When I was about eight years old I was playing with a string of
Christmas lights. I plugged it in and it appeared to work just
fine. I did notice that the end of the cord had a plug on it
(where you would plug in another string of lights) and this was
strange to me at the time. My understanding of Christmas lights
at the time was that all of the lights were hooked in series so
there should be no breaks in the circuit "anywhere". (Not
realizing that these were modern lights that all were 120v and
were hooked in parallel.)

 Well I proceeded to go into totally clueless mode and cut the
connector off the end of this cord and strip the wires so that
I could connect them together. So that the lights would be even
brighter! (Or so I thought... or something..) Doing all this while
the power was still on! Next thing I know I see these sparks
and the lights go off. At that point I was scared stiff because
I couldn't see anything and I was in my hide-out under the stairs
of our house and the only way out was to slide past all of these
wires that I had just stripped. I learned how to reset circuit
breakers that day... after I changed my pants.... ;)


 I remember I was visiting my granddad's place one time and I
was watching as he was doing house repairs. This is when I saw
him unscrew a light bulb and put two fingers into the socket.
I was about 10 at that time and after my own previous near disaster
experiences I thought he had totally "lost his marbles." I
later mentioned this to my dad and he said, "Oh... He's been
doing that for years! Don't let that surprise you." Hmmmm...
I'm genetically tied to them??.... Hmmm....


 I figure the following is probably an interesting story so
I thought I'd share it. Mainly because it's so unusual that
you probably couldn't get away with it in many jobs.
 In the early 60's my dad was working for the University of Iowa
in the US (under Dr. Van Allen, the radiation belt discoverer.)
At the time he was project manager over one of the early Injun(?)
satellites that was being put in space for measurements.
 Anyway, his job was to wire up all of the different out-sourced
modules of this satellite and make the thing work, ultimately.
Rather than to draw up a pile of wiring diagrams he requested
a section (unused I would assume) of the University to be blocked
off and he unrolled a ~100 foot long, 3 foot wide roll of paper
and proceeded to draw the whole wiring diagram for the module
interconnections on one large sheet of paper.
 When he got done he rolled up the paper and then handed this
off to the guys that were actually responsible for wiring the
thing and he said he got some strange facial expressions in
return. (Go figure!)


 He mentioned to me another story that occurred to him in one of
his very early part-time jobs that I figure is the best story
he ever told me so it's hard not to share it.

 During part-time work as a park assistant, part of his job was
to help out tourists, etc. Well he got this call that a truck
load of tourists were stuck in some mud and needed help getting
out. My dad was using a jeep at the time so he figured he'd
see what he could do. When he got there he hooked up a chain
and found that even though he had 4-wheel drive his tires were
spinning, as well, trying to help them out of the mud. Pretty
soon he was in up to his axles and couldn't get out himself.

 Since that was proving useless he started walking back to get
more help when a bus was passing by. He flagged down the bus
and asked if he could help in the cause. The guy agreed and
he drove to where the other two vehicles were stuck. Dad had
a winch on the front of the jeep that had a cord that wasn't
long enough to connect to any trees but was long enough to
connect to the rear bumper of the bus as it stayed on dry
ground. So the bus started pulling the jeep which was pulling
the stuck truck. Pretty soon the chains started getting very
tight but the truck still was still unwilling to budge. About
this time the jeep started rising up in the air, suspended
above ground, due to the the tension of the chains. At this
point he had a "real" problem because the jeep was top heavy
and slowly started turning upside down. The bus driver looks
back and notices that the jeep is completely upside down so
he lets of the gas and shuts down the bus. This of course has
the effect of setting the jeep on the ground in it's inverted
position. Sometime during this whole timeline my dad decides
it's time to bail out of the jeep so he ends up watching
some of this on  the sidelines.

 Now no one had a clue WHAT to do next... Before long the bus
driver mentions that he needs to leave because he is getting
behind schedule. So they unhook the chains to the bus and the
bus driver drives away. At this point you have an upside down
jeep with a tight chain that appears to be attempting to pull
a truck.

 I asked my dad about it, "What did your boss say??" He said
he didn't know, he quit his job then and there on the spot.
I still keep trying to picture the expression on his boss'
face when he saw this whole scene. I know what I probably
would have said, "What in the h@|| ?!?"

 Jeff