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Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 75 of the Listening Time Podcast.
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Okay, in today's episode, we're going to talk about accidents.
We're going to talk about different accidents where me or other people could possibly get hurt.
I'm going to tell some stories, a few stories about accidents that I've had, and I'll talk a little bit about accidents in general.
So I hope this episode will be interesting for you all.
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All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay so let me talk about some of the accidents that I've had.
I've never had any serious accidents so I don't have any really crazy stories about really big accidents in the past.
So Don't worry, I haven't had anything that serious.
But I've had a few small accidents before where I got a little bit hurt and I'm going to tell you three different stories about different times that I got hurt, where I had some type of accident.
But first, I should say that I've never had a car accident, so none of these will involve a car.
But the first one I want to talk about was falling off a dirt bike.
If you don't know what a dirt bike is, it's kind of like a motorcycle.
It works the same way, but dirt bikes are often taken off-road.
In English, when we say that you go off-road, This means that you don't go on the street, you go on the dirt or in nature or something like that.
So dirt bikes are often used off-road and I've only tried to ride dirt bikes this one time.
This was the one experience that I had.
And I fell off twice, actually.
So I just want to talk a little bit about that.
So it was nothing serious, obviously.
I'm still alive and my body is perfectly fine.
But it was definitely an experience that I didn't really like.
This was the first time that I'd ever tried some type of vehicle like this.
I had never ridden a motorcycle or an electric scooter or anything like that before.
So my friend was teaching me how to do this first just in the street before we went off road.
And so he was showing me how to turn the bike on and how to go forward, how to accelerate and so, and all of that kind of stuff.
And at that time, we were about 13 years old, if I'm not mistaken.
And I was a little bit scared.
I had never done anything like this before.
And I remember that even when I was trying to do this on the street, to just learn and see how to do it, I was already really nervous and I wasn't getting the hang of it right away.
In English, when we say that you get the hang of something, we're saying that you get accustomed to something.
It starts to become more comfortable for you.
So I wasn't getting the hang of it very fast, but it didn't matter.
My friend said, it's okay, you'll get it.
And we went to this off-roading place where we had a lot of space to ride these dirt bikes on the dirt, kind of in a nature area.
And there were these railroad tracks there.
Railroad tracks are the tracks that trains go on.
So a train needs to drive on these railroad tracks.
That's what we call them.
So there were some railroad tracks where we were riding.
And there were a couple times that I went over these tracks with the dirt bike and everything was okay.
But I tried to go over these tracks again, maybe the third time or the fourth time, I don't remember.
And I fell off the dirt bike.
I wasn't able to get over the tracks and I fell on my knees on the ground.
And this really hurt.
I had never fallen off of something like that before.
I think I've fallen off my bike a couple times, but it wasn't that bad.
This was the first time where I actually felt like it hurt when I fell off something like this.
And so I remember falling off and I was just stunned for a minute.
In English, when we say that you're stunned, this means that you're very surprised.
You're shocked.
It's like you don't know what to do.
So I was stunned about what had just happened and it hurt and I stood up And I realized that my whole body was shaking, especially my knees.
And I said, this is really weird.
Why am I shaking so much?
And my friend told me, oh, that's normal.
If you fall off a dirt bike, especially when you don't have a lot of experience and it's your first time, it's very normal to be shaking a little bit after you fall off.
So I said, all right.
And then I got back on the dirt bike.
I rode some more, and I think I was trying to go over the same railroad tracks.
I can't remember exactly if that's what it was or if I was riding over something else, but again I fell off the dirt bike and And it hurt again.
It was painful.
And this time I started shaking even more.
And I almost couldn't even get back on the dirt bike and start again because of how much I was shaking.
And this was the first and only time that I have ever experienced something like that, where I
I fall down and then suddenly my body is shaking so much and I can't calm it down.
So that was a really weird experience.
And my friend said, okay, I think you're done for today.
So I didn't get back on the dirt bike. and it took a long time for my knees to stop shaking.
It was kind of like my body was in trauma.
It was shocked after this accident.
Like I said, it was not a serious accident.
There was nothing that bad that happened, but my body was kind of traumatized by what had happened.
And finally, after a certain amount of time, My body calmed down and I was okay, but I really disliked this experience.
I did not have fun riding this dirt bike because of how hard it was for me.
I couldn't get the hang of it and I fell twice.
And so I never rode a dirt bike ever again in my life.
To this day I haven't tried this sport again and I don't know if I ever will, to be honest.
But yeah, so that's the first time I had an accident.
This isn't a very big accident, of course, but I got hurt a little bit.
Next, I want to talk about being electrocuted.
So this has happened a number of times.
So one of the times that I got electrocuted was when I was barbecuing some type of meat outside.
This is when I lived at my parents' house.
And in English, when we say that you barbecue something, we're saying that you grill it.
You put it on the grill and you cook it.
So, for example, you can barbecue chicken or beef or whatever.
You just put it on the grill and you cook it like that.
We can say that you're barbecuing that meat.
So I was barbecuing chicken, I think.
I was grilling chicken outside.
And it was actually raining, but it was okay because there was this thing, this covering over my head.
And so I wasn't getting wet and the barbecue wasn't getting wet.
But it was dark outside already.
It was already nighttime.
And I needed more light because I couldn't see very well.
And so I tried to turn on this light switch that we had that was outside near the barbecue.
And as I grabbed the switch and turned it to turn on the light, I immediately realized that something was wrong, because I felt this jolt of energy in my hand, in my arm, all the way to my chest, I think.
