We all can think back about dumb
things we’ve done and the unfortunate and embarrassing consequences that resulted.
One of my previous stories illustrated that very thing in my own life; there is
probably no more fertile ground for doing dumb things then during our school
days when we were young and impetuous. I certainly have more than my share of
experiences, some of which I’ve described in numerous past missives. This
time, however, for a change this is about someone else, other than Tim or
myself who did something dumb which had scary and embarrassing results. Dan J., one of our classmates, was the
direct antithesis of Tim and me. He was a quiet, introverted type that rarely
spoke much and tended to fade into the background in a group. This was a particularly
good trait to have in class during the times when the teacher would call on
random students to answer oral “pop” quizzes from time to time. It’s a trait
that neither Tim nor I had and as a result, we were called on quite often because
we always stood out in a group due to our gregarious natures. If my fuzzy
memory serves me correctly, this incident took place when we were in the 8th
grade. I was “hanging around” the playground, certainly not playing on
the playground equipment, since being in the 8th grade, I was much
too “cool” to ever condescend to such a childish thing as playing! I looked
around and happened to see Dan J. standing under an electric pole on the edge
of the blacktop by the road. Just out of boredom, no doubt, he started to “monkey
around” with the guy wire attached to the electric pole that contained 2 big
transformers. They were filled with transformer oil and big and cylindrical
shaped. We’ve all seen these, and likely have 1 or 2 by our driveways too. Dan
started to hang on the guy wire cable, then started to repeatedly pull on it
which resulted in a erythematic swaying of the whole electric pole. After about
30 seconds or so of this, the transformer suddenly “blew up” from the bottom
with a deafening “KABOOOOM”!!!! It seemed to shake the entire ground! It blew
the whole bottom out of one of the transformers! Poor Dan just stood there
shocked and dumbfounded! Immediately the power went out in the entire school!
It was great!!!! I’ll never forget the sight of Dan standing there in a semi shock
state repeatingly looking up, then all around hoping no one noticed!!! It’s too
bad this wasn’t before lunch or in the winter because they would have surely
closed the school and sent us all home for the rest of the day! Oh, well, I
guess you can’t have good timing in life all the time…
