Chainsaw Slingshot 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
The following story was related to me during a session of injury one-upsmanship. I had just finished telling the story of how I had found a way to break my arm at a video arcade (definitely not Darwin material and I DON'T want to talk about it) when a casual acquaintance of mine related the following story, which happened to her husband. The story was absolutely believable. The hardest part to believe was, given the sheer number of ways that her husband could have experienced instantaneous death by reason of stupidity, that he managed to get out of it with as few injuries as he did.
It had stormed hard the night before, and the wind had blown furiously. The morning light revealed a large tree limb that had succumbed to the blowing gales, falling across the electrical lines in the back of the house. The weight of the limb had caused the lines to bend alarmingly downward.
Joe, our hero, is a considerate, do-it-yourself type. Rather then troubling the trained and professional workers of the utility company, who were undoubtedly overworked after such a storm, Joe decided that he could get the limb off the wires himself.
Being a man's man, he was not in the least intimidated by the dangerous sounding combination of live electrical wires, fallen branches, aluminum step ladders, and chainsaws. Enlisting the aid of a buddy, he balanced the ladder carefully against the stretched wires, climbed up, fired up the saw, and began cutting.
Joe was very careful in his foolishness, as he was aware that cutting so near a wire with a chainsaw might be a little risky. After a lot of precision cutting, Joe managed to almost free the limb without cutting the wire. With one more cut, the entire limb would fall to the ground in one piece, releasing the wire to go back where it belonged.
Now, any child who watches Road Runner cartoons can tell you what happens when telegraph wires get stretched and released. Our hero apparently decided to follow in the great Willie E. Coyote’s inspiring footsteps.
The final cut was made, the limb was released, and to Joe's utter mystification, the wire chose to go back to where it belonged immediately, rather than politely waiting until Joe returned to the ground.
The force of the wire springing back into place lifted the ladder several feet into the air, carrying with it its brave but surprised chainsaw-wielding occupant. The ladder fell away, and Joe fell against the wire, knocking the still running chainsaw into his face, missing his cardioid artery by mere inches.
In the brief but exciting flight that followed, the bleeding Joe managed throw the chainsaw away from himself, preventing further injury from that source. No amount of arm flapping could postpone the inevitable encounter with the ground, however, and he met it shortly thereafter.
Fortunately, Darwinian laws are not absolute, and our helpful Samaritan managed to survive with a broken leg and (miraculously) only some stitches to his face. Hopefully, he also came away with the knowledge that, sometimes, what goes down must come up, and that there really are some things that should be left to train professionals, even if you do own a ladder and a chainsaw. Submitted on 10/09/2002
Submitted by:
bookworm0109@mindspring.com
Reference:
Personal Account. Mich. 2001
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