30 years ago...

 lately my mind often wanders into the late 70s and early 80s.

During 1980-83 my ex and I lived in Buffalo NY. One of our friends was named Tim, though we called him Tarzan. He got this nickname when he, trying to startle a friend, jumped out of a tree yelling "Patahhh!" or something like that, and startled himself instead, by breaking his left arm.

Within a week (before or after, I don't remember) of getting the cast off his arm, Tarzan was heading up a dark stairway to visit someone he'd just met. There was a party going on in another apartment, which had turned violent. Someone hiding on a dark landing mistook T for someone else and hit him with a bat, breaking his jaw.

Within a week (again) of cutting the wires that held his jaw shut (he cut them himself; it was our fault, we were unmercifully teasing him by eating steaks and baked potatoes), he broke his OTHER arm at the laundromat. His washer stopped, the light went out (cycle complete) and he opened the lid, reached in and grabbed a sheet. The washer then kicked into 'spin' cycle, quickly wrapping his arm in the sheet and breaking it in 3 places before he could pull it and the huge wad of linen out.

I wonder what ever happened to ol' Tim. I remember he tried to sue the laundromat and/or the manufacturer of the washing machine, but I don't know how that turned out. There were less lawsuits in those days, and if you didn't have a lot of money to pay a lawyer up front you didn't have much chance of getting justice.