Most stupid thing you,or I, ever did

I'm still working on mine, but go a head and start, I'll be back later.

Only unix-heads will understand this one -

rm -fr in the root directory.

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Mastery is not perfection but a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again

For me it's got to be a tossup.
1. I majored in Elementary Education in college....jeez I wish I was in a more lucrative field...don't get me wrong--I enjoy teaching and I'm well thought of as a teacher. But if I had it to do over, I would have sought a traditionally male domintated field, like computer science or something. It was lack of confidence that I didn't do this back then. I didn't think I was smart enough.

2. I wish I hadn't married my husband...that's kind of weird, because I do have a beautiful daughter whom I love more than anything. But...you think you can live with certain character flaws, because, no one's perfect. And later it turns out you can't.

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--Gail
What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what it's all about?

I have to go back to when I was about 20. I was at this family's house by a lake. There was a bike path along the shore with limited access. i got on the bike path, and started riding, and the family's 6-year old kid followed me. After about a mile I told him to go back. After about 5 miles he was still tagging along. I should have turned back.Eventually I was attempting to ride and pull the kid along, couldn't leave him alone. I was thinking the path must end somewhere. It would have ended.But about an hour after starting the kid's mom, by now assuming her kid had drowned in the lake, came driving in the opposite direction. The path was closed off from cars! She grabbed her kid and the bike and went home. I have no idea how I would have gotten him back.

Other potential events:When my brother in law nearly fumigated the neighbors out of their house with fire crackers.Also a very stupid trip across midwest states in icy weather, when they closed roads part of the trip.

When I was 6, I loved to go to the park. There was this one slide in the park that I loved so much to go down on. It was a half pipe about 50 yards long and 20 feet high and it was on the side of a mountain.

One day, when I reached to the beginning of the slide, I noticed many people around there daring each other to go down. No one wanted to go down the slide. But that didn't mean that I couldn't go down as well. So I went past the group and slid down the slide. I could hear the whole group go "NO! Don't go down there, kid!" I was wondering why they were telling me not to go.

Then when I looked ahead, my eyes went wide open in fright, as I saw why no one went down the slide. An animal or person apparantly took a crap on the slide. And poor little ol' me *SPLAT* right into the poop on the slide.

After I reached the bottom of the slide in tears, I had to walk half a mile back to my house from the park with poop all over my shorts.

Moral of story: Always have a second pair of shorts with you *drumroll*

Everything between the ages of 14 to 20.
I won't get into it but I am still repairing the damages. A word of advise don't ever think you are above the law then flaunt it!! I don't know what the hell I was thinking but eh I did it and it's over with now (well sort of).

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here kitty, kitty
Come out, come out where ever you are. :)

I joined the army... for SIX YEARS!!! Luckily, I developed knee problems and was thrown out for not running fast enough. I only wasted three years of my life.

I actually believed him when he said he was in the middle of a nasty divorce.

I was attending a summer camp for kids with high IQs. It was held on the campus of McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA. One of our classes was held in a chem lab, and was equipped with those jets that shoot out gas for Bunsen burners. We would amuse ourselves by turning them on for short bursts.

One day, while a few of us were killing time in the lab, someone dared me to turn on all the jets in the room and stay in there with the door closed. Naturally, being a dope with a high IQ, I did it. As you can tell by the fact that I'm writing this, I wasn't killed by asphyixiation; however, I found out later that someone smelled the gas, assumed there was a leak, and had the building evacuated. Luckily again for me, I was never caught, and no one was hurt.

Well, since you brought up Bunsen burners, my Stupid Human Trick was to set my hair on fire in a biology lab my senior year in college. I was an English major and seriously science-challenged and had no experience with microscopes or Bunsen burners. So I set up my B.b. right next to my microscope, prepared a slide to look at, put it under the scope and leaned down to look . . . and accidentally draped my hair into the Bunsen burner. Then I suavely beat myself on the side of the head to put the fire out, finished the lab with half a head of curly-fried hair, and went and got my hair chopped off. I've worn it short ever since. The worst thing about it was the smell of burning hair . . . and my appearance -- no way to pretend I hadn't done it. Ah, memories . . . they only hurt 'til the medication kicks in.

rm -fr in the root directory -- zyada
You didn't! :O

That's like the most feared thing in the world!

Did it manage to take out /etc before you stopped it?

A co-worker of mine accidentally did a

chown -R someuser on /

Not as bad as what you did, but it still messed the system pretty severely-- esp with all of the setuid progs.

P.S.

What were you trying to do when that happened? Did you accidentally put in a space, or perhaps you accidentally hit enter?

Fear of that has led me to never do a recursive change on an absolute path.

Ok, Here is mine. Actually a series so follow along...First-lost my job as a systems admin for a data processing company(not fired, the company went under) not so bad, but as I was undereducated and over-skilled I was unable to get a comperable paying job...so, bills piled up and things got cut...like my car insurance(As I live in NY it is manditory)...
so no insurance...DMV suspends my registration, but I keep driving...DMV suspends my license...I keep driving...My car begins to self-destruct due to lack of maintenence, and I begin to develop a moderate case of paranoia as I have been driving with these suspensions for over 2 YEARS! So heres the "incident"-driving home one day, my car stalls in traffic.In a busy intersection on a very slight incline, I can't get it started, and I know the police will come soon, so I figure I will push the car to the side of the road, and keep trying to start it. So I start pushing the car.
Not too hard for me as I am physically quite large and strong. So I push the car about 25 feet and it is cresting the slight incline,
and I go to jump in...Did I mention I have Athsma??? Yep, had a full-blown attack right at that instant. Missed the jump into the car, which is now picking up speed. I try again, miss, and fall to my knees, damaging both permanently. I hold on to the door, and am now being dragged by the car as it rolls down the hill, still accelerating. I let go, the back tire just misses rolling over my right leg, and accually pinches my side as it rolls by, the rear bumper rips out the back of my pants. I get up and watch as my car, which had quite an allignment problem roll into the right curb, glance off, roll toward oncoming traffic, veer back to the right, roll over the curb, knock down 3 signs and roll into a gas station! The car missed the customers, and struck one of the pumps, knocking it loose and sending fuel spraying.
Fortunately the pump was for diesel fuel, not gasolene! No explosion, but still, the fire department came and foamed it down, EMS came as I was on the verge of passing out due to lack of oxygen, and, of course, the police came. I was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the police station.
I was able to extricate myself form all my legal troubles, but the car was destroyed.
All true.
The worst part was my familly and coworkers reading about me in the local paper's "police blotter" section!

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"The universe doesn't give first warnings or second chances"

leaving my husband and assuring him there was no way in hell I'd ever get back together with him....then realizing when it was too late that I still love him.

This mushy stuff is ok, above, but ryan wins this Topic.

I returned my garment inspected by 004. Now I'm regretting it.See the topic in this forum.

Undead Dude:

#1 I don't know about /etc, but it had taken out most of /bin. Especially, tar was gone. I think they used cpio to get the system back. You notice I use the word they.

#2 I was trying to install some software and I couldn't get enough space free. Just as a semi-excuse, I had been out at the customer site the night before till 3AM. Oh, did I mention this was customer's computer? I then came in about 7 or 8 (yes AM) to install this software. So, I think I just accidentally fell asleep.

BTW, the person who took over the install called me later and said "I'm having trouble getting enough space to install this software, is that why you fucked up?" (or words to that effect ;) ) No Duh!

Sorta appropriate with my sig, eh?

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Mastery is not perfection but a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again

I don't mean to freak anyone out (and i don't like remembering it either) but for a few years in and after high school, I was a full-blown Satanist. I'm out of it now. What an awful life.

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"On the edge of sleep, I awoke to a sun so bright..."

If this I hadn't done this to myself I'd never have believed it...

One night back in the college days my roommates and I were desperate to stay up late to get some work done at the end of the semester. The only problem was we had no stimulants of any kind in the house, no coffee, no Coke (either kind), no No Doz, nothing. Someone did have capsules of bee pollen though, and we had all heard that it was supposed to give you energy, so we figured we'd take some.

However, being the impatient maniacs we were, we decided that it would take too long to work if we just swallowed the capsules like normal people. So we decided to empty a bunch of capsules out, chop the stuff up really fine, and snort it like a drug. Seemed to make sense at the time. We go through the whole process, get the lines all cut up and start. It gets to be my turn, I exhale and prepare myself. I take a deep inhale and instantly my nasal passages are on fire, I think my head is going to explode, it's a worse feeling than any drug I ever tried.

I had forgotten that I have really bad hayfever.

The next 4-6 hours were some of the most miserable I have ever spent on this planet. I was a sneezing, runny nosed, watery eyed mess. My roomates thought it was just about the funniest thing in the history of mankind. I ended up getting zero work done, other than having a story that can get any group of people laughing hysterically at my own expense. Ah, the folly of youth...

I don't have any one spectacular screwup (could anything even begin to compete with ryan's post anyway???), so I'll just have to post some small ones:


Swimming across a lake and back even though I'm a horrible swimmer. On the way back, I almost went under for good. I wound up floating on my back and drifting back to shore. Of course, I was a teen and didn't want to ask the other swimmers for help because I was too embarrassed.
Trying to pick up molten glass with my bear hands. Well, in chem class we melted some different chemicals which formed small glass beads, about the size of BBs. Left little indents on my thumb and index finger.
Along the same lines - checking to see if an electric stove eye was on by stick my hand on it. I'm pretty sure I didn't *mean* to stick my hand on it and had just planned on hovering about it a bit. But instead I plopped it right down on it. I was a bit 10 at the time. It left the pattern of the eye on my palm and fingers - kind of like the guy in the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Computer screwup time: I changed my root shell to /usr/bin/tcsh. Unfortunately, tcsh is in /bin under Debian, rather than /usr/bin as it was under my old RH system. chsh didn't even check for the existence of the shell. And, of course, I instantly logged out after doing this. Now THAT was fun. Luckily, I still had my old RH system. I booted it, mounted my other system and edited the passwd file. Later I talked to my friend about it - turned out he did the same thing when installing Debian.

It may not be as sophisticated as "rm -fr in the root directory" but I downloaded IE5 from Hotmail and got some lousy beta version.I may have used it for a month till I went to Microsoft directly.

Go ahead and laugh folks, everyone else does!

It's been just over 1 year and everyone at work feels compelled to tell all the new employees the story!


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"The universe doesn't give first warnings or second chances"

Thank you sunbear, it's nice to know I've excelled at one thing in my life! :D

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Mastery is not perfection but a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again

All in my 16th summer.........

turned down a scholarship to Rice.

got my toe impaled on a sewing machine needle.

tried to climb an 8ft fence in an evening gown. I got to the top with no problem.

OK, small Canadian town, circa 1978:

I go to the rival High School Halloween dance, dressed in a "borrowed" Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform. Not the fancy red full dress, but the everyday working uniform (patrol coat, [empty] holster, pants, shoes--all issue). I have fairly short hair at the time, and look older than my 17 years. (The uniform was actually my father's, at the time a sergeant in the RCMP, and it was 'borrowed' without his knowledge).

As if impersonating a Mountie isn't dumb enough, I have several 'beverages', pick up my date for the evening (the little sister of NHL star Cam Neely), and we have a few puffs of wacky tabbaccy en route to the dance (well, it was the 70s), along country roads at fairly high speeds.

Looking back now at what might have gone wrong with any part of the scenario, and the consequences, I blench to think how dumb I was. Let's see--federal offence of impersonating a police officer, driving under the influence, possession of dope, exceeding speed limit, risking being 'taken into the boards' by an NHL player...

Needless to say, I don't do any of that stuff anymore!

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"A friend will help you move house. A best friend will help you move a body."--Alexi Sayle

In 1989 (I was 26), I quit my job and moved 400 miles away to go to school. I had little money, didn't know anyone there, got an apartment that ended up being 25 miles from work (I didn't have a job either), traded my 74 Bug for a piece-of-crap VW Bus. I lasted 10 weeks, lost 20 pounds, was almost killed twice getting home, had to live with my parents for almost 6 months, and was in debt for two solid years to pay my flight of fancy.

Other than that, I've been pretty good at making decisions.


Trumpy

I think the stupidest thing I ever did was me and three other friends decided to drive from Michigan to Florida, pretty much on a whim. I was only 15 at the time. My then boyfriend was the oldest person, and he was only 16. We drove a POS 1976 Ford Mustand with a bad transmission and bad brakes. Between the four of us, I think we had maybe $100 on us. We got all the way to Tampa before the car finally died. Once we got there, we realized that we (a) didn't have a car anymore, (b) didn't have any money left, and (c) didn't know anybody in town at all. We spent a single night in the car (mind you, four people SLEPT in a car that wasn't much bigger than a Yugo) before we decided that we had had enough. We ended up having to call our parents (who were understandably upset with us) to get some money wired to us so we could take the bus back to Michigan.

Of course, there was also that time that we got pulled over by the Border Guards while trying to cross the Ambassador Bridge into Canada, but that's another story entirely.

Shadowfox

Most recent stupid thing:Printed the answers to the "Infinite Monkeys" topic.

As a "young, dumb, and full of come" trooper many years ago in a galaxy far, far away, a few of us decided it would be a cool idea to pull the blank adaptors off our M16 rifles and insert a fully assembled cleaning rod down the tube, chamber a blank round and fire it just to see what would happen. All of us agreed that the rod would shoot out at blinding speed until stopped by a fixed object. Stupidly, we decided that it must be demonstrated visually and not theoretically. Even more stupidly, I volunteered in front of this august body of enlightened soldiers the use of my M16 and my trigger finger. The result was that my fully assembled rifle cleaning rod was impaled about 35 feet up a pine tree. This amused my comrades and no doubt raised my cool points amongst my little group. This did not endear me to my training sergeant, whom I stupidly forgot for a few seconds had ruled my life and thoughts up to that time. It is very hard to explain to a mad sergeant how a cleaning rod was embedded 35 feet above me through natural causes. I was not a happy camper until I graduated that course.

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"...send lawyers, guns, and money..."

Warren Zevon

I volunteered to take the point several times.


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Ranger Jeff
The Idol of American Youth

Always drink upstream from the herd.

This one was risky, nearly stupid.
We were stuck in Wisconsin with a burned out radiator fan. Drove back with two kids, no air conditioning, a day's drive on the interstate. Then getting near our house, the traffic wasn't moving. Just in our drive-way the radiator boiled over a tiny bit and gurgled quite a while. I still drove it to the garage that night.

Yes, you CAN drive without that fan, at highway speed.

Ah....I remember my first espresso....took it back and indignantly demanded more coffee.

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There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline. -Montaigne

Does posting a response on the "Oral Sex Techniques" thread count?

yes.

[[Does posting a response on the "Oral Sex Techniques" thread count?]]

Not as much as being the originator of the "Oral Sex Techniques" thread, Suzeanne.

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"Me fail English? That's unpossible!"

"English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England."

Come on folks! Someone must have done something that was dumber than what I did!
I am more than a little embarrased! I new it was dumb, but surely someone can top it?
Please?
Huh?
Please?
:)

Honestly, I don't think that's possible.

Come on folks! Someone must have done something that was dumber than what I did!

You don't think sliding down with poop on my shorts isn't as embarrasing? Well, I guess I'll give another embarrasing story then...

Ok, this was in high school. One day I came to the group of friends I hang out with. They always like to dare me to so stupid things, which I always say no to. So on this one day, while I was eating some Cheetos, one of them said "I dare you to eat that bird poop on the bench", pointing it out over there. I look at my fingers, which were covered in orange Cheetos cheese, and, I don't know why but, I scraped up the poop on my orange fingers and licked it all up right in the public. All I tasted was the Cheetos salt so no harm done to me, or so I thought.

No one left me alone for a year after that incident, always asking if I'll ever do it again. One time, when I asked for food from someone, they said, "There's some bird poop over there, why don't you eat that instead?"

How about that, ryan?

10 years ago... I'm 10 years old, playing in my friend's backyard. My friend is inside so I'm alone on the swingset. I see that a chunk of wood has fallen off the garage. I grab it and start swinging it around like a sword, and hop on the swingset. While swinging both myself and the "sword", my foot catches the ground, and I fall off. No harm done, I thought. It didn't even hurt. That's when I look down and notice a HUGE gouge in my leg. Seriously, I could see every tissue in my leg at that point. It could have been worse though. The end of the wood that didn't gouge me had a rusty nail in it, and if I had been hit just 3 inches to the right, my ability to father children would have been seriously at risk.
Yeah, I was young, but even for a kid, that's pretty damn dumb.

When I was 10 years old, I was rollerskating backwards in Lynette Haubrich's garage when I tripped over the lawnmower and broke my tailbone.

One of the stupidest things I've ever done was overdose on my medication because I was mad at my mother. It wasn't ebough to kill me, or even to go to the hospital, but that next morning I found it almost impossible to wake up and go to school. The whole day I was extremely twitchy and I acted violently towards anyone that talked to me.

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~Ruby Sunbeam~
Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.

The story's really long and I don't want to post a novel (and it's impossible to cut) so let's just say I tried to hide an avocado in my locker but it just kept coming back to haunt me

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"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." --1984

The story's really long and I don't want to post a novel (and it's impossible to cut) so let's just say I tried to hide an avocado in my locker but it just kept coming back to haunt me

I hear you man--I made a tossed salad once and the lettuce and tomatoe spirits still haunt me to this very day. Who would have thought produce could be so vindictive?

There was the time I married the woman who would become the Former Mrs. Ranger.



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Ranger Jeff
The Idol of American Youth

Server's poor response
Not quick enough for browser.
Timed out, plum blossom.

