Nearly impaled 4 min read

This is a true story.

When I was in high school I was part of a stage crew for a school play which involved a jazz dance scene with 5 girls. One of the props was a spiral staircase which extended down through the stage floor and was secured to the floor beneath the stage to prevent it from twisting around. The upper part of the staircase was simply held in place to prevent it from moving side to side. During the dance sequences, the girls would walk or run up the staircase and/or swing off the staircase either one, several, or all the girls at the same time depending on the dance.

During one of the rehearsals, I decided to loosen the staircase under the stage, lift it up and slip under it, placing the metal support pole squarely on my stomach so that I could feel the weight of the girls as they went up the stairs. I wasn’t able to see very much of what was happening on stage since my view was limited to only a crack or two in the floor. The staircase itself was probably about 75-100 lbs. I knew from the music when to expect the first girl to climb the stairs so I waited in anticipation. The girls were quite thin, no more than 120lbs each so I figured I could handle 5 girls at once with no problem. The music began and the first girl jumped onto the stairs and I felt the pressure immediately and a slight twist in the stairs as her momentum caused the stairs to turn grinding the skin. Soon after, the second and third girls jumped on and I remember the pressure was much more than I bargained for. There were 3 girls on me, more than 300 lbs plus the staircase itself. I began to panic at the thought of two more girls getting on the stairs, and i wouldn’t dare yell to anyone for fear of embarrassment. Being a rehearsal, it made matters worse because they kept stopping the music to make adjustments or corrections in the dance routine. I remember I couldn’t breathe. I mean I was really getting crushed under the stage and the worse was yet to come, which it did. The 4th girl jumped on the stage and the girls were dancing and twisting on the staircase with me under them. The bouncing was killing me. I was about to yell when the last girl got on the stairs right at the end of the routine and I felt like the metal support post had gone through me and touched the floor. The music was so loud that no one could have heard me even if I was able to yell. You simply can’t talk when your stomach is compressed like that. I couldn’t catch a breath at all and the dance seemed to go on forever with all the girls jumping and bouncing. I remember thinking what a mistake it was to do this. The pressure was killing me, nearly 600 lbs of girls plus 100 lbs for the staircase all concentrated on a 4″ hollow round support column on my stomach. I had to be turning red and then blue from lack of oxygen. When the music stopped, the girls just stayed there waiting for further instructions from the director. The director came on stage and talked briefly with the girls and told them to set up for a second dance. As they came down the stairs the bounce was the worse but as they got off the stairs the release of pressure was such a relief. After the last girl got off, I knew I had only minutes to slide out before the next sequence. I was terribly weak from it all but I managed to lift it and slip out. I quickly bolted the stairs back to the floor and just sat there for several minutes before even trying to move. I had rolled my shirt up and placed the support beam on my bare stomach and there was an enormous round indentation just above my belly button about 4″ diameter. But my insides were hurting a whole lot, I felt sick, wanted to vomit, and my chest was heaving as I was still trying to get my breath. I would have bet anything that an organ had burst inside me since the pain was so bad. I finally crawled out from under the stage and sat in the audience and watched these cute girls dance on stage, the same ones that nearly impaled me under their combined weight and would have never known it. After about 2 weeks, the desire to repeat this was there again, I still get a rise out of thinking about it. I’m 48 years old now and i relive that scene every day. I LOVED IT. By the way, this was a Catholic HS and back then, all the girls were dressed in skirts and flat black shoes and knee highs. I would give anything to go back in time to that day.