This may sound a little crazy, but when i was quite young i got "lit up" by some type of power line in my back yard, probably an old service drop. It was supposed to be dead, but it was alive and kickin' or else it would not have got me. Ever since then i always had a huge interest in electricity, and pretty much done all of my own minor electrical work, and helped do large jobs. i can also do my fair share of "rigging" when the time comes if need be.. Sometimes i even prefer to make my own extension cords if i have the stuff on hand. Now i'll admit ive been hit by 120VAC numerous times, for numerous reasons. Like, installing outlets live and touched ground/neutral by mistake while messing with the hot wire,touching freyed wires on lights while holding the metal fixture, and even been got by a hot neutral wire, trying to re-attach the wires on my uncles pool table light.. that was obviously wired backwards. Not matter how many times i get "lit up" i keep going back to it and just find it interesting still.. Could it be bc ive been shocked so many times or am i just a natural at electricity? and no i do not enjoy being shocked.. bc that crap hurts.. even though i'm used to it.

No i don't find getting shocked interesting.I do everything i can to prevent it happening but it still happens.

Nick

I've gotten buzzed so many times that I expect it to happen. I've shared my stories before, to the dismay of the members here.
Does the 'physical' aspect draw me in? Only when I'm close to being electrocuted and I can't let go.

Electricity is attractive to me because it's a primordial form of energy that, ironically, we took the longest to discover, relative to all the other forms of energy we used in the past. (radioactivity is an exception) There's really no comparison. Electricity, in strictest terms, is renewable energy... THE renewable energy. All other expenditures of energy rely on a process; a specific input, reaction, and output. A tree grows, dies and then can be burned for energy. Nuclear reactors use a radioactive substance, which is used up over time. Electricity cannot be used up; electrons don't go through a life cycle and they aren't consumed. It's AMAZING!

More interested in insulation.

The word massichist, wrong spelling, comes to mind.
Me, it's a different insanity. I just have had my fair share of as we call it kick backs. And, boy, do they hurt!
Bill Cahill

Well if getting shocked can Spark an interest in electricity.
That would explain why one of my childhood friends Got hit by a car and became A Top 20 NASCAR driver.
Or why my Cousin Wilbur got kicked in the head by a cow and started a successful chain of Hamburger Joints.
There's always something to spark or Kickstart an Interest In life

It must have started for me before I could remember. According to my mother I was 5 yrs old. The TV wouldn't turn on one evening. I was walking around the house holding a couple of the tubes. There was an incident I do remember when I was still quite young. It seems I bent a paperclip so that I could plug it in to an outlet. It left a big black burn mark on the wall and scared the hell out of me. It was respect after that.

Nads Watkins wrote:

That was just getting sweet revenge!

I got a jab from a 400V power supply I built when I was 16 or so.
Been very careful ever since!
Nelson

I never thought about it being responsible for my interest in old radios, but as a kid I often played with electrical toys and often experimented with electricity, and got my fair share of "jolts."

My earliest memory of the power of electricity was sticking my tongue in a lamp socket when my father and I were in the attic. I was knocked on my can and my father was bent over he was laughing so hard. You would think that this would have given me a fear of electricity....... Nope!

One of my most spectacular screw-ups involved an electrical experiment using my Marx toy train transformer for a power supply. I turned the transformer on and the wall socket it was plugged into BLEW UP and blew all the upstairs fuses and knocked me across the room. In the darkness I could see that the wall socket was on fire, which I quickly put out.

Another was (after learning about parallel circuits in grade school) hooking up several toy train accessories and some home-made lights in parallel to one set of jacks on my abused toy train transformer. I again turned the transformer on and all the wires I had in parallel circuits promptly glowed red hot and burned lines in my parents new rug. Oh yes, I didn't mention that I was not supposed to set up my trains on the new rug in the living room.

And one more.... the time I put up an antenna (non protected) in the tree outside my upstairs bedroom window that was eventually hit by lightning, the results being (again) all the upstairs fuses being blown and the additional smoking of several other things that were plugged in wall sockets upstairs.

I used to live next door to the founder of the Andrew Corp. (Antennas with the lightning bolt symbol). He was in his late 80s at the time.