Ok College years

-Burned all the hair off my ass lighting a fart and seriously scored my asshole. But from what I hear it lit up (and stunk up) the room and permanently left a shadow on the wall I was facing so its a toss up. Did I mention I was drunk?

-Broke my hand catching a punch from another jerk

-Jumped off a second story balcony into a swimming pool (and nearly broke my feet)

-Blew myself into a wall making a "small chemical reaction" for a lab assignment (knocking myself out in the process)

-Let myself be videotaped over a Mardi Gras blowout of 1993 (among the big highlights: me puking over the side of a crowded balcony, getting spanked by a dominatrix in a leather club- and looking like I really like it *I was ultra stewed* and me um..playing hide Mr Knish with two girls in a hot tub by a unseen video friend) The result is a constant showing of it to crowds and parties and threatening to show family members if my rent is late. Believe me, they have copies (I have already destroyed two)

-Getting caught sneaking upstairs in the at Graceland. Not so bad but I got caught mimicking the Elvis death pose on the famed privy. At least I think it was it

Yes Alcohol had a lot to do with it but I was still stupid enough to say yes. Would I change-still haven't and how many can say they saw where Elvis had his last movement, got spanked by a leather bitch, and blew himself up numerous times.

Okay, here's one. I'm about nine or ten years old and I just got a tee-ball set for my birthday. I have it set up outside and I'm having a blast pretending I'm Babe Ruth. Unfortunately I have the tee-ball set up so that when I hit it, the ball flies up into a tree and gets stuck. A rational person might have called their parents at this point, but I decided to fix the problem myself by pulling on the elastic cord. After a few moments of hard pulling, the ball and cord abruptly part ways, and the cord comes whistling back and hits me in the stomach.

I still remember the sound I made-- kind of a gurgling whimper. I staggered into the house crying with a HUGE welt on my stomach and my parents wound up taking me to the doctor (and they were NOT pleased). Luckily, I wasn't seriously hurt. Of course, now I'm glad the damn cord didn't hit me in the eyes-- and I'm very thankful that the ball did not remain attached to the cord.


-- Sylence

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"A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space. On the back it said, 'Wish you were here'." - Steven Wright

I like these stupid things that end up here at 2 AM

In the Old Age Topic I came to the realization that youth is usually an element in the stupid things we do. But, I do driving under pretty bad icy road conditions just last year. I had enough experience to not even try it with the whole family. Took some 12-14 hours to drive a 7 hour trip.

Yikes! Maybe I wasn't too stupid after all!
It took a while, but some of you are getting very close to me!
Louie-Yuck!
Gundhilde-Doesn't count unless you tell us!
Ruby-Really, really dumb!
Heath-Well, sounds like you had fun!


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"The universe doesn't give first warnings or second chances"

Back in 3rd grade I had a very interesting teacher- Mrs Lamanski- who forced all the kiddies to eat everything on their lunch tray. Being allergic to peas I usually hid the pesky green veggies in my milk carton so I wouldn't have to eat them.. til one day my teacher saw me trying to hide my uneaten peas. She told me that if I didn't eat just one I would be forced to stay inside and not get to go out for recess. This was a dramatic thing- no recess meant no parking lot football! So, not wanting to miss a quick pick up game of two-hand-tap football I forced one down. I guess that wasn't a smart thing because the next thing I remember was puking my guts out all over my desk, the kid in front of me and all over the floor. Even though I followed her command I was still forced to stay inside from recess. After that day Mrs Lamanski never forced any of the kids to eat everything off their plates again. People still tease me about it- mainly because I didn't have to clean it up!

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"I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information."
-- Calvin and Hobbes

I was in the Youth Conservation Corps one summer. I had heard that people ate rattlesnake and I figured you could eat any kind of snake. So, we killed a water moccasin one day and I skinned it and took it to the dorm to boil (yes, that is pretty stupid) it. The darn thing stunk up the dorm so bad we had to leave till the smell evaporated (no a/c). Moral: water moccasins--a dish only the smell-impaired could endure.

Hey...um...cowgodmoo (great s/n, BTW), all I have to say is ... what a JERK of a teacher!



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"Me fail English? That's unpossible!"

"English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England."

I was.....seventeen I think, when my very precocious friend down the street suggested we make a hot air balloon. Great idea! We cut up and taped together a large number of the plastic bags dry cleaners use, and came up with a five foot wide, fifteen foot tall glory of a balloon.(Mistake #1)
It even carried it's own heat source up with it in the form of a small amount of sterno in an aluminum holder.(Mistake #2)
The balloon carried a small radio transmitter for tracking, which used a long wire hanging below the balloon for an antenna. (Mistake #3)
We decided to launch the balloon from the middle of a big open (strawberry)field in back of my house. (Mistake #4)

Problem #1..The launch site was less than a mile from a private airport. Nearly caused a single engine airplane to become landfill.
Problem #2..The launch site was less than five miles from an FCC monitoring station (of some sort), and they heard the transmitter on an unauthorized frequency. Loud and clear. They had better tracking equipment than we did, and arrived at the balloon's crash site before us.
Problem #3..The fire department arrived at the balloon crash site just after we did, so they had better luck putting out the brush fire started by the flaming sterno.
Problem #4..The police were alerted by reports of gunfire from a neighborhood near the balloon crash site, and arrived about the same time we did. There WAS no gunfire, it was the explosions of the antenna wire vaporizing as it flopped across the powerlines on the big metal tower nearby.
Problem #5..The squashed remains of the strawberries all over our feet identified us as the trespassers the police were looking for in response to the farmers complaint.

That was just the balloon! Wait'll I tell about the railroad stuff!
Fixed(innocent)Back

Pretty good.

I guess it would be too much for us to hear from loverock. But we'll accept the sum total of his posts as a stupid thing.

Fixed - You sure you didn't grow up in a small town in Idaho? Sounds just like me. Anyway, here's my RR story, will be looking forward to yours.

Highschool days, summer of '64 I believe. My friend and I decide to try the catwalk underneath a RR trestle outside of town. It was high, well over 100 ft. The catwalk consisted of a couple of 2x12's loosely attached to steel rods, and hung only about 5 ft. under the rails (not enough room to stand up, had to crouch. We get to the middle of the trestle and, you guessed it, train! We decide we can't make it to the end, so we just got down and hugged the boards. I can't possibly relate the horror of having two diesel locomotives pass right over your head as the whole trestle vibrates and sways back and forth. I think it was about a half hour before we could manage to move again. Oh yeah, and right before that we had spray painted our names on an old box car on a siding. It wound up in town a few days later, right at the main crossing.

Gary


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"Basses do it lower"
Homepage: http://members.aol.com/Toymkr47/Index.htm

I have found that when placing things on railroad tracks with the object of smashing them flat (coins, keys, random pieces of metal), it isn't a good idea to attempt to flatten a ball bearing 1/8 inch in diameter or larger.
The bearings are usually made of hardened steel, and when compressed between the train wheel and the rail, they tend to shoot out at great velocity, much like a pumpkinseed pinched between the fingers.
Anything downrange, I mean, ahead of the locomotive will likely sustain a direct hit.
A car proceeding through a crossing ahead of the train could become perforated by the high-speed projectile the ball bearing has turned into.
I never realized until then what cheap steel the pickup trucks imported from japan were made of. For what it's worth, the shattered remains of the ball bearing were later removed from the drivers side door of the truck. The impact was just a little too much for even a hardened steel bearing.

FixedBack

Bet you pause before crossing in front of a train from now on!

[sunbear]

I try not to do stupid things anymore. But sometimes I end up doing stupid things other people think up.
Some of you newer members never had a chance to boast of your stupidity.

[SanibelMan]

I did something stupid during the 2nd week of school... I accused my chem teacher of lying. She was going over safety procedures with us, and she related the story of a chemistry accident in a high school in California earlier that week. I was curious as to the details of the situation, so I went to the computer lab after school and searched MSNBC, CNN, etc., for stories about the explosion, but no luck. So I went back to her and 9here comes teh stupid part) basically told her I thought she had made up the whole story to scare us into being safe. She showed me the newspaper clipping she had comfirming her story, and I left with a nauseating feeling in my stomach... The next day, in the halls, she approached me and basically told me she thought it was inappropriate for a brand-new Chem student to go into her class and accuse her of lying, and I couldn't have agreed with her more... I apologized profusely, and we are on good terms now (she was actually pretty cool about it).

So what Ms. Lewton says is GOSPEL TRUTH now, NO MATTER WHAT!!!
;)

[sunbear]

Teachers are just training for a professor that you may have to work with. If you start out the wrong way, graduate school can be hell. I didn't figure out what level of teacher that was above.
-----
I'm not happy with my daughter's preschool this year. We were stupid enough to committ to a whole year. They have a nature trail they say they built and cleaned up. But she got all over poison ivy there the other day. I'm not happy with their unstable teacher situation. They quit etc. at odd times.

[GuanoLad]

I haven't done many things especially stupid. Apart from waste my life.

But I did ruin an opportunity to work in Special Effects by revealing a secret about an upcoming movie and putting on the internet with my name on it.

So that's why I'm not working on Lord of the Rings right now.

Another stupid thing I did was move to Australia with virtually no money in my bank account - and I filled in my Tax Return wrong so the rebate I thought I was getting to help me turned out to be a myth! D'oh!

Here's a stupid thing: Getting caught.
That applies in many situations.

There was gonna be something else, but I forgot it. Darn...

------------------
"Well, roll me in eggs and flour and bake me for forty minutes!"

The Legend Of PigeonMan (http://www.hotkey.net.au/~guanolad/pigeonman/) - updates every Wed & Sat

[Ayesha]

My list of stupid things.

Leaving home at 15.

Quiting school in the middle of the 8th grade.

Marrying my first husband at the age of 18. After knowing him for a total of two months.

Going to work for a carnival for 8 months after first husband hung himself.

EVER doing LSD.



------------------
Ayesha - Lioness
_________________________
You sound reasonable. Must be time to up my medication.

[BurnMeUp]

You worked for the Carnival?

You know, in all my life i don't think i've EVER known a carnie.

------------------
Magnificent to behold - Greatly to be praised.

[UncleBeer]

Posted this link.
http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/001826.html

------------------
"The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind." - Humphrey Bogart

[Ayesha]

BurnMeUp,
Yep, sure did. It's not a life I would recommend. Unless you are where I was at the time. No education to speak of, 18 years old with no life at all ( my husband had just killed himself after we were married for four months) nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. Then I guess it beats living under a bridge, but not by much.

It is a whole diffrent type of life, but I can say that for the most part carneys stik together. If the weather is good and your boss is decent you can sleep under a ride or in your "joint" ( game tent, concession stand, whatever ). If not it's not unusual to find up to 10 people sharing a double room in a cheap motel. If a room is rented everyone chips in with the cost,(the pay sucks, and sometimes your boss takes out a fee for "getting you over the road," (transportation) even if they don't do that) and you can get a friend to let you shower there, otherwise it's a old hose bath on the lot , not fun !

Am I sorry I did it ? Nope.

Would I do it again ? Only if I were starving to death, and even then only if I had a car and a camper !

Sorry, not trying to hijack the thread.

------------------
Ayesha - Lioness
_________________________
You sound reasonable. Must be time to up my medication.

[Sealemon88]

My sixth grade science lab was doing an experiment to show that mixing baking soda with hydrochloric acid would create an explosive gas. After the two indrediants were added into the beaker, we placed a burning piece of wood into the beaker with forecepts.

Well, nothing happened with my beaker, so I looked down the opening to see...well, I'm not sure what the fuck I was hoping to see.

I'm lucky I can see now.

I can also tell you that burnt nose hairs smell really, really bad.



------------------
You say "cheesy" like that's a BAD thing.

[StrTrkr777]

Okay, a number of years ago, I am not going to tell you how many. I was going to fire up the gas grill for a cookout. I did not want to clean the rack so I decided to put aluminum foil on it and cook on that. Now I knew that after the grill was lit that putting the foil on would be difficult due to the heat, so I put it on first. Then I turned the gas on a proceeded to try and light the grill with the starter.

The starter did not light right away and by the time it did there was a considerable amount of gas that had built up. When it did ignite, a fire ball shot out from under the foil and burnt my hair, eyebrows, and mustache. They did not catch fire, just singed them.

Then I had to go in the house and try not to let others see what had happened. The smell alone would likely give it away. I went to the bathroom and washed off all the singed hair and tried to clean it up as best I could.

Never trap the gas with anything and then light it.

Jeffery

[Lanna]

I think one of the most stupid things I've ever done would have be getting stuck on the roof at 6 AM, in drizzle and near freezing weather. It took two hours before my family heard my pathetic cries for help. No one has allowed me to forget it.

I'm sure there are more painfully stupid things I have done, but I seem to have blocked them from my memory.


-Lanna

[sunbear]

StrTrkr777:
I did the singed hair with an oven. We had to light it with a match taped to a stick. Some gas had built up. Singed arm and eyebrows.

[heatherlee]

trusted someone I really shouldnt have with something very precious to me. I learned though

------------------
Me?? an asshole?? You better believe it!

Heather Lee
XheatherleeX@aol.com

[SanibelMan]

Lanna, I almost hate to ask, but... what were you doing on the roof? At 6 AM?? In the freezing rain???
Sorry, but... inquiring minds have to know!

Oh, and by the way, I'm a sophomor in high school, so that was Chem 1, not AP or University.

------------------
SanibelMan
"A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men."
-- Henry David Thoreau

[SanibelMan]

And I do know how to spell sophomore.

[Martyr #7]

STUPID MISTAKE #1

One time a person posted a question in GQ asking for information about a particular company. I knew most of the answers to his OP and I replied. I also posted a link to the company, telling the OP that he could go there for more information. Ends up that I pissed off the moderator because he doesn't like the company and he deleted my entire post.

STUPID MISTAKE #2

One time after being chastized and having my post deleted for posting a link to a company, I reposted the post with the company name (12 letters) x'ed out between the www and the .com

Low and behold, it just happened to be a valid link to some kinda porn site which gave someone who hates me anyway a reason to ban me.

Stupid mistake on my part.

------------------
Martyr #7

[Lanna]

Lanna, I almost hate to ask, but... what were you doing on the roof? At 6 AM?? In the freezing rain???
Sorry, but... inquiring minds have to know!

Funny story that... Of course, I mean "funny" in the God-I-am-such-a-dolt sort sense, though I suppose my oh-so-suave ways may provide amusement for some. Just not me.

It was about 5 AM, and I hadn't slept for over 30 hours. Realizing there was no point in sleep at that hour, and finding nothing to do inside, I decided to go wander about in the backyard. Once I was out there, I noticed one of our cats on the roof of our guesthouse. That led to thinking about what a great view I would have of the sunrise from there, and that thought led to, "Hey! Why don't I get up on the roof?" With my book in tow, I set up our old, rickety wooden ladder and climbed on up.

(You would think that I would at least have used the sturdy metal one, but well, I didn't. I tend not to think things through, if I really think about them at all...)

Once up on the roof, I realized two things: 1) Wow, I really do have a great view! and 2) Fuck. I positioned the ladder in such a way that I can't use it to climb back down.

Then it started to drizzle. Twenty minutes later, I had lost all sensation in my fingers and toes. However, I did NOT want to call for help just then. So, I stuck it out another 40 minutes. By six though, I had come to terms with the fact that there was no way in hell I'd be able to get down, and even though everyone would tease me, I should probably bellow for help. And bellow I did. For two hours. My parents, in the house a good 100 feet away, and on the second story, couldn't hear my pathetic whimpering, nor my more frantic, louder pleas.

Only when my dad woke up to put another cat out did her hear some little voice saying, "Mom...? Daddy...? Mo-om? Dad? Help... I'm stuck... One the roof... Guys? C'mon... it's cold... Help... Mom..." and because only I could get myself in such a predicament, he looked out the window. There I was. He just stood there and laughed for a few minutes before coming out to help me.

So there you have it. The long-winded story of how I managed to get stuck on the roof... High quality reading, I'm sure.

-Lanna

[Catrandom]

Actually, it was pretty funny :)

Dreary story, but the most life-threateningly stupid thing I ever did was a couple of years ago, waiting and waiting and waiting to call an ambulance during an asthma attack until -- after it finally got into my hypoxic little brain that I'd better do something -- by the time the paramedics arrived I was ready to go into respiratory arrest, which I did shortly thereafter. I woke up in intensive care five days later.

Ordinary day-to-day stupid? Driving around on a suspended license in a car with two-year-old tags. Also going out a second time with the guy who abandoned me on the first date to take a long walk on the beach with another girl (I was young, romantic and an idiot.)

Catrandom

[sunbear]

I got up with a headache. MTV was ok for 5 minutes, but these last two posts have been entertaining. Still have headache. Will drink tea.Go back to bed. Lay awake.

[Sealemon88]

And what's the stupidest thingyou've ever done, sunbear?

Hmmmmmm?

------------------
You say "cheesy" like that's a BAD thing.

[Glitch]

Way back a LONG time ago, in my very first martial arts class I kicked myself in the face splitting open my lip. Required a visit to the hospital and several stitches.

How is this possible you ask? Come on, go ahead ask ...

Well since you asked, being a youngin' I was flexible and being a green martial artist I didn't know not to tuck my head forward while doing a front kick. All you MAs out there know what I am talking about.

------------------
What more could you expect from somebody who lets people kick him to the head?

[Glitch]

Wait I have another one.

When I was in my teens living in the frozen wasteland of Canada our front door was frozen shut. Being the clever little doobie I decided to put my shoulder up against it and push it open.

