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As an Occupational Therapy major, one of our classes was titled Activities and we focused on different activities you could use in therapy, what goals they might achieve and what the contraindications were for the activity. Part of this involved doing demonstration speeches and answering all of the above questions. I found a cool pattern on how to make a lamp out of popsicle sticks and did my speech on that. It was a 5 minute speech so I practiced a lot in my apartment, putting this lamp together over and over to get it so I could do it under 5 minutes.
It's speech day and I tossed all the parts into my backpack and headed for class. As I'm assembling this lamp in class I realize that the little cardboard tube that covers the electrical wires by the switch is missing. Oh well, I think, it's just decorative, I'll skip it. So, I plug the lamp in and go to turn it on and ZAP, I get a pretty good zap in my fingers and jump back about a foot, hitting the chalkboard behind me. Everyone in the class looks horrified and I just calmly unplug the lamp and finish my speech, making a joke that you need to make sure you have all the parts or you can get an electrical shock. During the rest of this speech, my arm is tingling and the muscles are really hurting. I sit down and start crying and my prof comes over with a dynanometer (tests muscle strength) and we find that my right arm is at about 40% strength compared to my left arm. I push my sleeve up because my shoulder is hurting and you could see an exit point for the electrical current! She sent me straight to ER where they had to do an EKG to make sure my heart wasn't affected by the charge.
It wasn't funny at the time, but I was definitely subjected to a lot of comments like "Dee's speeches are electrifying", afterward! They also practiced muscle strengthing techniques on that arm.. it remained weak for several weeks!
Oh yeah, I got an A+ for it.. the prof couldn't believe I kept my composure and finished the speech before breaking down.
What a trip!
Dee
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