When I wished I was bionic (and why I love my pancreas)

I was a big fan of the Bionic man tv series when I was a kid. I had the Steve Austin toy doll with the red jumpsuit, the Bigfoot, and a caveman guy called"The Intruder" who was kinda neat. I was even a member of the fan club! Got a signed poster, a few newsletters, all that! My Steve Austin guy came with removable bionic arms. You could swap in other arms for whatever the suituation called for. One arm had a scuba mask inside it, another arm had a gun, etc. They had this great idea to use rolled flesh-colored rubber on the arm so it would roll up and down like a foreskin (I'm not joking!) to reveal the tools beneath.
One day (I forget how old I was, Season 1 I guess, - someone can figure that out, I was born in 1969) I took a bobby-pin and tied it to a piece of thread and attached the free end of it to a carved out cavity in my running shoe. This was my attempt at fashioning a bionic recharging device. I guess I saw Steve plugged into a wall socket that week on the show.
So, being the stupid kid I sometimes was, I headed up to the bathroom on the 2nd floor and calmly jammed the widened prongs of the bobby-pin into the two open slots of the electrical wall socket. There were blue sparks! Good thing I had tied it to the bobby-pin because I was able to pull it out before the burn marks became "too" noticeable. Still, there was a bit if browning there that went unexplained for decades(grin). Feeling fully recharged I went downstairs, told no one, and never played with electricity again until many years later.

The whole reason I was reminded of this childhood episode was because one of the guys in my French class, who is diabetic, did a presentation on type 1 diabetes (his type) and he has this sorta electronic pancreas on his hip with a cord that runs straight into his body somehow. It feeds him insulin all day. If he eats something with carbs, he types it in and it gives him a burst of insulin. He has to wear this thing 24 hours a day for the rest of his life. Pretty serious stuff!

I love my panchreas....