Well, that's not so dumb ... except the door was made of glass. UGH ... me have purty scar on shoulder where me put a rather nasty gash (another trip to the hospital).

Wait I have another one.

I once actually tried to break a sheet of iron (2 years ago in fact). It was 1/8" x 16" x 12". It did not break. It did bend somewhat (maybe a inch or so). It did severely injure my hand (another trip to the hospital).

Wait, I have another one.

I once told my instructor that he couldn't really choke me out. I was wrong. Didn't have to go to the hospital though. Yay!!! :)

[eden]

Important safety tip (thanks, Egon):
If you are, hypothetically speaking, trapped in a car waiting for someone running an errand, and a giant eyelash falls in your eye and removal of your contact lens is imperative, DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT attempt to rinse the lens with 7-UP and put it back in your eye.

[sunbear]

Save this thread!Do something stupid, report back!

[salinqmind]

The stupid things I have done are...legion. There are far too many to pick from, but here is a particular favorite: I went looking for the outdoor pool on the roof of a hotel, saw it was CLOSED for the season, and discovered to my utter horror the door leading to the roof was self-locking and had slammed shut behind me. I was locked out, alone on the roof of a 15 story building, at night. I nearly shat, luckily family members had followed me and opened the f***ing door.

[sunbear]

Of course, zipping yourself inside a bean bag chair at age 3 also counts.

[zeenard]

A friend dared me to taste a base (koh or something) in my high school physics class. It burned my tongue and left a red spot on it. They sent me to the hospital but luckily my tongue wasn't seriously damaged. I just had to eat cold food such as ice cream for a few days (almost a reward,eh?). Stupid? I know it was. Even the principal told me (actually he said imbecile).

While drunk I once pissed on a parked police car and got caught by the cops.

Originally posted by GuanoLad:
Here's a stupid thing: Getting caught.
That applies in many situations.
[/B]

Damn right!

[purrplebear]

Your basic stupid stuff, well, I have a lot of stories, some of which I've already posted about in other threads, and no, I have no idea how to do a link.

One of them happened when I was 16 and hiking in the Bighorn Mountains of northern Wyoming with the Girl Scouts. I, being the coordinated person I was, tripped over a rock, missed all of the snow lying around and landed with my right knee squarely on a large rock. Three days out on trail, 10 to go. So, I refused to leave, kept on hiking for the rest of the trip.

Fast forward to several years, several doctors, many, many hospital visits later. I had surgery on that knee, almost lost my knee cap over it, and to this day, still have a limp that gets more pronounced when I'm tired, and that is where my arthritis started at. All because I didn't want to get proper treatment after original injury.

I've been paying for that mistake for 20something years and counting.

As for the stupidest thing I've ever regretted doing. Let's just say it happened in one night in late '78. If I'd only told him.............
Bittersweet memories........

------------------
You are more than a human being, you are a human becoming.
Og Mandino

That's my name, not a description. I am neither purple nor a bear. Okay, so I'm purple.<a true Wally original!>

[Popillia]

Here are just a couple out of the myriads of things I could tell on myself.

1. I was a Microwave Communications Repairman in the US Marine Corps in the early 80's. Some of these systems used 400hz rather than 60hz. So we had a 400hz generator set up outside with several connectors inside for working on the systems. Well one of these connectors became damaged/quit working or something, dont recall at this point. Myself and one of the other seargents decided to repair it. Well being the trusting souls we were we sent a lance-corporal out to make sure the power was disconnected to this connector, and then proceded to take it apart to what extent we could so that we could solder some new pins on the cable. Well we were almost done, with both of us staring straight into the connector (one holding the connector and the pin, while the other was holding an industrial size soldering iron) when we suddenly discovered the power was not removed when we crossed the soldering iron across two of the pins. Other than having little burn marks all across our faces and not being able to see for about 30 minutes I guess we were alright.

2.Got tired of cleaning out the fireplace by using the the little pan and brush to remove the ashes. So I pulled out the ole handy dandy canister vacuum and went to town. Now there hadn't been a fire in a day or so and I thought for sure there would be no hot coals.
Boy was I wrong. And of course the air being sucked across those hot coals as they were in the little vacuum bag only made them burn hotter. I still hear about this one every time I do something stupid.

Pretty much ruined that vacuum.

[sunbear]

Oh well, most appliances are disposable these days.

[Zico]

Best summed up in a letter I sent to a radio station. Got read out too...

Your calls on dangerous acts carried out as a teenager has made me decide that enough water has passed under the bridge to make my confession. Foolhardy child that I was, I was a teenage bomb maker, and at the top of my powers could construct devices that would have had Osama bin Laden running for cover.

It all started so innocently with long afternoons under my bed ignoring those public safety films about the dangers of playing with matches. It then moved up to "genie-ing" entire boxes of Swan Vestas and chucking them out of the window. Soon there was a whole gang of us diligently scraping the heads of matches and watching with abject terror as they all went up in about a quarter of a second, usually depriving one of our number of their eyebrows.

It would have stayed at this innocent level had my mate Graham not got involved. He was a wizz at science, and filled our heads with ideas of rockets, bombs, and certain combinations of garden chemicals and innocent kitchen ingredients which I won't go into right now as you'd get into trouble with the broadcasting authorities if I did. He would turn up after school with something he'd knocked up in his shed, we'd pack it full of the "substances", light the fuse and dive for cover. At the peak of our art we had rockets that could travel a good quarter of a mile, and what the bomb disposal people would call "viable devices" that would leave a sizable crater. It was gratifying to see that some of the innovations we brought about subsequently turned up in the Iraqi Supergun a few years ago. This success, inevitably, was to be our downfall.

Being 14 year old kids, we didn't have a firing range to test on like the army did. So we used the school field. After one particularly excitable device had veered off course and set fire to a hedge [casualty of war, I'm afraid], we were chased home by a baying hate mob who had witnessed the whole affair from the adjacent youth club. In our confusion, we ran through the wrong hole in the fence into our neighbour's garden, and it was quite a relief that the little squirt took the rap for the whole affair and not us.

But had we learnt our lesson ? Oh no ! Up the local chalk pits we went the following weekend with a satchel of the things determined to make a noise. Dressing in combat gear didn't help our cause much : there was this blue flashing light and the plod eventually rumbled our little game of world domination..... Being the cowards that we were, we laid the blame squarely on one of our number who had got cold feet and had run off home to watch Saturday Superstore.

Graham is now a well known research scientist, and at least one of our gang has used the experience gained in this little episode to forge a career in Her Majesty's Armed Forces. I, for my sins, still have the scar tissue on my right hand.

[Anti Pro]

I thought I was so grown up at nineteen that I got married, well, it did help me grow up pretty quickly afterwards!
------
Judy

------------------
"Muck should replace 'suck'. For 'muck' is yucky, while 'suck' feels very lucky. So, don't stay stuck on suck, switch to MUCK, today."

[Sentinel]

I've done quite a few really, really stupid things but I guess the worst would be as follows:

Loaned a cheating girlfriend $6,000. (I didn't know she was cheating then.)

Asked my most trusted and best friend to keep an eye on my girlfriend -- who had been stalked, while I was at work.

(He did more than keep an eye on her and they ran off together and she still owes me $6000 and he owes me $4000.)

Their names are Jill and Richard and they now have about a 7 year old son. If you know them don't trust them! DON'T LOAN THEM MONEY!

I might have actually gotten the better of the deal because she kinda swelled up like a watermelon and he's turned into a drunk!

[sailor]

here's a funny story http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/9886/Tomato.wav (660Kb)

[neutron star]

sailor :

We're sorry, but this page is currently unavailable for viewing. Please try again later, or search Yahoo! GeoCities for other pages that interest you.

[GaWd]

Hrmm...lemme think about this...

(1)Moved out of my families' home with a GIrlfriend that had 2 kids(not mine, thank GaWd), and brother to a city several hours away, with little money, no job. Finally got a job in retail(AcK!!) that was like 30 miles away that didn't pay the bills very efficiently.

(2)Only a week after my father passed away, I returned to work, and forwarded an E-mail from a customer to our Tech Support group.

Little did I know that it automatically copied the customer in my forward(no doubt a little act of espionage perpetrated by an ex friend that worked in the same dept). To say the least, with my inflammitory remarks about the end-user(I.E.-"this customer is a pain in the ass"), I was dispatched with haste.

(3)Posted a rather controversial question to a thread and when I didn't have my username and password handy, I created my own. Suffice it to say, I had not read the T's and C's(I'm almost contemplating reading them right now), and the mod and the admin...well, it went bad.

That's just a sampler of the "stupid things Sam has done" department.

[Spiny Norman]

I can't say that I've any stories to top those. But anyway:

In the Army, as a very, very green recruit.

We'd been issued a grand total of 5 blank rounds each - we weren't allowed near live ammo yet. Still, it was a step upward from the dummy rounds we'd been practicing loading/unloading with for the last week or so.

We were standing in ranks, rifles shouldered, preparing to march back to the barracks. The sergeant had spotted a private who had failed to safe (is that a word ?) his rifle. (We'd been practicing some (very basic) tactics in the terrain). I was completely confident that my rifle was safe, but I wanted to make 100% sure, as I had no real wish to do any more push-ups that day.

When you're standing in ranks, you cant see your weapon. You don't want to attract attention (believe me, you don't!) by fidgeting around to feel the safety switch. You can, however, discreetly move your right hand down to the trigger and feel if it's blocked, using your thumb. Of course, you need to judge the pressure needed very carefully.... As it turned out, my rifle wasn't safe, either, and my plan about not attracting attention completely fell apart.

My ears were ringing, so I didn't quite get every detail in the sergeants comments on the episode. I did gather, however, that he wasn't very happy with me, while I did an inordinate amount of push-ups.

Carrying a stick and yelling "Bang!" for a week was no fun, either....

Norman

[PunditLisa]

Happily making a cake with a mixer. The cord dislodges from the mixer and falls into the cake batter. Fish it out, think "Mmmmm" and proceed to lick the batter off.

You can imagine the rest.

[vanilla]

I believe its called getting married.

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[url=http://members.aol.com/abbie4ever22/index.html]My home page

[Openfist]

1) I once knocked myself unconscious. I was warming up for a Martial arts competition. One of the stretches was a leg lift (you swing your leg up to touch your shoulder). During this stretch my leg unlocked and my knee went crashing into my face. The next thing I know is that the medic is awaking me. Turns out that was the only injury of the whole tournament.

2) Once while doing a demo for my martial arts school a "volunteer" was picked from the audience to throw punches at me. It was all part of a skit to do a fighting scenario. The volunteer was actually a friend of mine who had worked the routine with me. He steps up to me and I ask him to throw a full strength punch at me. He obliges and starts throwing the punches. I am blocking and going through the routine. At one point I stop blocking and start to turn to the audience. Unfortunately my friend is full of adrenaline or whatever and does not stop punching (oh yea did I mention he is 6'1 and 300 lbs hitting full force?). Next thing I know I get hit in the side of my nose and hit the ground. I get up and find myself wearing a blood soaked uniform and listening to little children crying.

3) A few friends and I were sitting together drinking on a Sunday night. We all were waiting at a friend's apt for a bunch of girls to arrive from a night of clubbing. It was about 2-3 in the morning and we were all significantly sloshed. One of the guys has the idea that we should have some food around for when they arrive. We all mutually decided this is a good idea and head off to a 7 eleven about a mile away. After buying some groceries we start walking through a "shortcut" one of my friends suggest. While taking this shortcut a car slowly start to follow us. Eventually it passes us and drives down the street. The car gets about a block away from us, turns and heads towards us. It gets about 20 ft from us peels out and pulls up to the curb. 3 guys get out and the closest one has some kind of weapon. All three of us start running down the street to escape. As I am running I see a "dead end" sign and can only hope that life doesn't want to stick its irony to me. So I get to the end of this alley and duck behind a trashcan. Not more than 5 mins later I see the car drive past my street. I figure that I am in the clear and see a chain link fence to jump over. I step on one trashcan, jump on a stone wall, and then vault myself onto the fence (Of course it would have been a good idea to see if the fence was attached to anything...which it wasn't). As soon as my weight gets over the chain link fence it collapses and I go plummeting 12-15ft towards the ground. Luckily (???) there is a dumpster filled with trash to break my fall. I try to climb out of the Dumpster but it is filled with some kind of grease and I keep falling back in the Dumpster. Eventually I get my way out and start heading back to the friends' house. When I arrive the girls are waiting outside for us. I reek of garbage, have grease and stains all over my body, and am pretty scraped up. The other guys arrive a few minutes later without as much as a scratch. I think you can guess who didn’t get any loving that night. :)


------------------
Openfist

The hate I bear thee can afford No better term than this,--thou art a villain.

[SwimmingRiddles]

First of all, I never got to see this thread. I am wiping tears from my eyes. Literally.

When I was 16, my friend Caroline and I decided that we wanted to go to the first Lilith Fair. This concept occured to us the night before the show. We used the magic of ticket master and her mother's credit card to pay for the tickets. (not the stupid part, she's spoiled.) We get seats, and the woman tells us they are in row FF.

The next morning we take off for Montreal in my '89 Ford Tempo. We're late to begin with, and I have to stop and say goodbye to a friend of the family's 5 year old daugher who had adopted me as her mother-figure for the summer. She hugged me and wouldn't let go for 10 minutes. It was sweet, but contributed to our late-ness. We drive for an hour until we reach the Canadian boader. Perhaps it was the concert, but the boarder was a mess. Cars backed up everywhere. I smell something odd. At the same moment, Caroline asks me if I smell something. I look out the front windshield and see what I think is smoke rising from the hood of the car. I pop the hood, and a face full of steam reaches me. I then realise that the radiator temperature gauge had been disabled a couple years ago, when the car was my mother's. Some man in a mini-van leans out of his window and screams "Yep! That's your radiator." I almost attacked him.

So we were 2 hours from home, at the boarder, with $80 worth of tickets waiting for us in Montreal, an hour away. With a steaming car. After kicking the car a number of times and screaming obscenties, a young gentleman leans out of his Suburu and asks if we're going to Lilith Fair. "NOT ANY MORE!" I scream, kicking the car. "Do you want a ride?" he asks, "I LOVE you!" I exclaim, gleefully getting int eh car to move it to the shoulder of the road. Caroline expresses some misgivings about hopping in the car of a strange, frat-lookin' boy. I tell her she's being silly.

Well, I get in the trunk of Tony's Subbie. He is driving with three chicks, so we're safe. Caroline is about 5 feet, and tiny, so she squeezes in the back with the other two girls.

Tony doesn't know where he's going. Tony can't read a road map. But Tony can pilot a Subbie through tiny Montreal streets at the speed of light better than anyone I have known since.

We arrive at the venue, glad to be alive, and bid farewell to our ride. We then realise: Fantastic. We have NO way of getting home. I start freaking out, panicing that I am going to have to learn French to live in Montreal. Caroline points out that she has her mother's credit card, we can always take a bus home. I call my dad. He agrees to pick us up.

I never even considered how easily I could have been killed, hitchhiking with strangers, strangers who can't drive, and easily could have gotten us killed, stranded in a strange city in a not-so-hot neighborhood. The positive? Those row FF seats were 5th row. It was a neato show.

Of course, I also spent 25 continious hours on 41st in Manhatten for tickets to Rent once, but that's another story. :)

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________________________________
I'm waiting for my Wally quote.

[soulsling]

taking 10 hits of acid, spraying myself with hairspray, and rollerblading off the roof of my friends garage while lit up on fire one 4th of july long ago.

[Kirok]

Okay this is a novel but it may be helpful to Ryan's ego.

1. Out to dinner with my two best friends(?). I order the Cactus Juice (we were at a redneck bar). Cactus Juice has 5 - 8 shots of fire water in it and comes in a 44 ounce glass and is mixed with fruit juices and such. The waiter brings the cactus juice and then Skot says to me. I bet you can't drink that in under a minute. I take the bet he times me. I drank it in 23 seconds.

The waiter comes around the corner 2 minutes after delivering the cactus juice and says "Where'd it go?". We tell him and he says he has to see this done. He brings out another one on the house. Skot times me and I down that one is 19 seconds. The waiter freaks and says. "The kitchen staff have to see this." He then proceeds to bring out another one (in the interim I had to have him bring out a cup of tea to warm my frozen stomach, let me tell you if you think that "brain freeze" is an issue try "stomach freeze" on for size). So the 3rd drink and the kitchen staff are standing in front of me. Skot times it and I get that one down in 21 seconds.

By this time I'm out of my gourd. We finish our meal and head out the door. Now Skot and Jen haven't been drinking at all. I'm lit up like a supernova. I decide it'll be funny to drive Jen's car. Jen and Skot decide that would be funny too (?).

We get in and head down the road. It's a side road and there are no cars within 300 feet in front or behind me. I take a corner on the rainslick road at 65 MPH. The corner is recommended for 30. The car fishtails and the rear slides into a barrier which throws the car on it's side. I look over at my best friend Skot. His face is 1 1/2 inches from the pavement separated by a window sliding 50 MPH down the road. At this point things have slowed down and I'm thinking (?) "Hey, if I turn the wheel the car might flip back onto it's wheels or onto it's top. I've got a 50/50 chance either way. So I turn the wheel. The car drops onto it's wheels and I drive the get away.

We pull over in a neighborhood and shake for about 2 hours before getting back in the car to drive home. Nobody got hurt. The car was driveable but hideous. I almost killed my two best friends.

Sometimes the universe gives you a second chance. When it does, don't blow it.

Needless to say I don't drink and drive ever, amen!

2. Same bar two years later. Skot bets me a compact disk that I won't drink 1 1/2 cups of tobasco brand hot sauce.

I got the CD and threw up for 30 minutes.

