabbed the metal refrigerator door handle directly across the narrow portion of the kitchen, and he could not let go.
I heard odd sounds and turned to see him panicking in fear in a way that was so extreme it was nearly comical. I thought he was acting.
He was shaking, writhing, and at first, I thought he was pretending and playing a joke on me until I got closer and saw the fear in his bugged-out eyes and heard him make sounds I have never heard anyone make.
My brother was violently vibrating and I will never forget the sound of that snapping and popping and buzzing.
He was stuck clenching two appliances, one of which had an electrical short that faultily ran an electrical current through the handle.
I tried to grab his hand off the refrigerator which was a vertical handle, but the current went through me too and I could not release his grip on the handle.
So in a moment of urgent necessity, an intuitive inclination, I locked my hands together with interlaced fingers and raised my tightly clasped hands above my head in an opposite move to a volleyball hit, to karate chop his arm at his elbow with my arms locked straight throwing all my might downward – which freed my brother from the middle of an electrical arc.
He fell back and stumbled to the floor hitting and falling against our hallway wall a few feet away completely dazed, disoriented, and weak.
Perhaps, had I not been there, my brother not being able to free himself – might have died.
Electricity scares me.
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