You know that electric feeling you get when you touch the hand of someone you’re attracted to? High school sweethearts Dylan Corliss and Lexie Varga of Claremont, California, got sparks and a lot more when the hand-holding pair were struck by lightning last week during a southern California electric storm.

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What should have been a lethal shock was made virtually harmless because Corliss and Varga were holding hands, according to some reports.

“We were very frightened and screaming,” the couple told LifeZette. “It was the most terrifying experience of our lives.”

Around noon last Saturday, Corliss and Varga were walking down the street to get a hamburger. “When we left the house it was partly cloudy but no sign of rain or thunder,” the couple said in a joint email to LifeZette. “It was a warm day with no signs of bad weather, so there was no reason to take precautions. We heard some thunder but it didn’t seem likely that there would be danger.”

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They were walking along hand in hand. Then, out of nowhere, they were sent sprawling.

“We heard a large clap of thunder and saw a bright flash before we were knocked to the ground. We were stunned and disoriented, very frightened and screaming. A passerby told us we had been struck by a bolt of lightning. We both remember this as the most terrifying experience of our lives.”

Corliss said the force felt as if he had been hit by sheet metal, while Varga ended up three feet from where she had been standing when the bolt hit them. But just like the Taylor Swift song, Corliss and Varga shook it off, and kept going on their burger mission.

“Looking back, it doesn’t seem as if this was the best idea, to have continued on to the restaurant,” the couple said. “However, we felt OK, although we were probably in a daze. Also, the restaurant was closer than home so we felt it was a good place to sit down and recover.”

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A near-death experience in which they both almost got fried by 50,000 volts, and they went for a burger. Could they have been in, well, shock?

“Yes, definitely,” the teenagers replied. “We couldn’t remember what we were talking about just before the lightning hit. It wasn’t until 20 to 30 minutes later when we began to feel the physical effects, with minor aches and pains. We both had pain in our neck along with twinges of nerve pain.”

Corliss had some minor chest pain, he said, while Vargas said her tongue and foot were hurting.

The teenagers saw a doctor after their burger lunch, and news reports got behind the romantic notion that Corliss and Varga had survived because they were holding hands. Nice, but not true, according to John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert with the National Weather Service.

“A lightning discharge is not absorbed or dissipated in the body, but rather just passes through. Holding hands increases the chances that a current will pass through two people rather than one, potentially killing both,” Jensenius said.

He added that they may have been “hit by a ‘streamer coming off that strike. They weren’t hit by the main discharge for the lightning strike.”

Holding hands also increases the chances that any ground current will cause death or serious injury. “For a person (in this case, two people), the amount of potential ground current available is determined by the distance between the nearest contact point with the ground (one of the feet) and the farthest (one of the feet) to the main lightning discharge. By holding hands, you’ve connected both people and likely increased spread between the nearest and farthest of any two feet.”

Corliss and Varga weren’t too sure about that, either: “There are trees along that particular street, but we were walking on the sidewalk and the incident occurred in an area clear of trees.”  

Regardless of science fact, the media jumped on this Claremont Miracle as rapidly as they jump on shark attacks. Corliss and Varga’s megawatt adventure attracted as many one-liners as a tree attracts lightning: “Sparks Fly,” “Electric Love,” “Non-Lethal Attraction,” “Love Struck,” “Lucky in Love” were some of the headlines attached to the story.

“Everyone was very supportive,” Corliss and Varga said. “People are still contacting us but it seems to be slowing down. There have been a lot of puns, some pretty funny.”

For that millisecond of electric flash, Corliss and Varga got their 15 minutes of fame. They are alive to enjoy the rest of their summer, but that thunder off in the distance is something else. High school will start soon, and how is this story going to play among their wise-cracking friends? “We are excited for school to start and expect it to be mostly normal,” Corliss and Varga said.

But they might still be in shock.