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This happened when I was in college. I think about it often to this day.
My senior year I lived off campus in a four-story building that had a central staircase that wrapped around in a large spiral with about a six-foot gap in the center. On the roof above the center of the staircase was a domed skylight.
The roof of the building was supposed to be off-limits and was not set up for social gatherings (no railings on the edges, for one thing). But seeing as how the complex consisted of nothing but college kids, we went up there often to drink and hang out during warmer months. Plus, my apartment being on the fourth floor, it was a quick climb up the wooden fire escape stairs to get there (yes, we would have all been dead quickly if that place caught on fire).
One fateful summer eve as many of us imbibed an unhealthy amount of booze, some kind soul suggested someone walk across the skylight dome. I enthusiastically volunteered, because my top hobby is enthusiastically volunteering for the stupidest things possible. As I began my confident traverse, my heart sank when I set foot on the dome. This was, of course, not a thick, sturdy glass skylight. It was made of plastic about the thickness of notebook paper, not in any way designed for some poor rube to walk across it. It immediately started to give, but my momentum meant I couldn’t just pull back. I quickly diverted off-center and took 3 or 4 steps over the side of the dome and back to safety.
Luckily for me at the time, I was very, very skinny and didn’t weigh much at all. Had I been the size of a normal 21-year-old, that first step may have sealed my fate. If I had stayed the course and tried walking over the skylight, it would have collapsed underneath me, and I would have plummeted four stories through the center of the spiral staircase, directly to the ground floor.
I would have been a prime nominee for a Darwin award. Instead I was catching my breath, sitting wide-eyed on the roof next to the light, wondering how I could have been so stupid. But hey, I got a future Reddit post out of it.
TL;DR: I walked across a skylight that I thought would hold my weight, but it was thin plastic and almost collapsed underneath me, sending me four stories to my death.
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