What Happened When My Sister Got Struck My Lightening
68As told to me by Julia:
"It hurts! It knocked me out, so I don't really know what happened. I had some static electricity for a few hours. It changed my metabolism. I went from 145 pounds to 195 in a matter of two months, and I've been that way ever since."
Julia was working on a chicken farm when a storm blew up. She raced out to the barns to roll up the "curtains"--canvas tarps that adjust up and down to regulate the temperature in the chicken houses and to prevent rain from going into the houses and drowning the baby chicks. She was cranking the metal handle when lightening hit something metal on the barn and fed through to the crank, and through Julia.
"I woke up and Deborah and everybody was standing around me. I jumped up and went and finished rolling up the curtains on the chicken houses."
"It made my arm hurt for a while."
Julia said she really doesn't remember what happened, and that I should call our other sister, Deborah.
As told to me by Deborah:
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"She don't remember what happened. She don't even know who was there. I saw the whole thing happen out of the bathroom window."
Other names withheld to protect the not-so-innocent.
"We had been at the bar. We came into a really bad, bad storm on the way home. I went to the house to put down the windows, and Julia went to put down the windows in the chicken barn.
"You got to know how the chicken barn works. These were the big, like Purdue chicken farm houses. Metal. And it has a crank on the side that puts all the curtains down at the same time. It's like garage doors, sorta. Kinda.
"Well she runs her dumb ass out there in the pouring down rain, rain halfway up her calves, it was raining so hard. She gets into a big argument, cuz evidently the chickens can't get rained on cause they're dumb or something; they look up to see what it is, and the rain goes down their nose, and they drown. I don't know if that's true or not though.
"Anyway, she goes out there in the lightening storm to put the curtains down so the chickens won't die. At the same time I'm putting down the bathroom window and looking right at her when lightening struck the chicken house. And it knocked her on her ass, and the whole damn thing was a big flash of light. Just white light. You couldn't see anything. The whole farm was a big ball of white.
"And then she stood up and ran over to the other chicken barn and did the same thing! She was only out like a second. It knocked her on her ass, and then I couldn't see for a second, and then I could see again, and she was running to the next chicken barn, but the whole right side of her body wouldn't work. She was dragging her right leg and holding her right arm up at the same time like an ogre.
"I ran out the door and got in my Mazda RX7 and drove between the chicken barns and did a big donut and told her to get in the car before she got killed, that she just got struck by lightening. Then I did a rooster tail and sprayed everybody with mud. The mud went up to the top of the chicken barn. It spread everywhere. It was cool.
"But after that, and you know this, after that her whole body changed. Remember how petite and skinny Julia was? Within a year, her whole physique had changed."
I told Deborah that at least her and Julia had the weight-gain part of the story the same. I also told her I was probably going to have to clean up the curse words in this story.
She said, "If you get struck by lightening you're probably gonna say 'damn', too!"
I guess she's right. I'll leave this response as told to me by my sisters.
Copyright Dineane Whitaker 2008 - Please do not copy and paste this article, but feel free to post a link using this url: http://hubpages.com/_ndwcopyright/hub/What-Happened-When-My-Sister-Got-Struck-My-Lightening
CommentsLoading...
you don't have to admit you're the mother in public :-)
Oh my goodness! I didn't realize it could effect metabolism and actually change the physique of its victim. It is very interesting to know all of that! Great read! You've gained a fan and a Thumbs Up!
ProCW
To late. The cool thing about our family is we always have stuff the inspire our writing. Come on, Deborah. its your turn to tell a story. Give us a pig-picking how-to, or low country boil.
ProCW, I've never been able to find anything about weight gain being a result of lightning strikes, but in my sister's case, it sure was a mighty big coincidence! Thanks for joining my fan club :-)
And mama, I think I'm just going to keep interviewing Deborah. She definitely tells a good story!
Like momma said. There are plenty of stories to tell.
First person stories are always interesting, dineane, and yours is no exception. Lightning is nothing to play around with. You don't even have to get hit directly. A direct hit would probably be fatal. As a golfer, of sorts, I am very cautious when lightning is around. Swinging a metal club when there's lightning around is playing with fire.
Julia just used the excuse of being struck by lightning to eat more...;)
hey, good to see you here Stephanie! You can tell just as many tales about Julia as we can :-)
Although it messed up her metabolism I am certain and also glad she is alive and able to talk about it. I can feel not just the excitement of adrenaline but the humor as well. :)
I was struck by lightning over 11 years ago. It hit my whole family. In total 6 people were hit with one fatality. My brother had many burns all over his body, I had temporary paralysis and had many blisters in my head and on my fingers. My husband was temporarily paralyzed on one side up to his hip which is now needing replacement due to arthritis.
I too have had weight gain, but I actually eat less and healthier than ever before. I do think it changed my metabolism. It is extremely hard to lose weight since the strike.
Teresa, I'm really sorry to hear how badly your family was affected by the lightening strike. But thank you for commenting and confirming the apparent change in metabolism.
Being how you told this story I must say I am glad I am alive to hear all the comments. I do not remember much about it except I was trying to "save the chickens" and I DID so if a little weight gained made 7000 that crop I am happy for the owner because I never saw a penny of that money. ANYWAY LIFE STORIES ARE GREAT! now do a story about when I was on life support for 20 days and came home to resume life as it was on the 28th day.
I'll have to interview you about that sometime, Julia. Thank goodness there's a happy ending, but it's harder to find any humor in that story!
I grew up in a small southern community and have always been afraid of lighting. I now live in a big city and my fear of lighting continues. My fear is so bad that my friends sometimes make jokes about my fear.
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DonnaCSmith Level 1 Commenter 3 years ago
The things a mother has to endure.