Electrical Playtime

I thought I'd spice things up round this blog, post some old "stuff" for your enjoyment!

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Electrical Playtime - 10/8/01
© Kent Fletcher

Talk about the silly and sometimes foolish things we do early in life, and some real oddities come up. Like the time my brother, Jack, decided to "test the waters" for electrical current.

I guess this was a year or two prior to my enlisting in the Navy, maybe 1968 or 1969. I was at home, probably watching the television, maybe on a weekend. Jack called and asked me to come over to his house, he wanted to show me something.

When I arrived, he called me into his living room. He was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, with some strange apparatus next to him. Upon closer inspection I also noticed that he had taken the female end off a short extension cord and had stripped the insulation back several inches. This part of the cord was submerged in a plastic tub of water. The male end was plugged into this apparatus he had, which turned out to be a variable transformer, which was in turn plugged into the wall.

Jack: Sit down here, I want to try something.

Kent: Okay.

Jack: Put your hands in the water.

Kent: I may be your little brother, but I'm not stupid. Why should I put my hands in a tub of water along with a stripped extension cord?

Jack: I want to see how much electricity you can take.

Kent: Yeah, right.

Jack: I've got the cord plugged into this transformer, which you see is in the "off" position. You can watch me while I ease the power up, and I promise to go slowly. If the electricity starts to hurt you, just tell me, and I'll back it off.

Kent: Yeah, right. Oh, well, why not?

So I stuck my hands in the tub, and Jack slowly started turning up the power. Strangely, I didn't really feel anything until the voltage was up to about 25 or 30 volts. Then a tingling sensation started up my arms, maybe to the elbows. This was starting to get interesting. Jack left the power at that volume for a moment, asked me how I felt, and I told him to go on up with it. Around 50 or 60 volts the muscles in my shoulders started reacting. Not violently, more like what an ultrasound wand is supposed to do, make the muscles tense and then relax, but at a much faster speed. Jack again stopped the increase for a few moments, asking how I felt.

Kent: Wow, this feels good, really good. The tingles are light, and I can feel the pulsing going across my shoulders. But it still doesn't hurt. Ease the voltage on up a little.

Jack took it on up to around 70 volts, and the tingles were starting to get a tad uncomfortable, but not really painful. I told him to take it up real slow. At 80 volts or so, the hurt started, really intense in the shoulder muscles, and also in my arms. But the fingers were okay, best as I remember. I told him to take it back down to 70 or 75 volts. The pain went away, and I was in a blissful state. Really, I'm not kidding. This feeling I was having was better than anything I had ever done, yes, including that. I remained in this state for 5 minutes or so, and now Jack was wanting to try it.

So he shut off the transformer, I removed my hands from the tub, he rolled up his sleeves, stuck his hands in the tub, and I turned the transformer on. At around 5 or 10 volts, he was already hurting, so obviously he couldn't take any more volts.

Where is this all leading, you may ask? While I was stationed at the Pentagon, for something to do I signed on with a cleaning crew to work in secured spaces after hours. The pay was good, the work was easy and quick, and it was something to do when I was off work.

One night we were on the fifth deck working in a highly secured space. As I was swabbing the deck, I noticed two small telephone-type wires hanging from the ceiling. I knew that Wells Fargo was installing an alarm system, and it was obvious that these two wires were going to be connected to something at a later date. I put down my swab and walked over to the wires. I grabbed one in each hand and could feel just a tad of electricity flowing through them. I spit on my hands and grabbed them again, and was able to feel just a little bit more, maybe up to my wrists. Wanting more of a kick, I walked over to the deep sink and soaked my arms up past my elbows in water. I walked back over to the wires and grabbed them one more time. I could feel pulses up to my elbows, but that was about it.

About this time my supervisor, a second-class Intelligence Specialist, walked over and in so many words asked me what I was doing. I explained to him about the wires and my ability to take low-voltage electricity. He said I was nuts, or crazy, or something like that. I told him that I couldn't really feel anything lethal, that there was just a gentle tingling up to around my elbows. I told him he should try it, that the tingles were just wonderful. Not wanting to let a third-class Yeoman outdo him, he said, okay, he'd try it.

No sooner had he grabbed the wires after splashing water on his hands, he was knocked all the way across an eight-foot passageway, landing squarely on his keister. Needless to say, the rants of a severely upset petty officer were raining down around my head, calling me crazy, an idiot, a lot of other things. I wonder if the reason was because the wire carried too much for him, plus the fact that I was wearing sneakers at the time, and he had on leather-soled shoes?

Our antics were the talk of the watch when I went back to work a couple of days later. Just goes to show you that the Yeoman rate is one of two basic rates in the U.S. Navy, that all the others are spinoffs. Hah!

© Kent Fletcher
Arlington, Texas
YN1, USNR Retired

"Destiny is not a matter of chance.
Destiny is a matter of choice."