“Oh, this is dangerous. If this goes wrong my spine is going to crush like a tinkertoy. … … Well… shit. There’s no other way to do it really. Okay, I hope it goes okay.”

Turned out fine. In retrospect, I was young and dumb. I worked with some guys who’d gotten fucked up, just a couple, usually they gave them work in the office if they wanted it since their bodies didn’t work right anymore. OSHA’s a good thing.