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2011 Slush Pile

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Emergency Paint-Job

2011 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

I have been a piano technician for fifteen of my nearly thirty-one years. Of course, we all have to start somewhere. When I was sixteen, I worked with a technician named Russ. In the incident I will describe, he never injured himself, and was only aware afterwards how close he had come to death, so while a Darwin isn't in the works here, I feel an Honorable Mention should definitely be considered. Russ, and his partner, Ali were refinishing a piano in the workshop I worked at, on the fourth floor of the International Arts Complex at Washington and Fifteenth Street in St. Louis. They left a glass jar of mahogany stain on the sill of an open window. When Russ reached for it, it fell to the third floor and shattered on the lintel, the wind catching the stain and speckling the front of the building purple. First Russ and Ali broke into the third floor and cleaned the sill, even as a security guard ignored their precense. They then returned to the front floor and Russ decided to tie a rope around his waist and dangle upside down from the fourth floor window, in the middle of the night with a can of white paint and a roller brush and paint the facing of the building, with Ali holding the rope. Was Russ afraid of death? No! The catering company on the first floor, Windows On Washington, was holding an event and the news media was covering it! His biggest fear was that someone would look up! He survived the ordeal, and went downstairs. With the event in full swing, he and Ali used acid to burn the stain off the windows, the party goers, media and staff either oblivious to the proceedure, or ignoring them. Once they acid treated the sidewalk, the purple stain turned red. Russ said it looked as if someone had been shotgunned at the entrance to the building. He said that the possibility of death didn't occur to him until after he was safely inside. His paint job didn't get all the purple off the building.

Submitted on 06/18/2011

Submitted by: Anonymous
Reference: Personal Account

Copyright © 2011 DarwinAwards.com

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Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Honorable Mention
Hung upside down from a rope tied to his waist? All this just to clean up an obviously accidental spill? Yeah, he certainly is worthy of an HM in my opinion. Thanks for the story!

Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Oh. My. Goodness.... Thanks for the story!

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