I love interesting bits of trivia and my brain is a warehouse full of nearly useless facts. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, but I know how many vertebra are in a giraffe’s neck. The people who love me have been known to feed this obsession. This year for Christmas my darling daughter gave me a 365 day calendar filled with odd and amusing tidbits. For example, do you know what force causes one’s body to be thrown when accidentally electrocuted? It is the body’s own muscles. Apparently, the electrical impulse causes all muscles to contract violently.

Who knew?

I mentioned this to my husband over the weekend. He said, “That would make sense. I saw a man get electrocuted once and it looked like he launched himself backwards.”

“You saw someone electrocuted?” In nearly 23 years of marriage, how had this never come up in conversation?

“Yeah. It was in Ireland and he was another carpenter on a job I was on. He was hammering over his head and his hammer hit a live wire.” At my shocked expression he added, “It wasn’t supposed to be live. The electrician said all of the power was off.”

“That is terrible! Did it kill him?” A logical assumption on my part. After all, the European voltage is 220 which packs quite a wallop.

“No, it didn’t kill him but he had a twitch for the rest of the day.”

“You mean he just kept working?”

“Well not right away. It took two people holding him to keep him from killing the electrician first.”

By the way, in case you were wondering, a giraffe has 7 neck vertebra, the same as a human.