[Coldfire]

Why on earth did they allow you to drive??

BTW, welcome aboard.

[tracer]

SwimmingRiddles wrote:

When I was 16, my friend Caroline and I decided that we wanted to go to the first Lilith Fair.

Lilith Fair Performers, Attendees Achieve Largest-Ever Synchronized Ovulation: http://www.theonion.com/onion3404/lilithfair.html ;)

[Vestal Blue]

Germany, the Summer of 1970. I'm ten years old.

one of my favourite things to do on a swing at that time was to swing so high the chains went limp at apogee, and then flipping upside down, wrap my legs around the chains and return head first. It was truly a rush!

The very last time I did this, the rubber seat had stretched, without my realizing it, and my face caught the ground at full swing (so to speak). It flipped me out of the swing and laid me out several feet away on the grass, and my face looked like hamburger. It kind of reminded of the old Six Million Dollar Man Show: "She's breaking up! She's breaking up!".

The Doctors were amazed that I didn't break my neck or any facial bones. As there was nothing to stitch, all they could do was wash the dirt out of the wounds and let it scab over. I was quite a sight, I can assure you! The upside is that by the time Halloween rolled around, my face was a conglomeration of new pink skin, old scab, and yellowed bruises, although the swelling had gone down. I didn't need a mask!

I also got in trouble at school for hiding in corners and jumping out at girls, causing them to shriek and drop their books! It was great fun!

------------------
VB
I've performed a complete diagnosis of your car. It's broken.

- A Wally original!

[Gr8Kat]

I've dug through the memory banks trying to think of a stupid-funny thing instead of a stupid-mushy thing I've done. Failing in that, I'll offer up a stupid-pathetic thing, instead. Warning, it's a novel.

I'm a country bumpkin who's led a very sheltered life. So, 5 years ago, at the tender age of 22 or so, when my younger, cooler, sister and her boyfriend asked if I'd like to join them and her friend Joey for a weekend of clubbing in Portland, I said, "Yippee! A chance to get out of the house and be cool!"

Joey lived in The Dalles, about 80 miles east of Portland, and we lived in Willamina, about 60 miles south of Portland, so we had quite a long drive going out to pick him up and then turning around and going back to Portland. My sister drove her '76 Maverick so big sister was relegated to the back seat. The trip got off on a bad foot when Joey joined us and boyfriend Matt was also relegated to the back seat. Boyfriend no like playing second fiddle to 16 year old gay twerp (my sister was, at the time, a raging f** hag). Especially when twerp thought it was the height of cool to blast songs from the "Brady Bunch" at top volume. So he sulked the 80 miles back to Portland. (My sister was 20 and her boyfriend was 17, so maturity levels weren't real high, either.)

We had fun bumming around Portland that afternoon, though, shopping at Django Records, The O-Zone, Route 66, Magpie's, Powell's World of Books, I forget where-else, and eating at The Roxy. That was the fun part of the weekend, except for the sulking boyfriend who hated that my sister was lavishing all her attention on Joey. Finally, sun set and we headed to The City, Portland's only (so far as I know, anyway, but I'm a sheltered bumpkin) all ages gay night club. That would have been fun, too, except Joey hooked up with some guy in a dress named Scotty who was hanging with his friends , a goth chick named Anita and her boyfriend "Tweaker." Sometime after midnight, Joey, Scotty, Anita, and Tweaker (these names are burned into my memory) decided it would be fun to visit "Witches' Castle" and "tell ghost stories" until sunrise. We'd never heard of Witches' Castle, but we were assured it was a "real" haunted house in some park downtown. Or maybe it was a cave. I remember names better than details. Bonnie and Matt protested, but peer pressure got the better of them. Me? I didn't dare protest, I couldn't let them think I wasn't "cool".

So we all piled into my sister's Mav. She and Matt sat up front and the rest of us were squished into the back. We were squeezed in so tight that Tweaker could repeatedly "accidentally" cop a feel and, again, I couldn't let them think I was cool so my lip was zipped.

The only way to access the park was by walking down about 100 wooden steps set into a hillside. Did I mention I'm extremely acrophobic and it was pitch black? Bonnie and Matt refused to participate, but ... sigh.... you know the drill. So Joey, Scotty, et all, get me down the steps and we set off on a cement path to "Witches' Castle." By this time, a light rain was falling and none of us were wearing coats. Well, maybe Tweaker was. I don't know how far we walked, but the whole way Anita kept saying things like, "I'm really sensitive spirits and they're all around us, I can feel them, I can see them!" trying to freak everyone out. We walked up hills and down hills, we walked and walked and walked... did I mention I'm disabled and walked with a pronounced limp? But I couldn't tell them how tired and sore (not to mention wet) I was getting because etc., etc.

Suddenly Matt came up out of nowhere and said he and Bonnie were getting worried because we'd been gone so long. Note we still haven't arrived at any "Castle." They assure him we're almost there and will be on our way back shortly. He says OK and heads back to the car. Oh how I wish I'd joined him. But no, I've walked an hour in the rain, I'm going to see a g--damned "Witches' Castle" if it kills me. You have to know what happens next, though, right? I mean, Bonnie and Matt said they'd seen it coming a mile away but poor naive sister was clueless.

After Matt left, Joey took me aside and says, condescendingly (how humiliating), "We're about to do something very bad." It was crank. No, I didn't touch the stuff, I just stood off to the side weeping while they snorted it up. The walk back to the car seemed much quicker. We didn't have to go back up the wooden steps because Bonnie had found another place to park at the foot of the hill. Cold and wet, we piled back into the Maverick and headed back to The City where Scotty, et al, were dropped off, leaving just the original 4 musketeers. It was 3:00 AM and the club was going to close in an hour. They tried to convince us to stay, but we were too tired, too angry, too disappointed. We started to head back to The Dalles to spend the night with Joey's family, but my sister was too distraught by the whole experience; she was tired, crying, driving erratically (hey, what was she so upset about? She just had to sit in a car for two hours, I was the one dragged over hill and dale in the rain by druggies!), so I convinced her to pull off and find a motel. I had my mom's credit card for emergencies, so we got a room with two beds; of course Bonnie and Matt in one, me and Joey in the other. I was freezing cold at this point and couldn't get warm; I probably had hypothermia. It was about 5:00 AM when we got to bed, and I just laid there for at least an hour shivering, watching the sun rise and listening to trains go by. I considered snuggling up to Joey for warmth, but it probly woulda freaked him out.

Management called at 11:00 AM and kicked us out. Exhausted and bedraggled, we took Joey home where his sweet mom fixed us French toast. I came down with a raging case of the flu and missed about a week of work. Joey said he'd call, he said he wanted to come hang out in the sticks and see how the other half lives, but we never heard from him again. All in all, lessons were learned and life went on.

------------------
"I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it," Jack Handy

Are we kin? Visit me at The Kat House (http://members.aol.com/gr8kat1/KatGen/home.htm) and find out!
Join the FSH Muscular Dystrophy Webring (http://members.aol.com/gr8kat1/KatGen/fshwebring.htm)

[Milossarian]

When I was a sophomore in college, I spent a semester interning as a writer/producer at CNN's Detroit Bureau. It was awesome, and everybody there seemed to like me and the job I did.

But, because I then had to go back to college and finish three more years (as it turned out), and because I didn't know any better, I let all of my ties with those folks kind of fade out. If I'd have cultivated the relationships I'd started there, I probably could have gotten a real nice job with CNN out of it upon my graduation. As it went, everybody in that bureau has moved on to much bigger and much better things with CNN (this was 11 years ago now).

A little lighter one involving Mrs. Milo: I was in the living room one night; she was in the kitchen doing dishes. I hear a loud, odd noise, hear her yell, and come out and she's on the floor, looking dazed. Fortunately, she was OK.

During the course of doing the dishes, she'd somehow managed to conk herself on the head with a pot she was washing, and almost knocked herself out. Years later, I still haven't figured out how she managed that.

------------------
Give me immortality, or give me death!

[Kirok]

Thank you for the welcome. This is a great thread and I'm glad I've joined.

I called one of the friends to find out what the theory was on letting me drive.

Jen was the owner of the car. She tells me that at the time I looked completely in control and I assured her that I would be safe to drive such a small distance (we were only about 1/4 mile from our destination). I guess I proved her wrong ;)

I don't remember this part of the story at all. I just remember being handed the keys and getting in to drive.

------------------
Knowledge is not wisdom

[Breckinshire]

Ah, I remember my very first college chemistry class...

We were using hoods (sort of like fireplaces, used to vent dangerous gasses or flames) to cook up some hydrogen in test tubes. You were supposed to hold the bottom of the test tube over the bunsen burner. We were told not to set the contents of the tubes on fire. I had no problem with that, as I was a little nervous about doing this. Well, my lab partner at the time was very hot, and I sort of got distracted by her, and the next thing I know, there's a very loud whoosh and a big flare up. In my distracted state, it startled me, so I dropped the test tube, knocked over the bunsen burner, and fell back into the next table. Needless to say, I later switched lab partners (or perhaps it was the other way around) and I never found the courage to speak to her again (again, perhaps the other way around).

------------------

Blessed are the Fundamentalists, for they shall inhibit the earth.

[jaytini]

well, unlike many of the fun stories posted here, mine happened only a little while ago. In the throws of celebrating me (EEEEK) 26th birthday at the back to college bash i was having, i decided to try to cram the 5 years of college into one night of party. i did not take into account that my liver, constitution and tolerance had all decreased significantly since college. so needless to say starting the funnel at 4:00 following it with the booze luge (combining mandarine vodka, fire water, and something bright green, maybe apple scnapps) and chasing it with a couple of swigs from the keg, running around, eating cake and some kind of pasta creation, only to start the whole process again, none of this was a good idea. but i was having fun. some of it gets a little blurry, and at one point, i remember sitting at the bottom of the stairs, puking into a bowl (i think) then the next thing i remember is puking in the toilet bowl. at one point i brushed my head against the rim of the bowl, and realized that my forehaed was sore. next thing i know it was the morning...i dragged my self into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and realized that i had rug burn all over my face...from what i have been told...i was mid sentance halfway down the stairs when i stopped talking, looked up, and passed out, landing on my face and sliding down on the burber carpet...OUCH, i was the point of humiliation for at least a week at work, and of course, the reference for any story of drunken debauchery to come.
point being...college happens when you are young for a reason :eek:

[Vestal Blue]

My brother and I had a kiddy bow and arrow set, the kind with suction cup arrows. One evening we got bored with that, and had the bright idea of pulling the suction cups off and replacing it with a foam rubber ball.

We took turns shooting each other with it until on the last shot I nailed him right between the eyes.
He started hollering and clutching his head while I ridiculed him for being a baby, until I saw the blood. After wiping the blood away we found a neat semi-circular cut in his forehead. It turns out that with each successive impact, the arrow shaft drove a little bit further through the ball.....

------------------
VB
I've performed a complete diagnosis of your car. It's broken.

- A Wally original!

[THespos]

My brain torments me endlessly with reruns of all the stupid things I've done. Here's one.

Sophomore year in college, during fraternity rush. I was in a fraternity, and we were trying to impress freshmen by taking them on a road trip to a local girls-only school and getting them hammered. Three cars left our frat house that night, in a sort of caravan, with plenty of beer under the cover of darkness.

I'm driving my 1981 Pontiac Grand Prix and my car is second in line in the caravan. We're on a two-lane interstate and the lead car in the group pulls into the left lane to pass a slow-moving truck. I do the same.

Just as I do, two headlights come up behind me at high speed and disappear under my bumper. I figure that this is car #3 in the caravan, my friend Scott, and he wants to race or something. I floor it.

Our car passes the slow-moving truck at 80 MPH, well on its way to 115 MPH. (Top speed is estimated, as the needle buries at 85.) I pull ahead of car #1 and shift into the right lane with the pedal still to the metal. Right at around 115 I decide to look over and notice that I'm not racing car #3, but a Virginia State Trooper.

The trooper's light revolved once or twice, to warn me to slow down, and then he took off . I slowed down to 55 and tried as best I could to stop repeating "Oh my God...Oh my God" over and over again.

After arriving at the girls-only school party, we tried to figure out how badly I would have been screwed if that trooper hadn't had somewhere else to be:

1) Several guns and several boxes of ammo (left over from our fraternity shooting event) were stashed in the trunk.

2) Three cases of beer in the passenger compartment. Several open containers. No one in the car was even CLOSE to 21 (all 18- and 19-year-olds).

3) Radar detector on the dash ($500 fine).

4) Several car occupants had full bat boxes in their pockets. (Bat box = 1-hit marijuana pipe and reservoir)

All this, plus the 115 MPH in a 55 zone would have probably gotten me on COPS: Stupidest Lawbreakers #4 or something like that. Luckily for me, I was spared.

------------------
"Hand me my wallet...It's the one that says 'Bad Motherf**ker' on it."

[Vestal Blue]

Wow! This thread has really brought out the newbies! Welcome aboard, Y'all!

------------------
VB
I've performed a complete diagnosis of your car. It's broken.

- A Wally original!

[CanadaBoy]

Most stupid things I do involve me injuring myself.

Incident#1 - Age 12. A pencil fight with my friend. You now where you pretend there swords and you poke each other. Well we didn't want to hurt each other so we pointed the eraser end towards one another. Well when I poked my friend the lead pointy end went right through my hand. I still have scars on both sides of my hand to prove it.

Incident#2 - Age 16. Jumping on a trampoline and tried to do a backflip which I did not land. The result was my knee smashing into my face breaking my nose. Here's the stupid part....tried the same thing one month later with the exact same result. I haven't tried since then.

Incident#3 - Age 18. Started drinking early in the day. My friends didn't think I could break a beer bottle over my head. Well I proved them wrong but I sliced my right index finger to the bone. That didn't slow me down though. We later went to the bar, 20 some tequila later I took some endo's (speed). This was my demise. As we were walking outside the bar I see a shopping cart. I start running with the shopping cart. I fall still clenching the handle of the shopping cart grinding my knuckles across the pavement. Result = ripping off 5 of my figure nails and a whole lotta pain. I’m still not done for the night though. I get home and strap on the roller blades. Now we all know this is going to lead to more pain. So me and my friend start truckin it down the street and I wipeout hard. Tearing off a good portion of the skin that was left on my hands. I wake up in the morning covered in my own blood on my floor.

[Hepzibah]

Last month at work, talented attorney decides it's silly to call for help to move a bunch of boxes of documents and books, so overeducated attorney takes first heavy box of books, turns round to put it on one of those standing box-carts (you know - the ones on which you can stack up about five boxes, then you have to tip it slightly so it goes up on its wheels and you can pull it?) and as gifted attorney leans forward and plunks it on the cart, the handle is set in motion, and whacks her head with extraordinary force, knocking her out in front of many amused people on her hall.

------------------
Ooh, I love your magazine. My favorite section is `How to increase your word power'. That thing is really, really.. really.... good. -- Homer, ``Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington''

[Olentzero]

Well, the stupidest thing in recent memory involves taking the Metro home from a night of solo drinking. I used to do that a lot.
I got off the Metro and came up to the bus depot and my bladder started setting off alarms. It's a good 45 minutes to home, including waiting for the bus, so I hie off behind some bushes and let go against the building. After that I didn't stick around for the bus - I took off for the nearest pedestrian exit, hoping none of the cops took notice. And there were plenty of them.
Oooh, really stupid, peeing on a building when you're drunk.
Yeah, but it was the Pentagon.

------------------
All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don't know who you are...

[Olentzero]

Well, the stupidest thing in recent memory involves taking the Metro home from a night of solo drinking. I used to do that a lot.
I got off the Metro and came up to the bus depot and my bladder started setting off alarms. It's a good 45 minutes to home, including waiting for the bus, so I hie off behind some bushes and let go against the building. After that I didn't stick around for the bus - I took off for the nearest pedestrian exit, hoping none of the cops took notice. And there were plenty of them.
Oooh, really stupid, peeing on a building when you're drunk.
Yeah, but it was the Pentagon.

------------------
All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don't know who you are...

[GasDr]

1) When I was a junior, I went on a college trip to China for a month (supposedly to learn.) My father had given me an Ativan to take on the plane in order to sleep on the eleven hour flight across the Pacific. I thought I needed more for the ride home so I helped myself to about eight which I placed in a baggie. So, here I am travelling in Communist China with a controlled substance in a little plastic bag distributing them to my friends. Could have ended up in an "Midnight Express" type flick.

2) As a kid, 13 or so, filled up a tennis ball with gasoline (easier than you may think), lit it, and rolled it down the neighborhood hill. Three yards were lit on fire, one uncontrollably requiring the fire dept. Somehow escaped getting caught.

3) Sober, fried an ice cube. Biggest mess ever.

[Odieman]

Think cold day and flagpole. I was eight years old and I had done it a couple of years earlier and I thought " I wonder if my tongue will still stick to the flag pole. I tried it , it stuck untill I ripped it off. When I felt the blood in my mouth and saw the skin on the pole I thought " I won't do that again."
This trait must be genetic. My sister once locked her car and put her car and apartment keys in her mouth. In December. In Saskatchewan. It must have looked funny to see her reach into her mouth, pull out her keys and scream.

I just keep looking at the metal ice cube tray in the freezer and go hmm....
Keith
--------
I cant tak my mouth is rozen to the tay. Hep me peeze.

[Cervaise]

Two stories: one old, one recent. Shows how little I've learned in life.

One.

I'm 16. I've got a stepsister who's maybe 12; naturally, I torture her incessantly.

