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I've got a couple. They all involve other people nearly killing, or seriously wounding me.
First. When I was in my late teens and early twenties I worked as an electrician. I had spent all of one summer wiring and setting up a bank, literally from the concrete up. It was sort of my baby. Anyway, it was our final day on the job, and my final day before I was leaving for college, and someone noticed we had forgot to run a section of wire for one office. It was the leg that would go back to the breaker box. The only problem was that the city had checked out our wiring that day and conencted the building to the power lines. Well, not a big deal. One of us would have to feed the fishtape(conductive mind you) down the conduit into the breaker box and someone else would have to catch it and keep it from touching the buzzbars or lugs that held in the might power of high voltage lines. I got to be the guy who fed the tape.
So, I went and started feeding the fishtape. A man named Bobby, who was a real bright fellow, was one the other side holding cardboard next to the opening where my fish tape would come out to guide it away from any danger. I would ten feet in the air on a ladder waiting to hear him tap the pipe and let me know it was far enough. So I push and push, eventually I realize I should have been there at that point. So I walk back around to the breaker room and...No Bobby. The cardboard is still there but my fish tape has gone behind it. I walk outside and see Bobby talking to one of the building owners. Bobby is not a foreman, or even more than an electrician's hand. Bobby has fucked up.
"Bobby."
"Yeah?"
"Why weren't you watching the conduit?"
"You kept feeding!?"
"Yes..."
"I yelled that I was leaving!"
"...I didn't hear you..."
He pushes past me and stomps off towards the breaker room. I follow and watch him pull off the cardboard. The metal, conductive, fishtape is literally one centimeter away from 480 volts of Mbwuto frying juiciness. Bobby says, I shit you not.
"The good lord was riding with you today!"
I looked at him. My watch. Him. Then I realized oh hey, I almost died. I'm going home. And that was that.
Bobby was later fired.
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- people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent.
George Orwell
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