Great Balls of Fire 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This is a true story that deserves an honorable mention. One of my co-workers (the dimmest bulb of the bunch to be sure), took a week off work last November. When I asked the manager where he was he told me that he had an accident at home and he had a burn bad enough to go to the hospital.
The following week he shows up limping slightly and having trouble sitting down. After some severe interrogation we finally got the story out of him. It was so outlandish that it has to be the truth.
r. Dim (that's what we'll call him), lives in a trailer home and he gets his water pumped in from a well. Well overnight the temperature did a crash dive and froze all the water pipes under his house. Mr. Dim knew what to do. He crawled under the house and started heating up the pipes with a propane torch.
Now I know you think you know what happened next but he didn't set his house on fire. Instead he ran out of propane. Most people would drive down to the hardware store to buy more, but not our Mr. Dim.
He remembers that he has a couple of propane bottles for his camp stove and decides to use those instead. The thread on the camp bottle is not the same as the thread on the torch bottle however. "No problem." Mr. Dim says and he forces the torch head onto the camp bottle.
r. Dim crawls back under his house and goes back to thawing out his pipes. The gas was leaking out of the threads however, and building up quite a bit under his house.
Now try to imagine Mr. Dim on his knees, under his house, applying a torch to his water pipes, when he hears a pop and sees a fireball in front of his face as the build up gas ignites and lights his house on fire. Thinking quickly (but not intelligently), Mr. Dim drops the torch and tries to pat out the fire. Surprisingly, he manages to put out the fire with his hands but he realizes, too late, that the torch, which was leaking, has also ignited and it was spewing flames in all directions, including his pants because he dropped it between his legs.
At this point Mr. Dim realizes two things: one; his legs are on fire, and two; he has a flaming bomb between them. For some reason he picks up the torch/bomb, and crawls out from under his house with it and throws it into a snow bank. He jumps into another snow bank to put out his burning clothes.
End result: Second and third degree burns from his knees to his navel, and first and second degree burns to his hands and face. The house is still intact and (he told us later), the torch head still works when you screw on the right bottle. Waste not, want not, after all.
This is a true story
Submitted on 06/12/2003
Submitted by:
Anonymous
Reference:
Personal Story, Nov,. 10, 2000
Copyright © 2002 DarwinAwards.com
|