We're in the kitchen, and I get another bright idea on how to torment her. I grab her, put her in a headlock, and drag her over to the stove. It's a gas stove; to turn on a burner, you twist the control all the way, then just a little bit more, and you get the click-click-click of the igniter before the foom of the flame being lit. Here's my bright idea: I hold my sister's head above the front left burner. Then I twist the control for the back right burner, figuring the click-click will scare her, and then the flames come on somewhere else, and it's a harmless prank.

Right? Wrong.

Me, the moron, I grabbed the control FOR THE ONE SHE'S OVER by mistake. When it comes on, the flames engulf her head, catching her copious hairspray. "Oh shit!" sez I, turn off the burner, and put out her head with my hands.

She is uninjured, but she stinks like, well, burned hair, and her head is a frizzy mass. I spent the next hour trimming off all of the twizzled ends and made her promise not to tell. A true moron moment, indeed.

Now, to prove I'm just as stupid as I used to be, this next one happened just last year.

Two.

My wife and I decide to have a barbeque out in the back yard. I pour the briquettes into the lighting chimney (I don't know the official name; it's a fat tube you light the coals in, so they burn more efficiently when you're getting started).

I look around for some lighter fluid, but the one we had out there is now empty; I forgot to buy a refill. My wife says, "You want me to go to the store?" Me, the moron, I say, "No, I'll just look around the house." I'm figuring maybe the landlord has a can of lighter fluid sitting around in the basement; we've found all sorts of other odds and ends.

So I wander for ten minutes. I find the gasoline for the lawn mower, but hey, I know better than that, right? Because I find something that looks cleaner and safer.

Two words: CAMP FUEL. Yes, that clear stuff, part white gas, part who knows what all, you put into Coleman stoves and lanterns and such.

I say, hey, this has to be better than gas. I pour a big paper cup of it and take it up to the grill. I dribble it slowly over the coals in the chimney. I know it'll burn different than the regular lighter fluid, but I'm not quite sure how, so I let the fuel soak into the briquettes for a while before I light it, figuring that's safer. I explain this to my wife, who's sitting fifteen feet away, reading. She gives me the raised eyebrows, but doesn't otherwise object, assuming I know what I'm doing.

Then, to be extra safe, instead of using a lighter or a match like usual, I twist up a roll of newspaper, to make a slightly longer tool, so my hand isn't right next to the chimney when I light the coals, just in case something goes wrong. I light the newspaper, and reach for the base of the chimney.

WHAP

That's the only way I can describe the sound. I don't really remember it clearly, because at the same time, it's like I got hit in the chest with a truck.

I go flying back seven or eight feet and bounce off the porch. My wife is immediately up, worried; she felt warm air. I can see her mouth moving, asking if I'm okay, except my ears are ringing. All of this clears up in a few seconds, and I'm relatively uninjured (scrapes from hitting the porch and crashing to the cement), but... damn.

Then I notice: The coals are burning, nice and normal, as if nothing untoward had happened.

That's when my wife goes into hysterical laughter, and I know I've done something really, really stupid.

Those are probably my top two. Lord knows I've been responsible for much other mayhem, though...

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Movie Geek Central -- Reviews, news, analysis, and more! http://moviegeek.homestead.com

[HaploXL]

Ok ryan i got one for ya. Still not as bad as yours but its still bad.

My friend Jeff opened his new store *yaaa*, the guy worked *note: worked* on computers for a living. Now this is way way way back when i didnt know what a modem was.
My other friend told me that if you were to lick the end of a power cable for the monoter *one of those that plugs in to the CPU, not the wall* then the salt on the end would make the power flow better ensuring that the monoter could drain what ever power it needed to always look better.

So the next time i am down there he sets up some computers with Doom and hooks us up with some god awfle contraption that lets us play like we were over a LAN.

Now i reach back and unplug the power cable from the computer *not the monoter if i did that the power would have still been commign from the computer, i ain THAT dumb* lick it then go to plug it back in.

Well Jeff had looked for a store that would be comferting to walk around in bare footed *he is a comfort based guy* and insisted that the store have thick carpets.

*sigh* well with a snap crackle and pop the floor cought on fire. Jeff walkign around bare foot comes around the corner to see me holding a wet plug to the back of a sparkign computer and the carpet flamming up.

Well in the long rin the whole place burnt up distroying his shop *about 13 ready to e sold computer sand parts for more*, a childs clothing store that was next door to him. And a flower shop before the fire people could get it out.

I still thank good that he told them that he was hooking up a system and it must have had a bad power sourse.

The actual events were only known by me and him. And now ya'll know.

And remember kids Alt+F4 makes your computer run faster. =)

------------------
Remember Franklin Osis,
Father of his Clan.
Three Strengths he gave us:
The jaguar's spring that brings an enemy down,
The jaguar's claw's that rend the enemy's heart,
The jaguar's taste for the enemy's hot blood.

-"The Remembrance" (Clan Smoke Jaguar), Passage 104, Verse 18, Lines 5-10

[Coldfire]

Since the maming of family members is a topic as well as of late, let me teel you a li'l story.

I was about seven years old, and my sister must have been five. I had recently gotten one of them trainticket-sets for my birthday (you know, fake tickets, hat, whistle, signalling device, and a pair of them ticket pliers [don't know if that's the word, but I'm sure you know what I mean]). The pliers were especially realistic, and I loved playing with them. It started out innocently.

My mother was away for the weekend, so my father had to watch out my sister and I didn't kill each other. Believe me, this was not a very distant possibility - we were at each others throats most of the times.

Why it happened, I do not know. All I know it my father was lying asleep on the couch in the living room, and we were playing upstairs, relatively unsupervised.
For whatever reason, my sister and I got into a huge fight (it's not like we needed a reason, mind you). Since I was in full Ticket Clipping mode, I thought it would be a need idea to take my sisters cheek in my hand and threaten to clip it with my nifty plyers. But because I was angry (believe me, this girl could basically get me berserk ) no matter how much I restrained myself), I must have underestimated the force I was excersizing.

Yup, you guessed it. Clipped a neat little hole right through her cheek :D

She still has a tiny scar, at 25 years now. But we get along nicely, contrary to the old days.

Boy, I have NEVER seen my mother so pissed off...

------------------
Defect borg:
"Refutile is sistance. Your ass will be simulated".
_______________________________________________________
WallyM7 on Coldfire:
"Yeah, he knows a little about everything because they have a good prison library."

[Coldfire]

Please excuse my poor spelling and horrible English. My friend "1997 Rioja Faustino VII" also wants to apologize for that :D

[sh]

Used to own a house on lake Erie. Long narrow property, maybe 55 ft wide and 800 ft deep. House was halfway down the length of the property, up on a hill, maybe 70-80 ft above lake level.

A friend of mine from out-of-town used to visit there. We had a sort of hobby of having a few beers, and building model rockets. Got tired of that, and graduated to the build 'em yourself version, using plastic tube, plastic sheet, duct tape, whatever we could find. Made it easier to put in multiple engines and the like. Being safety-conscious, we used to launch these over the lake, figuring the odds of fire would be cut considerably.

I can clearly recall the last launch. A fine piece of work, three engines in it. It was very disappointing when the first engine lit, and the contraption landed in the lake about 30 ft from shore. I still can't explain how it took off from that point.

We lost sight of it while the second engine was still going, before the third ignited. At that point, it was probably 150 feet above the house, gaining altitude and headed towards town. I always wondered what sort of reaction it created when it landed…


p.s. Coldfire: Faustino... is that the one with the picture of the guy (or really ugly girl) on the front, looks sort of like George Washington? Nice stuff. But hard as hell on the typing, I'll bet.

[sh]

Ok, if the rocket didn't sound stupid enough...

I once went to a sushi restaurant in Mexico. And paid the price that is totally predictable to anyone with any sense.

[Coldfire]

Sh, you're absolutely right! Butt ugly... but boy, does he taste fine ;)

[Smeghead]

GasDr's story reminded me of my trip to Asia a while back.

I was in Singapore first, on a tram ride to a nearby island. We were talking about Singapore's famously strict laws, including one that punished public spitting with a hefty fine and I believe jail time(?) Right in the middle of the conversation, I lean over the side and spit into a public area. I didn't even think about what I was doing until I turned back around and saw the looks on everyone's faces. OK, it wasn't much of a crime, but you'd think the conversation would have given me pause.

A week later, I was in Bejing, haggling with a street merchant for something or other, and for reasons that to this day remain a mystery to me, I made some crack about "red China". Turns out, they don't like that phrase too much. Everyone within hearing range got that same look on their faces - kind of the deer in headlights look.

Yes, I felt stupid.

[Coldfire]

Smeghead: no jailtime for spitting in S'pore... a Sing$ 500 fine is likely to come your way, though.

Trivia: you cam buy a T-shirt in Singapore that reads:

"Singapore is a FINE country!"

[fnord1966]

Allrighty, you want to talk about stupid things, i am the KING i tell you.

#1 it all started long ago at my aunts first wedding rececption, i am 6 i think, well it was in a boyscouts hall or some such thing, so there was a kitchen and all that stuff, well, in one corner there was an old industrial freezer, not a walk in, probably only 3 feet deep. well, being a crazy and curious 6 yearold, i look inside, what do i see? but a pile of buttons, the white ones that look like pearl, so i figure i can keep the door open with my foot while i get the buttons, well, i think i came up a little short, so i let go with my foot to grab the stupid buttons, slam goes the door,light goes out and i about shit my pants. i scream and yell and cry and kick and cry some more, but this is a thick heavy door, i cant budge it, after what felt like 3 days, my mom opens the door, and i am set free, all this over buttons. oh did i mention that the only reason my mom looked in the freezer was that someone had seen me BY it a while ago, and my mom couldnt find me. top that for stupididy.

#2 i was about 8 or 9, and somehow i managed to get myself stuck behind the fold down seat of a 1980 ford F-150, it took my dad 15 min with a crowbar to get me out, did i mention i was claustrophobic at the time? still am.

#3 lets just say i was a pyro maniac, i live in redding CA, it gets really really dry here in the summer, didnt catch anything on fire but what i was burning, but could have wiped out the entire county.

#4 fire again, last day of burn season, my dad wanted me to light the pile of brush that we had collected over the winter, its about 6 feet tall, and about 10x10 feet, well it had to be burnt and out by the end of the day according to my dad, so i bust out the lawnmower gas, its a 5 gallon can, I pour it all over the pile, that is 5 gallons of regular unleaded, i thought i was being conservative (told yall i wasa pyro) then i pour a line about 10 feet out, as a fuse, well, the gas had evaporateda bit in the 10 min or so. i whip out my trusty Zippo, and light it, i was probably a good 10 feet into the fuel air vapor when it lit, 50 foot fireball, with me right inthe middle, lucky me i was still soaked froma dip in the pool, my arms were bald for a week, and the concussion from the fireball knocked me back about 5 feet. needless to say, there wasnt much left of the pile, actually it was burnt up and out in about an hour. now i saw some pretty dumb stuff, but nothing that stupid.
ALex

------------------

[fnord1966]

Allrighty, you want to talk about stupid things, i am the KING i tell you.

#1 it all started long ago at my aunts first wedding rececption, i am 6 i think, well it was in a boyscouts hall or some such thing, so there was a kitchen and all that stuff, well, in one corner there was an old industrial freezer, not a walk in, probably only 3 feet deep. well, being a crazy and curious 6 yearold, i look inside, what do i see? but a pile of buttons, the white ones that look like pearl, so i figure i can keep the door open with my foot while i get the buttons, well, i think i came up a little short, so i let go with my foot to grab the stupid buttons, slam goes the door,light goes out and i about shit my pants. i scream and yell and cry and kick and cry some more, but this is a thick heavy door, i cant budge it, after what felt like 3 days, my mom opens the door, and i am set free, all this over buttons. oh did i mention that the only reason my mom looked in the freezer was that someone had seen me BY it a while ago, and my mom couldnt find me. top that for stupididy.

#2 i was about 8 or 9, and somehow i managed to get myself stuck behind the fold down seat of a 1980 ford F-150, it took my dad 15 min with a crowbar to get me out, did i mention i was claustrophobic at the time? still am.

#3 lets just say i was a pyro maniac, i live in redding CA, it gets really really dry here in the summer, didnt catch anything on fire but what i was burning, but could have wiped out the entire county.

#4 fire again, last day of burn season, my dad wanted me to light the pile of brush that we had collected over the winter, its about 6 feet tall, and about 10x10 feet, well it had to be burnt and out by the end of the day according to my dad, so i bust out the lawnmower gas, its a 5 gallon can, I pour it all over the pile, that is 5 gallons of regular unleaded, i thought i was being conservative (told yall i wasa pyro) then i pour a line about 10 feet out, as a fuse, well, the gas had evaporateda bit in the 10 min or so. i whip out my trusty Zippo, and light it, i was probably a good 10 feet into the fuel air vapor when it lit, 50 foot fireball, with me right inthe middle, lucky me i was still soaked froma dip in the pool, my arms were bald for a week, and the concussion from the fireball knocked me back about 5 feet. needless to say, there wasnt much left of the pile, actually it was burnt up and out in about an hour. now i saw some pretty dumb stuff, but nothing that stupid.
ALex

------------------

[fnord1966]

Allrighty, you want to talk about stupid things, i am the KING i tell you.

#1 it all started long ago at my aunts first wedding rececption, i am 6 i think, well it was in a boyscouts hall or some such thing, so there was a kitchen and all that stuff, well, in one corner there was an old industrial freezer, not a walk in, probably only 3 feet deep. well, being a crazy and curious 6 yearold, i look inside, what do i see? but a pile of buttons, the white ones that look like pearl, so i figure i can keep the door open with my foot while i get the buttons, well, i think i came up a little short, so i let go with my foot to grab the stupid buttons, slam goes the door,light goes out and i about shit my pants. i scream and yell and cry and kick and cry some more, but this is a thick heavy door, i cant budge it, after what felt like 3 days, my mom opens the door, and i am set free, all this over buttons. oh did i mention that the only reason my mom looked in the freezer was that someone had seen me BY it a while ago, and my mom couldnt find me. top that for stupididy.

#2 i was about 8 or 9, and somehow i managed to get myself stuck behind the fold down seat of a 1980 ford F-150, it took my dad 15 min with a crowbar to get me out, did i mention i was claustrophobic at the time? still am.

#3 lets just say i was a pyro maniac, i live in redding CA, it gets really really dry here in the summer, didnt catch anything on fire but what i was burning, but could have wiped out the entire county.

#4 fire again, last day of burn season, my dad wanted me to light the pile of brush that we had collected over the winter, its about 6 feet tall, and about 10x10 feet, well it had to be burnt and out by the end of the day according to my dad, so i bust out the lawnmower gas, its a 5 gallon can, I pour it all over the pile, that is 5 gallons of regular unleaded, i thought i was being conservative (told yall i wasa pyro) then i pour a line about 10 feet out, as a fuse, well, the gas had evaporateda bit in the 10 min or so. i whip out my trusty Zippo, and light it, i was probably a good 10 feet into the fuel air vapor when it lit, 50 foot fireball, with me right inthe middle, lucky me i was still soaked froma dip in the pool, my arms were bald for a week, and the concussion from the fireball knocked me back about 5 feet. needless to say, there wasnt much left of the pile, actually it was burnt up and out in about an hour. now i saw some pretty dumb stuff, but nothing that stupid.
ALex

------------------

[fnord1966]

Allrighty, you want to talk about stupid things, i am the KING i tell you.

#1 it all started long ago at my aunts first wedding rececption, i am 6 i think, well it was in a boyscouts hall or some such thing, so there was a kitchen and all that stuff, well, in one corner there was an old industrial freezer, not a walk in, probably only 3 feet deep. well, being a crazy and curious 6 yearold, i look inside, what do i see? but a pile of buttons, the white ones that look like pearl, so i figure i can keep the door open with my foot while i get the buttons, well, i think i came up a little short, so i let go with my foot to grab the stupid buttons, slam goes the door,light goes out and i about shit my pants. i scream and yell and cry and kick and cry some more, but this is a thick heavy door, i cant budge it, after what felt like 3 days, my mom opens the door, and i am set free, all this over buttons. oh did i mention that the only reason my mom looked in the freezer was that someone had seen me BY it a while ago, and my mom couldnt find me. top that for stupididy.

#2 i was about 8 or 9, and somehow i managed to get myself stuck behind the fold down seat of a 1980 ford F-150, it took my dad 15 min with a crowbar to get me out, did i mention i was claustrophobic at the time? still am.

#3 lets just say i was a pyro maniac, i live in redding CA, it gets really really dry here in the summer, didnt catch anything on fire but what i was burning, but could have wiped out the entire county.

#4 fire again, last day of burn season, my dad wanted me to light the pile of brush that we had collected over the winter, its about 6 feet tall, and about 10x10 feet, well it had to be burnt and out by the end of the day according to my dad, so i bust out the lawnmower gas, its a 5 gallon can, I pour it all over the pile, that is 5 gallons of regular unleaded, i thought i was being conservative (told yall i wasa pyro) then i pour a line about 10 feet out, as a fuse, well, the gas had evaporateda bit in the 10 min or so. i whip out my trusty Zippo, and light it, i was probably a good 10 feet into the fuel air vapor when it lit, 50 foot fireball, with me right inthe middle, lucky me i was still soaked froma dip in the pool, my arms were bald for a week, and the concussion from the fireball knocked me back about 5 feet. needless to say, there wasnt much left of the pile, actually it was burnt up and out in about an hour. now i saw some pretty dumb stuff, but nothing that stupid.
ALex

------------------

[fnord1966]

Allrighty, you want to talk about stupid things, i am the KING i tell you.

