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2002 Personal Accounts
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The Darwin Awards salutes the spirit portrayed in the following personal accounts, submitted by loyal (and sometimes reluctant) readers. |
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Anchor Man
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Mick was helping my father Ken move our family from a 4th-story flat to a house across the road. The two friends, healthy young policemen, discovered that 1960s appliances are extremely heavy. Luckily they were creative thinkers. Why not lower items off the landing using a rope?
Mick was 6'5" and weighed 19 stone (300 pounds) so he was the natural anchorman. He stood some distance from the landing with a rope tied around waist, while Ken stood at the edge of the landing and controlled the speed of the rope with his hands. The first item they lowered was a refrigerator. Both men braced their feet against the load, but despite their combined efforts, the refrigerator's speed of descent increased, and the rope began to burn Ken's hands. He finally had to release it. He turned to see Mick racing across the roof towards him--and the edge--at a precipitous speed, screaming profanities and tearing at the ventilation pipes as he tried to halt his mad dash. Did anyone think to measure the length of the rope? I doubt it, and yet it was miraculously longer than the height of the drop. Each time Ken tells the tale, he cries with laughter--meaning that the refrigerator's progress was arrested when it struck bottom, and Mick stopped a few feet short of a Darwin Award.
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