One day, he saw me staring at the fuse panel and offered to help. So---to test for a live circuit: Thumb and forefinger to neutral bus and the hot lead. (Who needs meters?)

The farthest I will go is testing a 9-v battery by touching to my tongue......

I do not mind getting zapped when I'm doing something where I would expect it---eg replacing switch and plugs on live circuits. What really got my attention on day was drilling a hole through the siding on my house. Against all odds, I hit a piece of romex dead on. got a pretty good jolt before the breaker popped.

No, I am not excited about being electrocuted. When I was a kid we had a few cows and thus had electric fences all around the property. I would occasionally forget the wires were live, grab hold of one and -Zap! My Grandmother also had ancient Christmas lights with crappy insulation. I got a good jolt plugging those in one year. Probably the dumbest thing I did was when at a friend's house, he thought it'd be fun to solder a remote controlled car motor to a lamp cord and see what would happen.

The first renters in my parent's rental house decided to tear out the old wood paneling in the living room and were happy to find an electric outlet, but the outlet was " funny looking", so they replaced it with the "right one" not knowing that it was actually a 220 volt outlet. Their vacuum cleaner ran for about 2 seconds before frying itself and in their words, emitted blue flames.

Soldering a remote-control car motor to a lamp cord..... I wish I had thought of that!

I think the first shock i got was 5 or so i stuck my fingers in a light bulb socket to see if it was live or not.It was.I've also been shocked by christmas lights, electric fences (i've always lived in town so i didn't know about those), and as odd as this is guitars.

The 2 worst ones were 400 volts from one hand to the other because i was using test leads with badly cracked insulation on one occasion and the other was from a microwave oven transformer when i was bored and using it to destroy smaller solid state circuts.

Nick

When I was ~5, I was at another kid's house. I wanted to play with a toy. I apparently was hold the metal prongs, when I plugged it in, and got my first taste of 120VAC.

At Disneyland, at the arcade on Mainstreet, they have (had ?) a whole section of antique arcade games, including a "manly" device, that you hold onto, and the voltage progressively goes higher. You see how far you can tolerate it. Every time we went to Disneyland, as a kid, I had to go to that arcade, and that gadget. Of course admission back then wasn't some princely sum !

Bought a model-T ignition coil, from J.C. Whitney, when I was about 15. Actually, it was just another item, tacked onto one of my father's regular orders. Managed to get nailed, when one hand was holding the HV terminal, and the other, the common. It was like I got kicked in the chest.

In more recent years, I get "bit", on a fairly routine basis. I got interested in antique electronics ~2003. Hadn't played with tubes, since high school. The electronics teacher was an old Korean War vet, so he taught us active circuits using tubes. This was the 70's. But he was "Mr Safety", and taught us the "hand behind back method", for probing a hot circuit. So when I get nailed, its just my right hand that gets it. Plus I only do this with voltages no higher than 500V.

I had a very similar experience when i was about 8 years old. I was collecting different color scraps of wire at a construction site, when I found a large bundle sticking out of a pipe coming out of the ground. When I grabbed the bundle, Wham. Ever since I was interested in electronics ??? No OHSA then this was 1957.
Dan

Ive been lit up by coil packs on a running vehicle, and by a coil on a running lawn mower, they hurt but not nearly compared to 120VAC.. i wont mess with anything higher then that. Although 1 was plugging in a 220VAC extension cord for my friends dad's welder, and he didnt have the outlet for it, so he always removed the cover off of the stove plug to use the welder. I removed the cover and tried to plug it in, but couldnt get the plug seated in correctly, and next thing i know !POP! followed by a huge bright blue flash, so bright i was seeing spots for 10 minutes. Needless to say after that i went and flipped off the breaker, and made him plug it in.. and after that i wouldnt plug it in anymore. I think after being hit by a service drop was the worst i ever been shocked.. and now days i take extreme caution around service drops,but still dont mind electrical.

Receiving shocks repeatedly does not make someone a natural.
It proves they are a slow learner

Guess that makes Ben Franklin a slow learner ?

I guess that makes sense Dale..

I almost destroyed a Philco 84B because somehow the chassis was "hot" and when I plugged it in I touched the chassis, got a nasty little static shock, and nearly flung it off the bench.