Shock and Ow

I got the shock of my life today in my library. No, literally. I got juiced by a DVD-player-and-extension-cord mishap.

Let me just start by saying that I'm an idiot. When setting up media equipment, which is almost always powered by electricity, one should not do it "by feel" because she is too lazy and/or busy to walk to the other side of the library to flip some lights.

For the past 3 days I have been the technology wench for a big conference our school district hosted to provide PD to all its teachers. It has been my experience that audio-visual equipment in schools operates under the following law of nature: the likelihood that a piece of technology will break or freeze up is directly proportional to the user's need for the item and inversely proportional to the amount of time the user has before his presentation. In other words, if the success of your 2 1/2 hour workshop depends solely on your ability to play sound through your laptop, and you've got 5 minutes to set up before you're on, you ain't getting sound. Your laptop knows it has you, and it will laugh silently at you while you sweat and swear and call for the technology wench. But neither you nor she will be able to get the sound to work until the last 5 minutes of your now-improvised session, just as people are filing out of the room, dropping off negative evaluations for your hard work, when it's too late. You really should just plan on that happening so you're not ruined and so that you don't take it all out on the technology wench.

Anyhoo, as I knew it would, something went desperately wrong with a piece of library equipment this morning, and the presenter started just unplugging crap, so I jumped in. The DVD player I've used for 4 years now with our library's big-screen presentation TV with no problem stopped sending out sound to the TV. The presenter really needed to kick off her session with a DVD clip, so I raced around, grabbing a new RCA cord and when that didn't work a whole new DVD player. I had turned the lights off for her on that side of the library so people could see the screen and her fabulous PowerPoint. All of our stuff for that TV is in an ancient wood cabinet with two small holes drilled in the back barely big enough to slip our cords through. So it was completely dark back there. I groped around, found my little 3-outlet extension cord I keep in the back of it, unplugged the old DVD player, and plugged the new one in. So I thought.

A quick glance showed me that the DVD player wasn't turning on. The presenter was getting short with me. She said she would have to go ahead and start but that she would still like to have the DVD working for her next session. Natch.

So I reached back in. I had plugged the DVD player in by feel, and I knew I may not have gotten in plugged in right. I knew this. And yet I didn't turn on the lights. Or unplug the extension cord from where it came out of the cavernous cabinet into the open. I just freakin' reached back there to see what was up.

When I had pushed the power cord into the extension cord, I had been successful in getting one prong in. The other prong had been left sticking out over the side of the narrow little cheap-ass extension cord. My ring finger managed to find the prong, and ZAP! I got juiced.

Let me stop for a minute to tell you what I do when I get startled. I yawp. I don't squeal. I don't let out a cute little "Ooh!" I don't even let out something so normal as a scream. I make a noise that comes not from my lungs, but from my gut. No, not even my gut. From my very soul. It's a sound that has greeted my husband many times; if he tries to come quietly back to bed but makes the door creak while I'm half-asleep, he gets it. If I come out of the shower and he's coming around the corner, he gets it. Hell, I've yawped at him just for turning over in bed while I'm having a bizarre nightmare that a serial killer has come into the bedroom, killed my husband, and taken his place in the bed (oh, I must blog about that one someday.) He tells me my startled yawp is one of the loudest and most ferocious noises found in nature, second only perhaps to the noise Kentucky Basketball fans made en masse the day Rick Pitino went to Louisville.

So of course I yawp when I get electrocuted. In a room filled with about 45 people. In the dark.

I threw out some kind of lame, "I just got a little juiced, but I'm fine", unplugged everything from the wall like an intelligent person, plugged the DVD player in the smart way, and got the sound to work. During which the goofy presenter didn't even offer any expression of sympathy or thanks. I could have collapsed down there and I'm pretty sure she would have made a snippy comment like, "Well, now I'll never be able to show my DVD," and gone on with her engrossing presentation.

Except for a sore and slightly swollen spot on the pad of my ring finger where I touched the live prong, I'm none the worse for wear. I worked out this afternoon and my heart seemed to have all its normal rhythms, so I reckon I'll live.

Though I think next time I help with a conference I'll ask for hazard pay.