Dealing With Dealing With Death – or – Why I Stopped Drinking Gatorade But Not Smoking Cigarettes

A few years back in the halcyon days of my depression I developed a fascination with death. Specifically my own (this is not to say I was suicidal, but rather comfortable and content at the time with my life in the toilet). Working with electricity, I got used to the idea of potential personal expiration every time I operated something, so thinking about death eventually evolved into a habit. It’s never bothered me, thinking about death. I accept it as part of my job, as part of my life. I welcome it in my own way. Thinking about death keeps me honest, stays my hand when I think about cutting corners. In my nine plus years on the job, almost every significant injury I’ve been witness to or heard of can be attributed to at least one of two things: 1) lack of communication, and 2) taking a short cut. There’s been a dozen or so substantial accidents in my time (some without injury, some requiring minor medical attention, two comas and one death), and almost every one is not only avoidable, but avoidable because someone was doing something stupid (read: lazy).

Despite my constant morbid thoughts I’m not afraid of the work. Instead I’ve developed over time and experience a healthy respect for what I do. Every time I operate a piece of equipment, every time I open a cubicle door, every time I walk into a substation even, I shift gears mentally. I become almost hyper-alert to everything going on, looking and listening for anything out of the ordinary. I’m not on edge, not nervous or skittish, just alert.

So take nine years of forty-plus hour work weeks filled with scores of blow ups, accidents, injuries and job-related urban legends, combine that with two hours of daily commute time to ponder it all, and it’s fairly easy even for me to see how I became preoccupied with death.

Which is fine as far as I’ve said. It’s become a familiar albeit not entirely comfortable facet of my life. Every so often though a mood strikes in which I’ll take the whole death thing one step further. It always happens at work too (no surprise there). During my shift I’ll have rather vivid and detailed…no so much fantasies since it’s not something I want to happen but more like imagined scenarios where I’ll picture myself in some horrible and oft times bizarre accident. These scenarios tend to revolve around whatever it is I’m doing at the time, from the mundane to the exotic.

The other day I was struck by one of these moods. Some of my imagined accidents included having my legs decapitated at the knees from a car failing to brake in time and pinning me up against the back of my work van while I was out innocuously setting up a traffic cone, taking a fireball to the head because the uninsulated 14,000 volt fuse disconnect I’d just operated failed during the process, getting crushed up against a cement wall by a large metal fridge-sized door which blew off a transformer (although this might not happen in my mind since there was a steel rung ladder in between myself and the wall and that might prevent me from making it all the way to said wall), and asphyxiating from a half-chewed slab of Nutty Bar wedged in my throat. This last one is of course pure paranoia due to my recently begun conversion to eating vegan, and since I felt guilty about the treat my brain conjured up said scenario.

Usually the mood lasts an entire shift, sometimes two before it passes. The thing is though that while the mood passes the images will sometimes transform into memory which I’ll then remember later on, so when I revisit a place my brain conjures up the corresponding bludgeoning. Not too long ago I was out walking in the yard at a Brighton station where I once pictured a hinge bolt snapping above me, causing the 115 kilovolt conductor it supported to crack my noggin good. Here though was a more unique death in that it raised an interesting question: what would I die from first? My brains getting bashed in or the sudden inrush of 115,000 volts into and through me? There’s always a chance the protective relays would recognize a fault on the line in time to de-energize the conductor before it relocated my brain to my stomach, in which case I’d be spared that fleeting moment of consciousness where I realized I was on fire before losing the ability to think as my cranial matter sped past my eye sockets which were now empty as my eyeballs shot out and sat on the trap rock ten feet away from me. Maybe by some strange phenomenon my eyeballs would be facing me and I’d catch a glimpse of myself – on fire or not – before all went dark.

I know, I know. I’m more likely to die from the Nutty Bar.

You can say I’m paranoid, and you may be right, but I don’t think that I am. The difference to me is based on the fact that I’ve never let these imagined roastings, beatings, brainings, freak sinkholes, manhole collapses, lightning strikes, decapitations, et. al. keep me from doing my job. In fact, I give credit to my imagination for making me more safety-conscious. Dealing with electricity primarily in bulk is something Joe or Jane C. has no concept of, as an electrical grid is not designed to work the same way, say, a breaker panel or house feed would. When I first took the job, I had the most rudimentary understanding of electricity. An outlet, for example, has two wires, one is energized, the other isn’t. And even that little tidbit was completely useless. It had no bearing at all as to how a power grid works. Point is though, I started the job blissfully ignorant of all the numerous hazards and their implications. So if I saw someone taking a short cut and there were no immediate negative consequences, I accepted that as standard practice. The people who trained me had years, even decades of experience, and they survived unscathed, so in my mind I should be able to as well. As time went on though, soft hot intestinal trash happened, and people got hurt, not only hurt but in ways that were both unbelievably stupid and completely avoidable. Over time I changed my tune and realized there was no chance worth taking. This philosophical change has now been cited as the germ of my current overactive imagination, which despite its seemingly negative implications does nothing more than reinforce the need for safety and precaution.

All right, if I’m being truly honest here, there was one time where in retrospect I did act a little paranoid. Even I’m willing to admit that.

During the summer months I always carried a fruit punch flavored sport drink with me (any other flavor makes me gag). One day I was studying the bottle’s label and after reading about how said drink was an excellent way to replenish electrolytes, I began to reason thusly: if by drinking and replenishing I’m adding more electrolytes to my body, then I’m increasing my own state of electrical conductivity and making myself more prone to get electrocuted. So I stopped drinking Gatorade. And felt weird about it. To combat this unorthodox belief, I did some research on the subject and realized that my internal chemical and biological state had a microscopic impact on my whether or not I’d get zapped. All I really had to do in the first place was abide by the safety guidelines and maintain the minimum approach distances from exposed conductors (as listed in Section 7 of the Incident Prevention Manual (previously known as the Safety Manual (which was then changed to the Accident Prevention Manual until it was determined through extensive and exhaustive corporate marketing research and brainstorming that using ‘Accident Prevention’ had negative connotations and thus the name change. Accidents, they reasoned, cannot be prevented. Incidents can. This is also further proof that simply by changing the nomenclature we are able to make things less dangerous (also proving the invaluable nature of corporate marketing and lawyers)))). I’ve stayed off the sport drinks altogether, but more so for dietary and health reasons.

And as for the smoking, I know all the arguments against it, and until I reach the point when I’m ready to quit, I accept the consequences of my actions. But at least with smoking I have a fair notion as to how it’s all going to go down. Unless I’m having a butt while climbing down into an enclosed subsurface location and there’s a gas leak coming in through one of the cable ducts. Then that might be a surprise.

I don’t of course have any foreknowledge as to exactly when I’m going to bite the big one, but one thing’s for sure: the next time I’m underground in the North End and the tide’s coming in filling up the vault I’m working in, if on the off chance the sidewalk hatch closes on me and locks me underground and at that moment a parade walks past on the sidewalk preventing both me from getting the hatch open and anyone from hearing my cries for help, you can be damn sure when they pull my soggy carcass out they’ll not only find my lungs full of salt water but my mouth full of partially chewed Nutty Bars.

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