My cousin Rick and I were pretty normal, curious preteen boys back in the early 80s. We were always testing theories and trying out science without the aid of social media or the internet for inspiration. We mixed foods that sounded like they shouldn’t go together just to see how bad they’d taste. We mixed random cleaners and chemicals to see how bad they’d smell (how that didn’t end in us passing out from a toxic gas was shear luck). We would drop things from tall heights to see if they’d break. We’d drop ourselves from tall heights to see if we’d break. Whatever seemed like a good idea at the time.
One particularly cold winter day we were at Rick’s house and noticed the audible “snap” of static discharge when we touched a doorknob. This caused us to immediately lay all of our other plans of deviance to the side to start exploring the wonderful world of electricity. We started scrubbing our feet up and down the hallway and touching any metal that we could find, usually resulting in a visible spark and a very satisfying crackle as the built up charge arced from our bodies to the nearest conductive surface. Further experimentation led us to try different sock and shoe combinations and we soon figured out that we could get a much larger zap from wearing oversize wool socks from out of the skiing bin.
We continued our electrical assault on the house until we wondered if we could join ourselves and combine energy for an even larger spark.
Some digging through the old junk bin rewarded us with about a 1 meter long piece of used speaker wire with the ends already bared. We pulled the double row of insulated wire apart and twisted two of the ends together to finish the construction of our self-dubbed “megazapper!”
Rick gripped the middle, twisted section while I held one bare end of the wire and we started shuffling down the hallway. As we approached the end of the hallway Rick lifted the wire, holding the free bare end of the wire out slowly towards the doorknob.
“KAZZAP!!”
The sparks was so big we both jumped and then immediately fell to the floor in gales of laughter, not unlike a stereotypical mad scientist and his assistant would do if their monster suddenly rose to life on the table.
“Let’s do a bigger one! Shuffle longer!” Rick instructed and off we went down the hall again.
The 80’s brown shag carpet was really getting a workout from our feet conjuring up whatever static we could muster to pass along to the world, each time with the same awe inducing snap and blue spark leaping from the wire.
What was to be our largest spark ever was underway as we had created a path that went down the hall, circled through the bedroom and then proceeded back down the hall to circle the living room. This one was gonna be awesome.
As we turned the corner into the living room I noticed that my Uncle, Rick’s dad, had come in and was going to light a fire in the fireplace. He was crouched down in front of the mantle neatly stacking paper and kindling inside of the fireplace. As we approached, Rick noticed that the back of my uncles jeans were gaping open. Plumber-butt was on full display, although he was not a plumber by trade. The world will never know what possessed Rick to do what happened next but as we approached, both of us still firmly gripping the MEGAZAPPER, Rick proceeded to lower the bare business end of the wire down the opening of the back of his dad’s pants. I did not have time to react to his plan and could only look on in horror before that now familiar electrical “SNAP” sound filled the room.
What happened next was so fast it is kind of a blur, although it felt like slow motion. My uncle jumped up with a horrible bellowing sound and I am not sure, but his feet may have left the ground. This might be a good time to mention that my uncle was a multilevel black-belt karate instructor. My cousin Rick dropped the wire from his hand and bolted out of the room. I was too scared to move. My uncle then turned around to find me standing in the middle of the room, oversized wool socks pulled up to my knees, holding a wire that went from my hands directly down the back of his pants where it remained. I’m pretty sure we both had our lives flash before our eyes. The standoff was broken by the absolute screaming howls of laughter coming from Rick who was now “hiding” in the other room. Thankfully my uncle must have been a good sport about it since we lived past that moment to tell the tale, but I do recall that we stayed out of the adults way the rest of the day. Probably the best behaved we had ever been in fact.
I do still wonder if there was any smoke.
Sadly, my cousin Rick passed in a tragic accident in 2012. This story and memory is dedicated to him. RIP dinglefritz 💔
The Involved Husband 