All new levels of f'ed up in "The Visitor", aka "Ghost Dad"

Bear with me, here we go...

-Jake Sisko and Papa Sisko go on spaceship analogue of a canoeride
-They somehow screw it up, Papa Sisko gets electrocuted by the warp drive
-This causes a rift in space-time-contiuuload-of-crap whatever thingy
-Papa Sisko gets vaporized, Jake Sisko cries for most of the episode
-Jake Sisko ages into an old man, here he is crying more:

(screenshot contains a chat with my friend Chrissie who's gracious enough to deal with my venting over this episode)

-Somehow Papa Sisko keeps reappearing every few decades as a ghost, despite being vaporized
-of course this traumatizes Jake, who cries more (lol?)

-SPOILER ALERT (who cares though)
-Jake decides to kill himself (episode highlight?) to stop pulling his dead ghost dad through time
-Basically, it works, BUT
-then Papa Sisko is back on the ship the moment before he gets vaporized
-Papa Sisko realizes he's about to pwn himself by holding the stick
-and decides to drop the metal stick that got him vaporized in the first place, thereby avoiding electrocution
-Papa Sisko sees Jake, and then takes over on crying duty for the rest of the episode
-Putting all the ludicrious elements of this episode aside, how does Papa Sisko know to drop the metal stick?
-I'm confounded, and will probably lose 1-2 minutes of sleep tonight over this.

-btw "Ghost Dad" was a pretty solid Bill Cosby movie when I was 12, it deserves mention as the basic story for this episode of DS9.