A Shocking Thanksgiving

November 22,1979 is the Thanksgiving I'll never forget. My family was spending the week in a hotel at Willow Beach on Lake Mojave. Stupid names, because Willow Beach is a small hotel, campground, boat ramp and bait shop, there is no beach and Lake Mojave is part of the Colorado River. How the Hell can you have a lake in the middle of a river?

I was a freshman in high school and had just turned fourteen. My family at the time consisted of my Mom, my stepfather Ed and my stepbrother Bill, who was the same age as me. Ed decided we should spend the Week of Thanksgiving water-skiing, so off we went to Willow Beach.

Ed's brother Carl and his family also came along for the trip. Carl had two incredibly hot daughters around my age. Bill, and I had many a discussion about how it would be OK if I made out with one of them because we weren't really related. The Lords of teen lust blessed Bill and I even more that week, Carl's two hot daughters each brought a hot friend.

Consequently I became an extraordinary water-skier that week. The only way my hormone filled teen body could keep from getting a boner around four girls in bikinis was to get into the freezing cold river. Every time the boat stopped I was in the water ready to ski. The rest of the time I sat at the back of the boat wearing my mirrored sunglasses with a life vest on my lap.

I didn't think I had a great shot at making out with one of the hot girls, I wasn't the best looking kid around, but I was on the football team. I sat on the bench for two games then broke my finger in practice and never played a down, but they still gave me a Letter! I had a good sense of humor, I knew a lot of dirty jokes and I had great hair. My hair feathered like a Tiger Beat cover model, like Parker Stevenson, as if the Fairy Queen of the seventies had drifted down from the clouds and blew perfect hair plus twenty on my head.

Thanksgiving day arrived. I was getting ready for the big night and had just stepped out of the shower. I put on my best jeans and favorite shirt. (Property of Saugus Football, 1979.) I gazed in the mirror thinking how good I was going to look after I feathered my hair. I plugged in the blow dryer and turned it on. Unfortunately for me I was standing in a puddle of water and there was a small crack in the cord of the blow dryer. When I turned the damn thing on the electricity raced through the cord, but instead of powering the blow dryer, it shot out the cracked cord and hit me on the right side of the stomach like a bolt of lightning. A bolt of lightning that lasted for six seconds. The arc of electricity that hit me must have been a foot long. The lights flickered, the outlet blew and I was thrown to the floor. I got up shaking. There was a hole the size of a silver dollar in my shirt with black smoke rising from it and my skin was bright red.

The night got worse from there. I had ruined my favorite shirt, my hair wouldn't feather without the blow dryer. Without my favorite shirt and perfect hair I had no confidence. The tremendous shock had also upset my stomach so I couldn't eat. I was afraid to tell my mother what happened and she got mad because I wasn't eating. Then she embarrassed me in front of everyone by sending me to bed. I didn't make out with any girls on that Thanksgiving.

What's even weirder about this story is that three months later hair started to grow on the spot where I was shocked and to this very day I have a hair patch on the right side of my stomach.

(Click on the image to see more hairy detail.)

The hair patch isn’t so bad. What really sucks, is now I like getting shocked. Carpet static is like foreplay, I always test 9-volt batteries with my tongue (even when they're new), and I secretly hope that someday I'll be struck by lightning. Worst of all though, is I just can’t eat on Thanksgiving without giving myself a good jolt of electricity first.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody, and don't panic if your lights start to flicker. It's just me getting ready for the big meal.