Close Encounters Of The Gigawatt Kind

Do you pronounce "gigawatt" as "jiga" or "giga"? I always thought that Doc Brown in Back To The Future was wrong to say "jigawatt", but more recently I've been told that he was right and we computer people with our "gigabytes" with the hard "g" are saying it all wrong. Dictionaries I've checked seem to agree about the preferred pronunciation being the soft "g".

What brings this up? Well, My wife called a short time ago. "Just checking to see if the phones here work yet," she said. "We were struck by lightning."

"Who was struck by lightning?" I asked, in as calm a voice as I think I was capable of -- considering that my head was approximately 3 millimeters away from hitting the ceiling.

"The building," she answered.

OK, nobody was hurt. No fire. No hole in the roof. Just FLASH/BOOM! and out go the lights. Followed no doubt by a bit of minor panic, given that the building in question is a summer camp infirmary.

Yow! Brings back the memory of my own closest encounter with lightning. It was on golf course in New Jersey, and I teed off on the third hole on a partly cloudy but otherwise seemingly fine day for 18 holes. By the time I hit my second shot, huge dark clouds were forming up ahead, and by the time I sank my putt raindrops were coming down. But I went on to the fourth tee... which just happened to be surrounded by tall trees.

Gimme a break! I was fifteen years old!

And not too bright, apparently.

Before I could hit my drive on #4, the lightning started pouring down. Not in the distance, mind you. It was less than a few hundred yards away. I saw a bolt hit the pond on #2. I saw another hit the trees on #3, where I had just been playing. It did finally occur to me that being surrounded by tall trees on the #4 tee was probably not the best situation to be in, but there was no shelter nearby. So, I took off down the middle of the fairway, toward the clubhouse.

Once again, I ask you to give me a break. The lightning did, so you can too. You see, although I was not bright enough to (a) take off my metal golf spikes, or (b) leave my metal golf clubs behind, I was at least bright enough to stick to the middle of the fairway... and the lightning was kind enough to merely hit a tree 20 yards to my left as I sprinted the 600 or so yards down the fourth hole and across to the first and into the clubhouse.

Not that I knew how close it was when it happened, though. I didn't see it. I felt it, and I sure heard it! But it was as if I had tunnel vision. It was only when the next fellow, who was running about 200 yards behind me (shoeless, and clubless, having started his sprint from #6 a minute or two before I had the sense to get moving) came into the clubhouse and said "Do you know how lucky you are?" that I learned how close it was. After the storm, he walked with me back to show me the tree that had been hit-- although I think I could have found it myself considering that the particular tree was now really just half a tree.

I've had lots of electronic equipment knocked out by lightning, too, despite having surge supressors on the power lines. Several modems and answering machines, to be specific. But that's another story, for another day.