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Queer as Folk start for a twelve year old boy
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PROLOGUE
I should not be here to write this. You see I should have kicked the bucket when I was seven. I attended a political bullshit rally with my Mom and Dad at an old small country school one day in the early fall. The bullshit rally was held on the schools baseball field. The field looked like all ball fields I had ever seen. A set of open bleachers on each side of home plate with a tall set of poles with cheap chicken wire fence attached to the poles for a backstop. As a boy of seven the political bullshit speeches going on was of no interest to me thus I just wandered around looking at things or trouble I could get into. It was a cold night and I had my very cool leather jacket on to keep warm. This jacket was part of what saved my life.
In my wandering around I walked over to the chicken wire fence backstop and reached up with both hands about head high to grab the wire. When my hands griped the fence I was hit with a powerful electric shock. I felt my hands close vice like and ever thing stopped for me. I was froze to the fence and could not release my grip, scream or run. The only thing I could do and did was piss in my jeans. This was the first time I had ever pissed in my jeans in public and I didn't know I had even done it until later in the car when I found myself wet to the bottoms of the legs of my jeans. Talk about having to change your shorts. Boy did I after that day. I'm just thankful that I was not full of shit or it would have been a lots smeller affair.
The pain was blinding. I latter learned that if the current through you body were at the right level (15 to 20 Milliampere, See Note #1) it could immobilize your muscles stopping you from releasing your grip. Lady luck was with me for sure that evening as a young man a few paces from me saw what was happening and stepped in by grabbing the back of my jacket and picking me up off the ground.
As my sneakers left the ground the current stopped and I let go of the wire and screamed at the top of my lungs. The young man swung me away from the fence and set me on my feet, which gave way as I hit the ground and rolled into a ball crying like a baby. By this time my Dad was by my side picking me up and carrying my piss-dripping butt to the car. After he set me in the front seat and checked me to be sure I was going to be OK. Dad went to the group of people that was standing near the backstop to see what had happened. He found that some jerk from the school had tided the fence to one of the lighting circuits to kept smart ass kids like me from hanging on to the fence and pulling down the cheap chicken wire. It also turned out that the young man that picked me up off the wire knew the fence was hot. He had lived close to the school for sometime. He assured my Dad that the he would get the jerk that put the circuit up, to remove it next day after he saw what had happened to me.
This kind of electrifying a fence was not uncommon in the days when I was a kid. People just did not understand how dangerous this sort of thing was. Some of the idiot farmers in my area did find out the hard way. One a few years later tied the 110VAC hot wire through a 25watt light bulb to his cow pasture fence. A few days later he found his favorite dog dead next to the fence. The next day he found a cow dead next to the fence. He took the circuit down and spent the money for a proper type fence charger that was safe around people and animals. The safe fence charger pulses the voltage charge. The off time between the pulses allows the person or animal to let go of the fence and not be frozen to the fence and die from slow electrocution like I almost did.
I never did get the name of the young man that lifted me off the fence and saved my young life that day so long ago. It would have been nice to say thanks to him. My Dad did tell me later that he did thank the young man for lifting my ass out of trouble that day. I learned later just how luckily he was also. If he had touched my body the electric current could have hit him also, but he grabbed the back of my leather jacket which safeguard him from the electric current as dry leather is a fair insulator to electricity. I hated the day I out grew that cool leather jacket and had to pass it to my younger brother, piss stains and all.
CHAPTER ONE
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