1987: My unattended 3 year old brother decided he wanted a shave and a haircut. He got up on the bathroom counter, filled up the sink and sat in the water. He cut his hair with scissors and turned on my dad’s corded electric shaver. Then he decided he wanted to cut the cord…..sparks flew and the power surged. We found my brother dazed on the floor, with shorn hair and a pair of blackened scissors in his hand. My family still has those scissors :)

2002: My father, an audiovisual engineer, was working on a very large, old console tv. Despite his years of working on cathode ray tubes, this particular one gave him a shock so bad that it singed his eyelashes and sparks flew off his tongue. He had a bad chemical burn on his tongue, which affected his ability to eat for weeks. In the ER, the doctor said his heart rhythms were all over the place, and he shouldn’t have survived the near-electrocution, and God had kept him on the earth for a reason. (Interestingly enough, the doctors said the same thing when he survived a nearly fatal rollover crash last year http://davidewatson.blogspot.com )