#1 it all started long ago at my aunts first wedding rececption, i am 6 i think, well it was in a boyscouts hall or some such thing, so there was a kitchen and all that stuff, well, in one corner there was an old industrial freezer, not a walk in, probably only 3 feet deep. well, being a crazy and curious 6 yearold, i look inside, what do i see? but a pile of buttons, the white ones that look like pearl, so i figure i can keep the door open with my foot while i get the buttons, well, i think i came up a little short, so i let go with my foot to grab the stupid buttons, slam goes the door,light goes out and i about shit my pants. i scream and yell and cry and kick and cry some more, but this is a thick heavy door, i cant budge it, after what felt like 3 days, my mom opens the door, and i am set free, all this over buttons. oh did i mention that the only reason my mom looked in the freezer was that someone had seen me BY it a while ago, and my mom couldnt find me. top that for stupididy.

#2 i was about 8 or 9, and somehow i managed to get myself stuck behind the fold down seat of a 1980 ford F-150, it took my dad 15 min with a crowbar to get me out, did i mention i was claustrophobic at the time? still am.

#3 lets just say i was a pyro maniac, i live in redding CA, it gets really really dry here in the summer, didnt catch anything on fire but what i was burning, but could have wiped out the entire county.

#4 fire again, last day of burn season, my dad wanted me to light the pile of brush that we had collected over the winter, its about 6 feet tall, and about 10x10 feet, well it had to be burnt and out by the end of the day according to my dad, so i bust out the lawnmower gas, its a 5 gallon can, I pour it all over the pile, that is 5 gallons of regular unleaded, i thought i was being conservative (told yall i wasa pyro) then i pour a line about 10 feet out, as a fuse, well, the gas had evaporateda bit in the 10 min or so. i whip out my trusty Zippo, and light it, i was probably a good 10 feet into the fuel air vapor when it lit, 50 foot fireball, with me right inthe middle, lucky me i was still soaked froma dip in the pool, my arms were bald for a week, and the concussion from the fireball knocked me back about 5 feet. needless to say, there wasnt much left of the pile, actually it was burnt up and out in about an hour. now i saw some pretty dumb stuff, but nothing that stupid.
ALex

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[NothingMan]

How about this past Easter weekend ? I was playing catch with a baseball and a few friends at a cook-out. The host of this BBQ is an old friend and has a three year old I sit for sometimes. So as he was going into the house for something (I think it was cheese) he said "keep an eye on Ethan". Fine no problem . . . well, except it is hard to keep an eye on a three year old and a baseball at the same time. You guessed it - I ended up catching a particularly hard thrown one right in the face. I dropped like a sack bleeding all over, I thought I had broken my nose. Turns out I just split my upper lip open and gave myself a nasty bruise right under my nose. I was a trooper and stayed for the rest of the event. Afterwards I went home and took an obscene amount of pain killers and went to bed. Its three days later and I still look like someone punched me, and I still have a terrible head-ache. If it doesn't go away in a few days, I suppose I will have to go see a doctor. I really felt very stupid.

Moral : Catch a baseball with your glove not your face. OWWWWWWWWW!!!

------------------
"I am mortal, born to love and to suffer." - Friedrich Holderlin

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[NothingMan]

How about this past Easter weekend ? I was playing catch with a baseball and a few friends at a cook-out. The host of this BBQ is an old friend and has a three year old I sit for sometimes. So as he was going into the house for something (I think it was cheese) he said "keep an eye on Ethan". Fine no problem . . . well, except it is hard to keep an eye on a three year old and a baseball at the same time. You guessed it - I ended up catching a particularly hard thrown one right in the face. I dropped like a sack bleeding all over, I thought I had broken my nose. Turns out I just split my upper lip open and gave myself a nasty bruise right under my nose. I was a trooper and stayed for the rest of the event. Afterwards I went home and took an obscene amount of pain killers and went to bed. Its three days later and I still look like someone punched me, and I still have a terrible head-ache. If it doesn't go away in a few days, I suppose I will have to go see a doctor. I really felt very stupid.

Moral : Catch a baseball with your glove not your face. OWWWWWWWWW!!!

------------------
"I am mortal, born to love and to suffer." - Friedrich Holderlin

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[KravMason]

Lets go chronologically:

Age 9ish: Racing against 6 year old sister in department store. She begins to win. I decide to push her out of my way. I knock her to ground and she cracks two front teeth on floor.

Age 10ish: Riding bicycle down hill at high rate of speed, decide to use soles of shoes on pavment to slow down. Sometime later wake up in street as car approaches. I am covered in blood. Thankfully car carries doctor. He brings me home. I require 14 stiches. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Age 11ish: Accidentally lynch best friend. Full story kind of long. I put the chair back under his feet in a couple of seconds but it was scary. Truly accidental. Best friend still best friend.

Age 20ish: Home visiting from college. I am now about 6'4", or almost 6'6" with my shoes. I am acting silly and skipping around the house. Sadly, apex of skip and top of door jam coincide. I knock myself silly. I don't think I actually lost consciousness, but it was close.

Age 24ish: Taste "Smoked Ale", otherwise known as liquid ham. Not palatable, but as there is so much more beer to smother the taste, I down it anyway. Stopped drinking after about 4 beers. Became VERY VERY ill the rest of the night.

I'm sure there is more, but I will stop now.

--

"Keep charging the enemy until there is no life." - A Fortune Cookie

[Sentinel]

Well, let's see now. I've done enough stupid things to fill a book with.

I believed[/b] her when she said she was breaking up with him.

I [i]believed her (a different her) when she said he was 'just a friend.'

I set off one of those little rocket engines on a sand ramp, believeing that it would rocket down the street -- which it did, then looped around and chased me across the yard before getting bored and rising into the sky to fire it's parachute charge.

I carried a tear gas pen into a strip club, got plastered and accidentally knocked it out of my pocket -- not knowing that it was cocked -- and it went off. I cleared the bar that night and spent a few hours in the holding cell of the local police station because the bar tender had no sense of humor. (No charges were filed.)

Bought a $1.25 beer at a strip club, gave the bartender a $20 and went to the can as my order was being filled. I returned to find my beer there, with $3.75 in change and the guy who had been sitting next to me gone -- along with the other $15.00.



------------------
CAREFUL! We don't want to learn from this!(Calvin and Hobbs)

[InsanityIncarnate]

All my stupid moments have to do with head truama and the a comment at the wrong time.

#1 Over at my friends house pogosticking in his driveway. When I do it I hear this really
wierd noise so I say "listen to this" and of course just then the pogo stick decides to lose grip with the ground flies out from under me and my forehead connects with the cement. Now my friend thought this was the funniest thing and didn't stop laughin the whole time he walked me home while a huge bump appeared on my forehead.

#2 Over at a different friends house climbing in a tree lose grip on tree fall out of tree land on my back. Did I mention that the tree was over the sidewalk. Well at first I can't move so I yell "I can't move! I can't move!" then my arm finally moves under my command and so logically I say"Wait maybe I can" Everyone thought that was funny. then they helped me up to find blood running down my back from my head.

[skingraftat75mph]

Age 10 or thereabouts. Before retiring for the evening I find myself on the business end of a mighty tongue-lashing from my father, on the subject of my report card sucking ass (I think he worded it better though). I'm sitting on the bed, my father is sitting on the floor in front of the bed
(it was a long lecture, I guess his legs got tired) about three feet in front of me. Dad wraps things up, I nod and don't mean a "word" of it, he gets up, and some change falls out of his pocket. He kneels back down, turns his back to me, and goes to retrieve it. I happened to have a toy
gun sitting on the bed next to me for whatever reason. I get an evil smirk on my face and point this gun at the back of his head in a pretty silly display of prepubescent frustration and fantasy. What D- student Me fails to realize is that a small desk lamp in the corner of the room will cast shadows on the opposite wall. So dad, still turned around, glances up at the wall and is greeted by the silhouette of what appears to be his own son about to cap him execution-style. What transpired next, in a way, speaks volumes about my father's trust in his own next of kin at such a tender age. Keep in mind this is a good decade or so before kiddies toting handguns were in vogue. So anyway, dad's fight or flight instinct kicks in. He lets out a yelp of panic, spins around and probably would've tried to wrestle the fluorescent green toy out of my hand had he not noticed its uncharacteristic coloration for an
instrument of death. It was one of the few times the old man gave me a good licking, and in retrospect I think he should've hit me a hell of a lot harder than he did. Just typing this out makes me shudder, as I really can't believe I did something that stump dumb and/or depraved.

I've done tons of equally stupid things in my day, but this is one of the few good stories that I have yet to repress.

[lachesis]

many thanks to the various posts that have just about made me split my sides. in fairness, then, i share my own moments of mayhem:

as a budding young pyrophilic, i was bored when my parents were working on our boat (hauled out of the water for the winter), so i went wandering around the boatyard. you'd think adults would be smart enough not to smoke around wooden hulls and marine fuel, but i managed to find several half-used books of matches scattered around the place. thinking purely in scientific lines, i started accumulating odds and ends of materials and comparing their combustion rates and methods. a couple of adult strangers surprised me at my experiments, causing me to drop my latest test material. it blurs a bit in memory at that point, but i slipped/bolted off, and tried unsuccessfully to play hide and seek, hoping my parents would finish up and we could leave before the posse arrived. no such luck. sitting down was a carefully choreographed event for several days afterwards.

my other offering for "Great Moments In Stupidity" would probably be the time i was trying to work with my pony. since he hadn't been ridden for a couple days, and (as best i can recall) we were going someplace the next day where his being on his best behavior was highly recommended, i took him to the training ring to try and work off a little of the "high spirits" he would probably be feeling. [SIDEBAR--little known fact to non-riders: horses are somewhat like batteries hooked up to a charger; if they're not used actively, they tend to build up quite a bit of "juice".] anywho.... i'm working him on a long line, going through his paces--walk, trot, canter hey! COME BACK HERE! snotty little mumblemumble.... after the third time or so, i got tired of his pulling the rope out of my hands and having to chase him around the ring. in what {then} seemed like a moment of brilliance, i decided he couldn't pull the rope out of my hands if i had it tied around my waist. :: sigh :: it doesn't take a lot of math to figure out what happens when the mass ratio of 10:1 is applied against the smaller of the bodies involved. let's just say i had a very practical demonstration regarding vectors, tangents off circular paths, and Laws of Inertia (as in "A body in motion tends to stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force"--in this instance, the solidly-set fencepost for the ring). after my own moans woke me up again, i managed to call for help until someone at the barn either heard me or noticed that The Bun was doing unsupervised laps around the ring. Intensive Care Units are not the places to get a good night's sleep...although the painkillers may make your own plight bearable, listening to the moans of other patients tends to be distracting.

of course, the topper to that one was...about 10 days later. the day i got out of the hospital (semi-healed broken ribs, part of vertebra, variously concussed internal organs), i went out riding. alone. on The Bun. oh yes...and did even manage to fall off while on the trail. but the Power of Youth prevailed. i still went out to the Hunt Ball that night.

never let it be said that i only screw-up in a half-hearted fashion.

------------------
next one who says "Fates a bitch" gets whacked with my measuring stick.

[Quadzilla]

Oh my gosh, I just figured out mine...because it happened yesterday. I am an intern in my university's writing lab, and many of our class discussions take place on an e-mail listserve - this listserve is sent to all 7 of us interns, as well as the professor. I was extremely frustrated with the way our final project was going, and e-mailed (so I thought) JUST the editor of the newsletter, telling him that I would be in to help with layout "after I finish getting my paper ripped to shreds by the good Dr. (our supervisor)." However, when I went back to check my sent items to reply to, I found out that I had sent it to the entire listserve...including the professor. I'll let you know how it goes after my previously scheduled appointment with the professor...God, I feel dumb. :o

------------------
Christopher Robin Hood - he steals from the rich and gives to the Pooh.

[pjstamler]

It's 1970, I'm just going on twenty, and moving out of a miserable student apartment. I'm packing.

I haven't vacuumed or swept for a while, so it's pretty dusty, and I'm sneezing, so I take a Chlor-Trimeton (antihistamine). It's June in St. Louis, 3 p.m., so it's broiling hot, so I have a beer, then another one.

When I wake up, it's about ten p.m., and while I was passed out someone has stolen everything worth stealing from my U-Haul.

[Phrogge]

My late husband used to tell of the time when, in his mid-teens, he and a friend were scoping out the effects of Hurricane Connie on the farm and surrounding areas. The two were greatly impressed to discover the South Branch of the Raritan River flowing mere inches below a railroad bridge instead of the usual 15 feet or more, and as they sat on the tracks trailing their feet in the floodwaters, Gary was struck with a brilliant idea:

"Hey, wouldn't it be neat to jump in, float down to the ol' rope swing and climb out!"

Uhhhh--maybe not! they realized the microsecond they let go of the bridge, but it was far, far too late to do anything other than try to stay afloat and aim like hell for that one slim rope they hoped would be still dangling in the current a turbulent quarter-mile downstream.

Fortunately, they were strong swimmers accompanied by dumb luck; had they missed the rope, most likely their drowned bodies would have washed up miles away.

I don't know if he ever DID tell his folks....

[CWN]

2 things come to mind,both when I was much younger
1-in the old day you could go to the local gas station(closed of course)and empty any remaining gas from the hose.Several of us had built a tree house that was about 40 feet in the air and had a long pipe which we imagined to be a cannon, into said cannon we would pack gas soaked paper and "fire away".After a several "shots" we got bored and went on to other things till someone noticed the smell of smoke, we had set the ground below as well as the tree we were in on fire.Never knew we could climb from tree to tree like that!
2-Our father had built a above ground cinder block swimming pool,after watching a few WW2 submarine movies decided to stage a mock Depth charge attack using ash can fire works (the only kind at the time you could submerge and still have em go Bang) we had envisioned a hugh plume of water being sent skyward but alas all that happened was a small burp-along with every seam breaking loose.Never got over how fast that pool emptied!

[kRaZycHeeZ]

It was my senior year of high school, somewhere in metro Atlanta. Two friends and I decided to vandalize our major rival's school the night before the big football game. The rival school had a 'commons' area where all of the students ate. Along the top of the front and back walls of this area, there are huge panes of glass. We decided to get on the roof, and spray-paint the name of our school. Well, after we did it, it was a sight to be marveled at. In retrospect, we're extremely lucky that we didn't get caught by the patrolling policeman.

[CanadaBoy]

One other stupid thing

I was attending a university party in one of the dorms. My friend comes up to me telling me he broke a mirror in the bathroom. I go check and he was right he did break a mirror. It was just a small mirror above the sink. So the night goes on…I go to a different bathroom. By now I’m drunk, really drunk. As I’m washing my hands I look at myself in the mirror and think… I can do better than that!! So I wind up and roundhouse the mirror with my foot. Only this mirror is a lot bigger, about 5 by 15 feet. You could not imagine the sound that made as the glass crashed down on all the sinks and the floor. I got busted and fined. My girlfriend was not happy with me because it was in her dorm. I think she received the savage boyfriend award or something like that.

[Matt MacKinnon]

Oh, where to begin. These go back a long way, so get comfortable.

When I was very young, my stupidity involved several brushes with death.

1) When I was about 1-year-old, I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin that I found under my parents' bed. I don't remember any of this, but apparently I was rushed to the hospital and given charcoal or something.

2) When I was about 5, my mother asked me to carry a box of tools downstairs. On top of the stuff in this box was a small pair of garden clippers. At the bottom of the stairs was a vacuum cleaner plugged into the wall. I looked at these two items and couldn't resist the temptation. All I remember as I cut the cord was a blinding flash of light somewhat reminiscent of cheap cartoon explosions, and waking up a moment later across the room. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that the clippers had a rubber handle.

3) Another stupid incident almost involved the death of my sister. I was maybe 12. We were out in the backyard with the whole family, and she was sitting on my shoulder. We had this cheap swingset that wasn't anchored to the ground, and had a lot of sharp, rusty metal sticking out of it. I walked underneath it with her on my shoulders, and she grabbed on to it. I then proceeded to walk out from underneath it, but she didn't let go. I kept walking forward and she fell backward off my shoulders, landing on her back with the rusty metal of the swingset imbedded in her forehead, right between the eyebrows. Forty stitches and 10 years later, she still has a big-ass scar on her forehead.

4) Still more of my stupidity involved my friend Darin. He had knack for getting in trouble, which is one of the reasons I liked hanging out with him. He made me look a whole lot more responsible. :) Anyway, one time in the middle of August we were playing with magnifying glasses in the field behind his house. We were making little fires, but we knew they really wouldn't spread because there were a lot of rocks. However, his mother apparently noticed the smoke and came running wildly towards us with a bucket of water, screaming at the top of her lungs. That was more amusing than it was stupid.

5) The other stupid thing I did with Darin almost got me arrested. We found this beat up old shack by a little beach in our neighbourhood. The shack was all destroyed, and held nothing of value, so we proceeded to amuse ourselves by bashing it up further. Well, the owner heard the commotion and came running, catching us on the roof with cinder blocks in our hands. It turned out that the place had been destroyed like a week earlier, and the owner thought we had done it and come back for more. Fortunately, we managed to convince the police otherwise, and ended up paying $12 each in restitution.

The rest of my stupid incidents revolve around the various lifeguarding jobs I've had over the past few years.

6) I started working when I was 16 at this university pool. After about a week, my boss asked me to carry some garbage upstairs, but I was new and the building was pretty confusing, so I quickly got lost. I walked through this door, which immediately slammed shut behind me, trapping me in this small hallway.

