I was helping a friend move his stuff yesterday, and got electrocuted. His house has an old elevator, one with a double door made of metal mesh you can see through. A cupboard was two centimeters too big for the inner door to close, and the elevator wouldn’t move. I didn’t want to carry it so I got a knife and tried to see if I could prod it into the groove of the inner door to make it think the door was closed, whe in fact it was open. Such a trick has worked before.

I found the switch, pushed it down with the knife and pushed the button in the elevator control panel that would make it go down. There was a loud noise, sparks were flying, a little smoke, and an arc of electricity flying between my thumb and my index finger. I was fortunate the elevator button was plastic; otherwise the current would have gone through my heart.

There is a lesson in this story: In the future, I shall use implements made of wood.