It was a big jolt of energy.
And I realized that I was being electrocuted because this light switch was wet from the rain.
And I was turning it on and this conducted the electricity.
And then I got shocked.
I got electrocuted and this hurt.
It was painful.
I really felt it.
This was the first time in my life that I had ever felt a powerful shock like that.
And it wasn't pleasant at all.
So after that I kind of got a little bit traumatized because when I would go to turn that same light switch on afterwards I would always be a little bit nervous because I remembered what had happened to me before.
And so that was a pretty painful shock.
That was definitely the worst one that I've ever experienced.
However, I also got shocked multiple times when I lived in my old apartment here in Mexico because we had a shower head.
In English, a shower head is the part of the shower where the water comes out.
We had a showerhead that was electric.
So I don't know why people choose to use electric showerheads, but that's what we had.
It was already there.
And so we used it.
And this was horrible, because here in Mexico everything is built for shorter people, and I'm pretty tall.
So this means that when I take a shower in older apartments in Mexico or older houses, I almost always have to duck to avoid hitting my head against the shower head.
In english, when we use the verb duck, we're saying that you lower your head, you bend it down so that you don't hit it against something.
So i usually had to duck when i took showers in that apartment because the shower head was right at the height of my head.
But sometimes I would forget this and as I was showering I would raise my head up and it would hit against the shower head and I would feel this electric shock, because the shower head was electric.
And it would give me this shock.
Not too bad, but it was definitely uncomfortable, maybe a little painful.
And this happened many times when I was showering.
And sometimes I would also forget about the fact that this was an electric showerhead.
And I would grab the shower head to try to adjust it.
And it would also shock me.
So this was a terrible setup.
I really hated this shower.
And so I got shocked many times.
It wasn't as bad as the time that I was barbecuing.
That was definitely the worst.
But these shocks were also uncomfortable and a little bit painful as well.
I have one more story.
This is the time when I got burned, kind of.
I'll tell you what happened.
So again, I was barbecuing.
It's almost the same story as before.
I was barbecuing at my parents' house and I had turned on the gas.
So with these barbecues, you have to turn on the gas and then you have to ignite it.
In English, when we say that you ignite something, it means that you turn it on.
In this case, like you light the fire and then it turns the grill on.
So I don't know what happened, but I forgot that I had turned this gas on.
And then I went inside to go get the meat and I was preparing this meat.
I was marinating it.
In English, when we say that you marinate some meat, it means that you put it in some sauce to give it flavor.
Like you let it sit in that sauce for a while and then it gets the flavor of the sauce.
So I think I was marinating this chicken or something like that.
And I went back outside and I had completely forgotten that I had already turned the gas on and I never turned it off.
And then I had a lighter in my hand and I reached down into the grill to ignite the grill, to turn it on.
And as soon as I did that, the fire exploded up, this big flame of fire and it almost hit me on my skin.
But what it did is that it burned all of my arm hair because my arm was close to the grill, because I was trying to light it.
I was trying to turn it on.
And it burned all of my arm hair.
And it almost burned me, my skin.
Thankfully, it didn't.
But it was this big explosion of fire.
And it was a terrible experience.
I was so scared after that.
And I never wanted to use this grill ever again.
And even today i don't like lighting things like grills or ovens with a lighter, because i still remember that experience, i still think about that explosion of fire and it makes me very nervous, and so even today i get a little bit anxious when i have to light things manually like that, because I remember this experience of the fire exploding in my face almost.
So this was a bad experience, but I learned my lesson.
I always need to be mindful of the gas and if it's on or not.
In English, when we say that you're mindful of something, it just means you're careful, you are aware of something, you're conscious of it.
So I need to be mindful of this gas and whether it's on or not, and I need to be sure that I don't leave it on for a long time.
So lastly, I just want to mention car accidents in general.
I've never been in a car accident before.
I'm very thankful for that.
And I've been driving for many years, so I've been very fortunate.
And I think this is because I'm a defensive driver.
In English, when we say that you're a defensive driver, it's the opposite of being aggressive.
So I'm always trying to be very careful and make sure that I'm not doing things against the rules or rules being too aggressive, and this helps me avoid accidents because i don't put myself in dangerous situations and i think, in general, i'm a good driver.
I don't know anything about cars mechanically speaking, so i'm not a car guy, but i'm definitely a good driver.
I know how to drive well.
I really trust myself behind the wheel.
In English, when we say the phrase behind the wheel, we mean in the car.
So I've never had any accidents before, but I've seen many accidents here in Mexico, where I live, because so many people break the rules here and drive really aggressively.
And so because of that, there are tons of car accidents.
Even yesterday, I heard this big car accident right outside my apartment building.
And this is really common.
I've heard this noise many times of cars crashing right outside my apartment.
So this is unfortunately a very common situation in Mexico.
But I hope that I never have a car accident ever in my life.
I'm sure it'll happen at some point, but I'm hoping that I'm the most fortunate driver in the world and it never happens to me.
All right.
Why don't we stop there for today?
I hope this episode was interesting for you and I hope it was good practice for your listening.
Remember that if this podcast has become easy for you, then make sure to become a Listening Time family member and you'll receive my advanced podcast.
You'll get two new advanced episodes every month.
So click on the link in the episode description.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And if you like this podcast, please give it a five-star rating and share this podcast with your friends and family members who are learning English and who could benefit from this content.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
