As I was checking my new electric fence for shorts, Joel was watching me intently.  Suddenly, he blurted out, "Poppa, I can touch the fence and not get a shock", and proceeded to illustrate by proudly touching the fence.

I replied sarcastically, "Try it sometime without your sneakers on". and walked on down the line.

Not to be perturbed, Joel quickly took off his sneakers, and grabbed the fence again.  Suddenly, I heard a scream behind me.  Joel lunged backward, and fell on the ground in a sitting position, and began to cry.

I knew that electric fences have a high voltage but very little current, so the shock is designed to impart a psychological trauma, not a lasting physical one.  As a child, my friends and I used to play a game with the neighbour's electric fence.  We would time our touching between the loud clicks the fencer made.  Sooner or later, everyone would get a shock because of an inevitable error in timing, but no harm was done.

After watching Joel loudly cry for awhile, I said, "Why are you crying, its over with now?" -  He promptly stopped crying, and put his sneakers back on. 

Later, I showed him how to tell if there was an electric current going through the fence.  I used a fresh blade of grass and placed it across the wire, and squeezed my end of the grass.  A small tingling sensation could be felt in my hand.  As Joel finally got the knack of it, I was sure that some day, he would show his grandchildren how to tell if there was electricity on a fence line.