Siamese are particularly good for shocks. Stroke them head to tail ten times, touch them on the nose and then run like hell!
If you think you’re about to get a shock, take something metal out of your pocket (a key, or coin, or something), and use that to touch the surface. It’s not the current that hurts, it’s the heat from the arc. If the arc hits the key instead of your skin, no problem.
We like to go for brunch at a farm in the mountains nearby. The parking is right in front of an electric fence and once I unwittingly parked the car against the wire. That was fun.
I agree with the OP. The cartoonish shuffle-zap-heehee seems like a thing of the past.
I’ve got a coat with a synthetic liner that really hauls in the charge. I sometimes have to push through the clinging sleeves and then my hair feels funny after it’s on. I can usually count on a mild zap next doorknob or faucet I touch.
Sodium is a metal and I’m doing all I can!
In winter I get static electric shocks when I wear my Birkenstocks (wood and tile floors) and from the couch.
I have gotten a shock from our carpet at home, which we’ve had more than 20 years.
FWIW, I remember as a kid ( 9, 10 y/o? ) in bed one night fidgeting in bed trying to find a comfortable sleeping position and I guess my pajamas or the sheets rubbing against this rough textured blanket caused so much static it lit up the area under the covers with multitudes of sparks. I remember it still, kind of like a St. Elmo’s fire phenomenon.
There was a fashion over here, back in the 1960s/70s to use fitted synthetic sheets in the kind of accommodation I was using back then (ie - cheap).
Nylon is great for creating static, especially in conjunction with cheap carpets. The light show could sometimes be spectacular.
I remember them always happening in the same places, like my middle school office where I would go to take my medicine everyday. It was specifically that very short carpet followed by touching an unpolished metal doorknob that would do it.
It didn’t happen at home with our more shaggy carpet, nor any rooms where you could move off a short carpet to tile without touching anything metal.
I love scruffing up the cats in the winter and seeing their fur light up in the dark. Cheap thrill.
Same thing happened to me, except I’d gotten up to use the toilet in the middle of the night. Sat there for who knows how long, terrified that if I so much as moved, I’d catch fire.
… the only thing more terrifying to lil’ bitty me was the thought of how much trouble I’d be in if my parents caught me out of bed in the middle of the night.
I think I eventually shuffled back to bed with the slowest, most gentle, “old guy who just got kicked in the nuts” sort of mincing steps possible, because the choice between “being burned alive” and “getting in trouble with my parents” was difficult, but not impossible.
during the winter months I regularly get shocked, especially when wearing a couple of pairs of shoes . It’s particularly bad in my office so that I’ve learned to carry a key in my hand and touch it to a doorknob before using my hand during the winter.
That’s bound to build up static
When i first started driving cars, in the 80s, I regularly got a static charge from touching the car when i had parked it for a while. Same with my dad, he got shocks too, but my brother didnt. I wonder why that was.
Full-house humidifiers are pretty standard these days. When I was a kid we all wore a lot of double knit polyester; I think that had a lot to do with it too. I do still have trouble with static in my hair during the Winter.
Don’t know if it matters but I’m unlikely to be wearing leather soled shoes anymore. If I’m not wearing sneakers it will still probably be shoes with a plastic sole.