Now, the interesting thing about this building is that it has what's known as a field house. It's a very large recreational area with a ceiling held up by air pressure. All the regular doors are like airlocks. However, I was in the middle of an emergency exit. On one side was a row of doors (with no handles) that led into the field house. On the other side was a row of doors that led outside. I realized I was pretty fucked, standing there in my bathing suit with a box of crap. To make matters worse, I took a step forward and set of some alarm. Now, I realized that I didn't really have any options, so I opened one of the doors to the outside with the intention of walking back around the building. However, when I did so, the field house began to depressurize. This was bad. I couldn't even get the door closed because so much air was rushing out. I started to walk around to the front of the building when one of the security guys came out and started yelling at me for almost making the roof collapse. Needless to say, I was pretty mortified.

7) Another of my shining moments involved a quart of Smuggler's Cove rum (45%), a cottage party, and two wet, naked girls. I won't go into detail, but needless to say, but girlfriend wasn't too impressed.

8) Another flash of stupidity came when I was 19, and I decided to wear sandals on my first pub crawl. We were at this dance bar, and I was nicely toasted and dancing with a bunch of girls. All of a sudden, I feel a bit of a pinch on my foot. I look down and it seems I've stepped on broken glass, and my foot is spurting blood. I my alcohol-induced haze I remember thinking, "Oh, this is kind of bad." The girls started freaking out, and the only help I could get from the bar staff was a band-aid and a dirty rag. I ended up having to call my parents (who didn't know I was on a pub crawl) to have them drive me to the hospital. At the end of the summer, I got the "First and Worst Pub Crawl Award." Good times.

9) The final, crowing moment of sheer stupidity happened less than a year ago. I was on yet another pub crawl, and I was dancing with this girl. We went out for "some air" and started fooling around in the bushes. In my drink-addled state, I decided this wouldn't do, and invited her back to my place. Now, the problem with this was that I lived with my parents. Even better, my room was right next to theirs. I don't know how I ever thought I'd get away with it. I was just about to leave to drive her home the next day, when my mom got up and opened the door. She was less than thrilled. She asked what I was doing, and all I could say was, "nothing" in a very sheepish voice. (The girl and I ended up dating for a while, so it all worked out in the end) :)


Well, those are just the stupid moments I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more though.

[Matt MacKinnon]

Oh, where to begin. These go back a long way, so get comfortable.

When I was very young, my stupidity involved several brushes with death.

1) When I was about 1-year-old, I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin that I found under my parents' bed. I don't remember any of this, but apparently I was rushed to the hospital and given charcoal or something.

2) When I was about 5, my mother asked me to carry a box of tools downstairs. On top of the stuff in this box was a small pair of garden clippers. At the bottom of the stairs was a vacuum cleaner plugged into the wall. I looked at these two items and couldn't resist the temptation. All I remember as I cut the cord was a blinding flash of light somewhat reminiscent of cheap cartoon explosions, and waking up a moment later across the room. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that the clippers had a rubber handle.

3) Another stupid incident almost involved the death of my sister. I was maybe 12. We were out in the backyard with the whole family, and she was sitting on my shoulder. We had this cheap swingset that wasn't anchored to the ground, and had a lot of sharp, rusty metal sticking out of it. I walked underneath it with her on my shoulders, and she grabbed on to it. I then proceeded to walk out from underneath it, but she didn't let go. I kept walking forward and she fell backward off my shoulders, landing on her back with the rusty metal of the swingset imbedded in her forehead, right between the eyebrows. Forty stitches and 10 years later, she still has a big-ass scar on her forehead.

4) Still more of my stupidity involved my friend Darin. He had knack for getting in trouble, which is one of the reasons I liked hanging out with him. He made me look a whole lot more responsible. :) Anyway, one time in the middle of August we were playing with magnifying glasses in the field behind his house. We were making little fires, but we knew they really wouldn't spread because there were a lot of rocks. However, his mother apparently noticed the smoke and came running wildly towards us with a bucket of water, screaming at the top of her lungs. That was more amusing than it was stupid.

5) The other stupid thing I did with Darin almost got me arrested. We found this beat up old shack by a little beach in our neighbourhood. The shack was all destroyed, and held nothing of value, so we proceeded to amuse ourselves by bashing it up further. Well, the owner heard the commotion and came running, catching us on the roof with cinder blocks in our hands. It turned out that the place had been destroyed like a week earlier, and the owner thought we had done it and come back for more. Fortunately, we managed to convince the police otherwise, and ended up paying $12 each in restitution.

The rest of my stupid incidents revolve around the various lifeguarding jobs I've had over the past few years.

6) I started working when I was 16 at this university pool. After about a week, my boss asked me to carry some garbage upstairs, but I was new and the building was pretty confusing, so I quickly got lost. I walked through this door, which immediately slammed shut behind me, trapping me in this small hallway.

Now, the interesting thing about this building is that it has what's known as a field house. It's a very large recreational area with a ceiling held up by air pressure. All the regular doors are like airlocks. However, I was in the middle of an emergency exit. On one side was a row of doors (with no handles) that led into the field house. On the other side was a row of doors that led outside. I realized I was pretty fucked, standing there in my bathing suit with a box of crap. To make matters worse, I took a step forward and set of some alarm. Now, I realized that I didn't really have any options, so I opened one of the doors to the outside with the intention of walking back around the building. However, when I did so, the field house began to depressurize. This was bad. I couldn't even get the door closed because so much air was rushing out. I started to walk around to the front of the building when one of the security guys came out and started yelling at me for almost making the roof collapse. Needless to say, I was pretty mortified.

7) Another of my shining moments involved a quart of Smuggler's Cove rum (45%), a cottage party, and two wet, naked girls. I won't go into detail, but needless to say, but girlfriend wasn't too impressed.

8) Another flash of stupidity came when I was 19, and I decided to wear sandals on my first pub crawl. We were at this dance bar, and I was nicely toasted and dancing with a bunch of girls. All of a sudden, I feel a bit of a pinch on my foot. I look down and it seems I've stepped on broken glass, and my foot is spurting blood. I my alcohol-induced haze I remember thinking, "Oh, this is kind of bad." The girls started freaking out, and the only help I could get from the bar staff was a band-aid and a dirty rag. I ended up having to call my parents (who didn't know I was on a pub crawl) to have them drive me to the hospital. At the end of the summer, I got the "First and Worst Pub Crawl Award." Good times.

9) The final, crowing moment of sheer stupidity happened less than a year ago. I was on yet another pub crawl, and I was dancing with this girl. We went out for "some air" and started fooling around in the bushes. In my drink-addled state, I decided this wouldn't do, and invited her back to my place. Now, the problem with this was that I lived with my parents. Even better, my room was right next to theirs. I don't know how I ever thought I'd get away with it. I was just about to leave to drive her home the next day, when my mom got up and opened the door. She was less than thrilled. She asked what I was doing, and all I could say was, "nothing" in a very sheepish voice. (The girl and I ended up dating for a while, so it all worked out in the end) :)


Well, those are just the stupid moments I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more though.

[Matt MacKinnon]

Oh, where to begin. These go back a long way, so get comfortable.

When I was very young, my stupidity involved several brushes with death.

1) When I was about 1-year-old, I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin that I found under my parents' bed. I don't remember any of this, but apparently I was rushed to the hospital and given charcoal or something.

2) When I was about 5, my mother asked me to carry a box of tools downstairs. On top of the stuff in this box was a small pair of garden clippers. At the bottom of the stairs was a vacuum cleaner plugged into the wall. I looked at these two items and couldn't resist the temptation. All I remember as I cut the cord was a blinding flash of light somewhat reminiscent of cheap cartoon explosions, and waking up a moment later across the room. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that the clippers had a rubber handle.

3) Another stupid incident almost involved the death of my sister. I was maybe 12. We were out in the backyard with the whole family, and she was sitting on my shoulder. We had this cheap swingset that wasn't anchored to the ground, and had a lot of sharp, rusty metal sticking out of it. I walked underneath it with her on my shoulders, and she grabbed on to it. I then proceeded to walk out from underneath it, but she didn't let go. I kept walking forward and she fell backward off my shoulders, landing on her back with the rusty metal of the swingset imbedded in her forehead, right between the eyebrows. Forty stitches and 10 years later, she still has a big-ass scar on her forehead.

4) Still more of my stupidity involved my friend Darin. He had knack for getting in trouble, which is one of the reasons I liked hanging out with him. He made me look a whole lot more responsible. :) Anyway, one time in the middle of August we were playing with magnifying glasses in the field behind his house. We were making little fires, but we knew they really wouldn't spread because there were a lot of rocks. However, his mother apparently noticed the smoke and came running wildly towards us with a bucket of water, screaming at the top of her lungs. That was more amusing than it was stupid.

5) The other stupid thing I did with Darin almost got me arrested. We found this beat up old shack by a little beach in our neighbourhood. The shack was all destroyed, and held nothing of value, so we proceeded to amuse ourselves by bashing it up further. Well, the owner heard the commotion and came running, catching us on the roof with cinder blocks in our hands. It turned out that the place had been destroyed like a week earlier, and the owner thought we had done it and come back for more. Fortunately, we managed to convince the police otherwise, and ended up paying $12 each in restitution.

The rest of my stupid incidents revolve around the various lifeguarding jobs I've had over the past few years.

6) I started working when I was 16 at this university pool. After about a week, my boss asked me to carry some garbage upstairs, but I was new and the building was pretty confusing, so I quickly got lost. I walked through this door, which immediately slammed shut behind me, trapping me in this small hallway.

Now, the interesting thing about this building is that it has what's known as a field house. It's a very large recreational area with a ceiling held up by air pressure. All the regular doors are like airlocks. However, I was in the middle of an emergency exit. On one side was a row of doors (with no handles) that led into the field house. On the other side was a row of doors that led outside. I realized I was pretty fucked, standing there in my bathing suit with a box of crap. To make matters worse, I took a step forward and set of some alarm. Now, I realized that I didn't really have any options, so I opened one of the doors to the outside with the intention of walking back around the building. However, when I did so, the field house began to depressurize. This was bad. I couldn't even get the door closed because so much air was rushing out. I started to walk around to the front of the building when one of the security guys came out and started yelling at me for almost making the roof collapse. Needless to say, I was pretty mortified.

7) Another of my shining moments involved a quart of Smuggler's Cove rum (45%), a cottage party, and two wet, naked girls. I won't go into detail, but needless to say, but girlfriend wasn't too impressed.

8) Another flash of stupidity came when I was 19, and I decided to wear sandals on my first pub crawl. We were at this dance bar, and I was nicely toasted and dancing with a bunch of girls. All of a sudden, I feel a bit of a pinch on my foot. I look down and it seems I've stepped on broken glass, and my foot is spurting blood. I my alcohol-induced haze I remember thinking, "Oh, this is kind of bad." The girls started freaking out, and the only help I could get from the bar staff was a band-aid and a dirty rag. I ended up having to call my parents (who didn't know I was on a pub crawl) to have them drive me to the hospital. At the end of the summer, I got the "First and Worst Pub Crawl Award." Good times.

9) The final, crowing moment of sheer stupidity happened less than a year ago. I was on yet another pub crawl, and I was dancing with this girl. We went out for "some air" and started fooling around in the bushes. In my drink-addled state, I decided this wouldn't do, and invited her back to my place. Now, the problem with this was that I lived with my parents. Even better, my room was right next to theirs. I don't know how I ever thought I'd get away with it. I was just about to leave to drive her home the next day, when my mom got up and opened the door. She was less than thrilled. She asked what I was doing, and all I could say was, "nothing" in a very sheepish voice. (The girl and I ended up dating for a while, so it all worked out in the end) :)


Well, those are just the stupid moments I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more though.

[Matt MacKinnon]

Oh, where to begin. These go back a long way, so get comfortable.

When I was very young, my stupidity involved several brushes with death.

1) When I was about 1-year-old, I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin that I found under my parents' bed. I don't remember any of this, but apparently I was rushed to the hospital and given charcoal or something.

2) When I was about 5, my mother asked me to carry a box of tools downstairs. On top of the stuff in this box was a small pair of garden clippers. At the bottom of the stairs was a vacuum cleaner plugged into the wall. I looked at these two items and couldn't resist the temptation. All I remember as I cut the cord was a blinding flash of light somewhat reminiscent of cheap cartoon explosions, and waking up a moment later across the room. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that the clippers had a rubber handle.

3) Another stupid incident almost involved the death of my sister. I was maybe 12. We were out in the backyard with the whole family, and she was sitting on my shoulder. We had this cheap swingset that wasn't anchored to the ground, and had a lot of sharp, rusty metal sticking out of it. I walked underneath it with her on my shoulders, and she grabbed on to it. I then proceeded to walk out from underneath it, but she didn't let go. I kept walking forward and she fell backward off my shoulders, landing on her back with the rusty metal of the swingset imbedded in her forehead, right between the eyebrows. Forty stitches and 10 years later, she still has a big-ass scar on her forehead.

4) Still more of my stupidity involved my friend Darin. He had knack for getting in trouble, which is one of the reasons I liked hanging out with him. He made me look a whole lot more responsible. :) Anyway, one time in the middle of August we were playing with magnifying glasses in the field behind his house. We were making little fires, but we knew they really wouldn't spread because there were a lot of rocks. However, his mother apparently noticed the smoke and came running wildly towards us with a bucket of water, screaming at the top of her lungs. That was more amusing than it was stupid.

5) The other stupid thing I did with Darin almost got me arrested. We found this beat up old shack by a little beach in our neighbourhood. The shack was all destroyed, and held nothing of value, so we proceeded to amuse ourselves by bashing it up further. Well, the owner heard the commotion and came running, catching us on the roof with cinder blocks in our hands. It turned out that the place had been destroyed like a week earlier, and the owner thought we had done it and come back for more. Fortunately, we managed to convince the police otherwise, and ended up paying $12 each in restitution.

The rest of my stupid incidents revolve around the various lifeguarding jobs I've had over the past few years.

6) I started working when I was 16 at this university pool. After about a week, my boss asked me to carry some garbage upstairs, but I was new and the building was pretty confusing, so I quickly got lost. I walked through this door, which immediately slammed shut behind me, trapping me in this small hallway.

Now, the interesting thing about this building is that it has what's known as a field house. It's a very large recreational area with a ceiling held up by air pressure. All the regular doors are like airlocks. However, I was in the middle of an emergency exit. On one side was a row of doors (with no handles) that led into the field house. On the other side was a row of doors that led outside. I realized I was pretty fucked, standing there in my bathing suit with a box of crap. To make matters worse, I took a step forward and set of some alarm. Now, I realized that I didn't really have any options, so I opened one of the doors to the outside with the intention of walking back around the building. However, when I did so, the field house began to depressurize. This was bad. I couldn't even get the door closed because so much air was rushing out. I started to walk around to the front of the building when one of the security guys came out and started yelling at me for almost making the roof collapse. Needless to say, I was pretty mortified.

7) Another of my shining moments involved a quart of Smuggler's Cove rum (45%), a cottage party, and two wet, naked girls. I won't go into detail, but needless to say, but girlfriend wasn't too impressed.

8) Another flash of stupidity came when I was 19, and I decided to wear sandals on my first pub crawl. We were at this dance bar, and I was nicely toasted and dancing with a bunch of girls. All of a sudden, I feel a bit of a pinch on my foot. I look down and it seems I've stepped on broken glass, and my foot is spurting blood. I my alcohol-induced haze I remember thinking, "Oh, this is kind of bad." The girls started freaking out, and the only help I could get from the bar staff was a band-aid and a dirty rag. I ended up having to call my parents (who didn't know I was on a pub crawl) to have them drive me to the hospital. At the end of the summer, I got the "First and Worst Pub Crawl Award." Good times.

9) The final, crowing moment of sheer stupidity happened less than a year ago. I was on yet another pub crawl, and I was dancing with this girl. We went out for "some air" and started fooling around in the bushes. In my drink-addled state, I decided this wouldn't do, and invited her back to my place. Now, the problem with this was that I lived with my parents. Even better, my room was right next to theirs. I don't know how I ever thought I'd get away with it. I was just about to leave to drive her home the next day, when my mom got up and opened the door. She was less than thrilled. She asked what I was doing, and all I could say was, "nothing" in a very sheepish voice. (The girl and I ended up dating for a while, so it all worked out in the end) :)


Well, those are just the stupid moments I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more though.

[sunbear]

Can I have an honorary stupidity award? My stupidity seems to have run out. But I get the award for getting this dug up thread on the SD front page. Thank you all.

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progressive rock will come back..soon..maybe..

[Kakkerlak]

Life is just a series of near misses, isn't it?

My former favorite was canoeing at night on Lake Washington without a light. I saw the gravel barge (totally silent, being pushed by a tug) obscure a shore light just in time.... I've never paddled so fast in my life.

I have a new one though, from last Friday. Heavy-duty industrial motor starter relays are usually enclosed in cabinets that have two protective devices to keep you from opening them when the power is on. One can be defeated while the door is closed, and the other can be defeated when it's open, to turn on the power anyhow. Yes, I defeated the door-open lever. Yes, I reached for a network cable inside with a ring on my finger.

Yes, I know what 480V AC feels like. It's not at all pleasant. If I'd had a tool in my hand or a better grip on the door, this post would be coming from my next-of-kin.

Turns out that electrocution, unlike pregnancy, can be partial. I still type funny because the ground path went through my left index finger.

Remember that is is a partial list. The final entry will be engraved in granite...

[fnord1966]

Allrighty, you want to talk about stupid things, i am the KING i tell you.

