Brush with death...

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Adz you were lucky old bean. And you now have something in common with me, except mine was a closer call. You definitely weren't hit, my good man. You would have had burnt armpits and a burnt arse-crack from the surface moisture being superheated.

Here's my close call: I was working a night shift in Johannesburg back in the late nineties and a bad storm was putting on a show. The rain was so hard that I decided to take the car from the hospital residence and drive round the block and park in the underground staff parking. The theory was that I could only get wet while getting to the car, and maybe a little bit while reaching out of the car window to tap my electronic pass on the gate reader at the parking.
All was good, I got in the car and drove round. I got to the underground parking entrance and wound down my window and reached out with my card.
And that's when the car got whacked. It was the same deal: more of a loud pop than any kind of Hollywood sound effect. Everything went white, the whole lot, and I froze. I wondered if my chips were being cashed in. Had there been any amount of urine or faeces available for evacuation, then the interior of that Ford Sapphire would have got a new decor  :lol:

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"...As for surface moisture, what surface moisture, the drought has made the ground as dry..."
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I mean sweat, on you.
There have been many cases where workers in the fields have been hit and the sweat has conducted most of the bolt. These guys have had bad skin burns.

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Hehe, I think that should be Adz's new avatar, since he was almost turned into a macro Adz by the finger of Zeus  :-P

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...or is it Thor?

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Speaking of brown undies and a brush with death, here is a good one:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eZPOfwVhokI

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I've been thinking about these brushes with death and my conclusion may surprise many of you.
I believe these brushes with death are a good thing (provided no permanent injury is sustained). I have had a few of these and I can only tell you that it makes you appreciate life and makes you feel alive after you realise your chips were almost cashed in. I thought I would list my memorable encounters:

1) Almost drowned in rough seas in Port Alfred. I was swimming alone late one afternoon and got caught by an undercurrent. It was like being in a washing machine. I just couldn't surface. Only by going further down and crawling along the sand could I escape the undertow. By the time I surfaced I was breathing in water. That's my closest brush with death. If I hadn't gone down, there would have been no X-ray today. That was when I was 16.

2) I failed to see a black mamba snake while peering into a bush in Tzaneen. I thought it was a plastic bag rustling in the wind. When I finally resolved the source of the noise (like when you finally 'see' the shape in those random stereodot images) I realised that the fukka was not more than 15cm away from my face and he was tasting the air, his eyes fixed on me. My heart skipped a beat while I made myself scarce. That was when I was 14 or 15.

3) Lightning hit my car (as mentioned above). In my 20s.

4) Several incidents involving armed individuals.

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Well, I learned from that day onwards that going down can save you a whole lot of trouble  :-P

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@ Adz

I must say, now that I think back on it, when I was 12 I took a nice jolt off some Christmas tree lights I was testing (the quick way, by leaving them switched on  ;-) )

I didn't like being made to fall over, but once I got up and realised I was okay I felt pretty good the rest of the day.
I wonder if that is the mechanism for 'shock therapy?'