#1 it all started long ago at my aunts first wedding rececption, i am 6 i think, well it was in a boyscouts hall or some such thing, so there was a kitchen and all that stuff, well, in one corner there was an old industrial freezer, not a walk in, probably only 3 feet deep. well, being a crazy and curious 6 yearold, i look inside, what do i see? but a pile of buttons, the white ones that look like pearl, so i figure i can keep the door open with my foot while i get the buttons, well, i think i came up a little short, so i let go with my foot to grab the stupid buttons, slam goes the door,light goes out and i about shit my pants. i scream and yell and cry and kick and cry some more, but this is a thick heavy door, i cant budge it, after what felt like 3 days, my mom opens the door, and i am set free, all this over buttons. oh did i mention that the only reason my mom looked in the freezer was that someone had seen me BY it a while ago, and my mom couldnt find me. top that for stupididy.

#2 i was about 8 or 9, and somehow i managed to get myself stuck behind the fold down seat of a 1980 ford F-150, it took my dad 15 min with a crowbar to get me out, did i mention i was claustrophobic at the time? still am.

#3 lets just say i was a pyro maniac, i live in redding CA, it gets really really dry here in the summer, didnt catch anything on fire but what i was burning, but could have wiped out the entire county.

#4 fire again, last day of burn season, my dad wanted me to light the pile of brush that we had collected over the winter, its about 6 feet tall, and about 10x10 feet, well it had to be burnt and out by the end of the day according to my dad, so i bust out the lawnmower gas, its a 5 gallon can, I pour it all over the pile, that is 5 gallons of regular unleaded, i thought i was being conservative (told yall i wasa pyro) then i pour a line about 10 feet out, as a fuse, well, the gas had evaporateda bit in the 10 min or so. i whip out my trusty Zippo, and light it, i was probably a good 10 feet into the fuel air vapor when it lit, 50 foot fireball, with me right inthe middle, lucky me i was still soaked froma dip in the pool, my arms were bald for a week, and the concussion from the fireball knocked me back about 5 feet. needless to say, there wasnt much left of the pile, actually it was burnt up and out in about an hour. now i saw some pretty dumb stuff, but nothing that stupid.
ALex

[fnord1966]

Allrighty, you want to talk about stupid things, i am the KING i tell you.

#1 it all started long ago at my aunts first wedding rececption, i am 6 i think, well it was in a boyscouts hall or some such thing, so there was a kitchen and all that stuff, well, in one corner there was an old industrial freezer, not a walk in, probably only 3 feet deep. well, being a crazy and curious 6 yearold, i look inside, what do i see? but a pile of buttons, the white ones that look like pearl, so i figure i can keep the door open with my foot while i get the buttons, well, i think i came up a little short, so i let go with my foot to grab the stupid buttons, slam goes the door,light goes out and i about shit my pants. i scream and yell and cry and kick and cry some more, but this is a thick heavy door, i cant budge it, after what felt like 3 days, my mom opens the door, and i am set free, all this over buttons. oh did i mention that the only reason my mom looked in the freezer was that someone had seen me BY it a while ago, and my mom couldnt find me. top that for stupididy.

[Bloodshedder]

This one may not win an award, but it was pretty stupid. One of the computery screw ups.

I went into Windows 95 display properties, to the appearance tab, and put in the largest number possible for each of the items in the drop down list.

Result:
format c: /s

[Bloodshedder]

This one may not win an award, but it was pretty stupid. One of the computery screw ups.

Screw up:

I went into Windows 95 display properties, to the appearance tab, and put in the largest number possible for each of the items in the drop down list.

Result:

The start button was so huge you could only see 2/3 of it on the entire screen. It filled it up completely. And when it showed My Computer, you could only see the "My" in the name, it was so large.

Which lead to:
format c: /s

[Saltire]

Ooh, ooh, can I be stupid, too?

Many years ago, I was trying to grind some edges off a piece of metal. I didn't have a grinder, so I had a grinding stone in my hand-held drill. My finger was tired from holding the trigger down, so I had it locked on. That means it was running full speed.

I've always worn my hair long. It wasn't tied back.

When a few strands fell into the drill, the drill pulled out of my hand and reeled itself up to my forehead and struck with some force.

I pulled the plug out of the wall soon after that. The amazing thing was that none of my hair was pulled out. I was able to unwind it all from the device, guess it's stronger than I thought. I did get a nice cut on my head, though.

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"If you prick me, do I not...leak?" --Lt. Commander Data

[Matt MacKinnon]

Oh, where to begin. These go back a long way, so get comfortable.

When I was very young, my stupidity involved several brushes with death.

1) When I was about 1-year-old, I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin that I found under my parents' bed. I don't remember any of this, but apparently I was rushed to the hospital and given charcoal or something.

2) When I was about 5, my mother asked me to carry a box of tools downstairs. On top of the stuff in this box was a small pair of garden clippers. At the bottom of the stairs was a vacuum cleaner plugged into the wall. I looked at these two items and couldn't resist the temptation. All I remember as I cut the cord was a blinding flash of light somewhat reminiscent of cheap cartoon explosions, and waking up a moment later across the room. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that the clippers had a rubber handle.

3) Another stupid incident almost involved the death of my sister. I was maybe 12. We were out in the backyard with the whole family, and she was sitting on my shoulder. We had this cheap swingset that wasn't anchored to the ground, and had a lot of sharp, rusty metal sticking out of it. I walked underneath it with her on my shoulders, and she grabbed on to it. I then proceeded to walk out from underneath it, but she didn't let go. I kept walking forward and she fell backward off my shoulders, landing on her back with the rusty metal of the swingset imbedded in her forehead, right between the eyebrows. Forty stitches and 10 years later, she still has a big-ass scar on her forehead.

4) Still more of my stupidity involved my friend Darin. He had knack for getting in trouble, which is one of the reasons I liked hanging out with him. He made me look a whole lot more responsible. :) Anyway, one time in the middle of August we were playing with magnifying glasses in the field behind his house. We were making little fires, but we knew they really wouldn't spread because there were a lot of rocks. However, his mother apparently noticed the smoke and came running wildly towards us with a bucket of water, screaming at the top of her lungs. That was more amusing than it was stupid.

5) The other stupid thing I did with Darin almost got me arrested. We found this beat up old shack by a little beach in our neighbourhood. The shack was all destroyed, and held nothing of value, so we proceeded to amuse ourselves by bashing it up further. Well, the owner heard the commotion and came running, catching us on the roof with cinder blocks in our hands. It turned out that the place had been destroyed like a week earlier, and the owner thought we had done it and come back for more. Fortunately, we managed to convince the police otherwise, and ended up paying $12 each in restitution.

The rest of my stupid incidents revolve around the various lifeguarding jobs I've had over the past few years.

6) I started working when I was 16 at this university pool. After about a week, my boss asked me to carry some garbage upstairs, but I was new and the building was pretty confusing, so I quickly got lost. I walked through this door, which immediately slammed shut behind me, trapping me in this small hallway.

Now, the interesting thing about this building is that it has what's known as a field house. It's a very large recreational area with a ceiling held up by air pressure. All the regular doors are like airlocks. However, I was in the middle of an emergency exit. On one side was a row of doors (with no handles) that led into the field house. On the other side was a row of doors that led outside. I realized I was pretty fucked, standing there in my bathing suit with a box of crap. To make matters worse, I took a step forward and set of some alarm. Now, I realized that I didn't really have any options, so I opened one of the doors to the outside with the intention of walking back around the building. However, when I did so, the field house began to depressurize. This was bad. I couldn't even get the door closed because so much air was rushing out. I started to walk around to the front of the building when one of the security guys came out and started yelling at me for almost making the roof collapse. Needless to say, I was pretty mortified.

7) Another of my shining moments involved a quart of Smuggler's Cove rum (45%), a cottage party, and two wet, naked girls. I won't go into detail, but needless to say, but girlfriend wasn't too impressed.

8) Another flash of stupidity came when I was 19, and I decided to wear sandals on my first pub crawl. We were at this dance bar, and I was nicely toasted and dancing with a bunch of girls. All of a sudden, I feel a bit of a pinch on my foot. I look down and it seems I've stepped on broken glass, and my foot is spurting blood. I my alcohol-induced haze I remember thinking, "Oh, this is kind of bad." The girls started freaking out, and the only help I could get from the bar staff was a band-aid and a dirty rag. I ended up having to call my parents (who didn't know I was on a pub crawl) to have them drive me to the hospital. At the end of the summer, I got the "First and Worst Pub Crawl Award." Good times.

9) The final, crowing moment of sheer stupidity happened less than a year ago. I was on yet another pub crawl, and I was dancing with this girl. We went out for "some air" and started fooling around in the bushes. In my drink-addled state, I decided this wouldn't do, and invited her back to my place. Now, the problem with this was that I lived with my parents. Even better, my room was right next to theirs. I don't know how I ever thought I'd get away with it. I was just about to leave to drive her home the next day, when my mom got up and opened the door. She was less than thrilled. She asked what I was doing, and all I could say was, "nothing" in a very sheepish voice. (The girl and I ended up dating for a while, so it all worked out in the end) :)


Well, those are just the stupid moments I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more though.

[Matt MacKinnon]

Whoa, sorry about the multiple posts. I had trouble sending.

[dpdx]

My one shining moment came at age 9:

Our middle school miraculously found funding to send the fifth-graders and their teachers out to a nearby State Park for Outdoor Education. We packed for five days, and assembled into dormitories on the premises, where we were met by counselors.

Counselors were selected from among volunteers at high school. Our particular group was a bunch of dweebs who seemed to relish their authority, and quickly instilled an aura of boot camp at the site. This included dropping campers for pushups as punishment for 'infractions,' speaking to them in that military voice many of us have come to know all too well, and marching them back and forth from playtime, lunch, and classes. As a result, the fifth-graders developed a considerable fear of the counselors, myself especially so.

On Wednesday, after the counselors had hazed us into bed for the evening, I suddenly had to piss as badly as if I had ingested Seaworld. I got out of bed, ran over to the staircase, and as I looked out over the rail, across the gymnasium-sized building, I saw...

Counselors.

Three of them, milling in front of the restroom door, certainly with malice in mind. I would surely have to drop and give them at least 20 for the privilege of draining my pre-pubescent weasel, maybe even 30 if they hadn't run across any other fifth-graders to torture that night.

As I contemplated my biceps, and began to flex to assess my stamina, my bladder responded by forcing me to double over to avoid losing it right there by the stairs.

By now panicked, I glanced back across the bunkhouse to notice that the counselors hadn't seen me yet. As I whirled around to assess my options, I knew I wouldn't even make it to the restroom in time to unload, much less submit to the impending PT.

The clock on the wall read 2:30 when I noticed a corner spot between the two groups of bunks, only 15 short feet or so away. At the bottom of this architectural anomaly was a hole, square and about 8 inches wide.

I retreated from the balcony as if I had been shot in my package, and shortly thereafter, I was astride the hole in the corner, and ready to let fly.

And let fly I did. I estimate I lost roughly a quarter of my total body weight into that hole, and when I was done, 90 seconds later, I went back to bed and slept the blissful sleep of kings, presidents and returning war heroes.

The news of my calamity had not hit the general population until lunch the next day, when afterwards Mr. Eckley, another fifth-grade teacher (not mine) and a field-grade officer in the Oregon National Guard, pulled me aside quietly and asked if I had had an "accident" the night before.

I managed to stammer out an affirmative, whereupon he informed me that his room was directly beneath that hole, and his sleeping bag was in dire need of a drycleaning, maybe two to get rid of the contents of my system from the night before. My parents would be billed for the drycleaning.

As I went into system shock, I still don't know how I managed to stay standing, even three hours later. I vaguely remember my classmates gathering around me in various states of emotion, from "Ewwww..." to "Oh My GOD, dude! You pissed on Eckley! You. Are. AWESOME!"

The rest of fifth grade went by in a blur, and no further repercussions resulted from my incident.

At the end of the year, we were informed that Mr. Eckley would be retiring from teaching to pursue his dream of small business ownership; in this case, a Dairy Queen franchise in the booming metropolis of Tillamook, Oregon, known for its picturesque coastal location, and world-class dairy products.

I can neither confirm nor deny that I had anything to do with that decision.

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Raise your voice. Shock the world.

[Coldfire]

Two thoughts.

1) Why is it exactly this thread that convinces people to start posting? God knows we have enough stupid people already :D

2) I think the folks at www.darwinawards.com (http://www.darwinawards.com) might be very interested in the contents of this thread...

[Rilchiam]

Coldfire: I take it you're not aware of the new Threadspotting feature on the main page?


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Sing glogalimp, sing glugalump,
From deep inside the Wuggly Ump.

[Coldfire]

Yeah, it occurred to me right after I posted that comment... surely, that must be it. And what a great feature it is!

[sunbear]

Some mild middle age stupidity: I have a hedge trimmer that I use about twice a year. I buy these 50 foot chords for it, and yes I cut thru 2 of them. Then I learned. I put a cheaper 12 foot power chord at the end of the expensive 50 foot chord. Have not managed to cut thru the 12 foot chord yet.

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progressive rock will come back..soon..maybe..

[GarrettTaylor]

Date: 10/16/1999
Place: Ormond Beach, Florida (USA)

Hurricane Irene kinda snuck up on me. I didn't hear about it until Friday morning. So after work on Friday, I made sure I had the supplies from Hurricane Floyd handy and set about not worrying. Saturday morning came and went.

Knowing full well that Time-Warner Cable can't maintain service during normal weather, a hurricane is a guarantee for outages. After the first 15 minutes of strong winds, the cable went out, came back, went out, came back, and finally gave up the ghost to static. So I immersed myself in a PlayStation game. Since I was destined to have a Crappy Day, the power went out shortly thereafter and stayed out (unlike during Floyd, when the power went out twice for a total of 15 mins).

Not being one to sit still without *some* form of mindless entertainment in front of me, I started to do the dishes. One good thing about having a broken dishwasher is that it makes no difference when the power goes out. I was finishing the first 'rack' when I noticed the patio roof wasn't leaking nearly as bad as is normally does. This means that the water is pooling on the flat plastic and thin sheet metal roof and may take it down. This would not be good.

I would like to flashback three weeks to the previous hurricane, Floyd. Essentially Floyd did two things; The first, he pushed over the trees/shrubs that died in the last two years of drought. The other thing he did was to push over a 'weed' tree into the grove of bamboo that is next to the patio with the leaking roof. The bamboo is what's keeping the tree from continuing its arc downward into the kitchen roof. The landlord had called the 'tree guy' several times after Floyd, but the tree was still leaning on the bamboo over the kitchen roof when Irene came to town.

But back to the present, so to speak. This is one of the points in space and time that hindsight dictates as a 'critical moment of stupidity.' Somehow I reasoned that I needed to get up on a ladder and scoop out all the dead bamboo/weed tree leaves from the gutter to prevent the patio roof from collapsing. So I hauled out the industrial strength ladder and started scooping out the leaves. Having taken the Zen approach to getting wet, I was:

barefoot
in hurricane Irene
on a ladder
in swim trunks
scooping fistfuls of rotting leaves from between pieces of sheet metal

I'll let that sink in for a bit.

Having unblocked the major gutter (technically there are six on the patio roof alone), I saw that the other gutters were being blocked too. To unblock a gutter *on* the patio roof requires a long, strong pole that one can pull towards oneself to clear the channels. Not having the proper tools, I did what any American Pioneer would do. I made the tool from local materials, namely bamboo. (What?! I'm *not* a pioneer, but an out-of-shape Web Programmer?! Pshaw! Don't bother me with trivial details!)

Retrieving my machete, I selected, cut, trimmed, and notched a tool to my liking. The homemade tool wasn't working efficiently as is, but being an engineer at heart, I figured that if I *pushed* instead of *pulled* the tool, I could easily clear the rest of the blockages with no problems. So I climbed up on the roof to change the applied force vector. Here's a brief recap of my state. I was:

barefoot
in hurricane Irene
on my roof
in swim trunks
wielding a 4m pole

I managed to clean most of the gutters out, but I kept running into the tree the Floyd pushed over and the bamboo it was resting on. Another brilliant idea emerged from the engineer part of my head - "Why not reduce the chance for the tree to finally take out the kitchen roof by reducing the wind load on it?" I was up there, I had a machete, what could go wrong?

I started clearing the leafy branches of the tree, and indeed the tree was swaying less and less as I cut more and more branches. Instant gratification from a plan *actually working* is highly intoxicating to an engineer. So I turned my machete-wielding attention to the bamboo that wasn't holding up the tree, thinking that if I get rid of the bamboo over the roof, so much the better. This was the other critical moment of stupidity.

Bamboo bites back. Remember this. Trees just sort of sit there as you hack them to pieces, but bamboo fights you tooth and nail, all the way. You have to hold it down while you cut it, else it justs bends and snaps back in your face. Being right handed, I was holding the bamboo with the left and wielding the machete with the right. I know, I know this is where I tell you I missed and *WHACK* - off goes a finger.

But it ain't. My aim was 100% for the 30 minutes I was doing this. What went wrong was that the machete didn't cut 100% through the bamboo, just 99.9995%. It's hard to describe in words how this was unfolding but I'll try. I had the 'free' end of the bamboo stalk in my left hand and my machete in my right hand. The free end still had a few small 'strands' connecting it to the rest of the plant, and wasn't going anywhere. So I pinned the right end of the bamboo with my right hand (still holding the machete) and pulled hard with my left. Somehow my right pinkie managed to get wrapped around the .0005% of the bamboo that did not get cut. And so when I pulled, the remaining bamboo attachment gave way and slid along my right pinkie, edge on.

The rest of the 'Crappy Day' story (it ends about 5 pm on the next day) can be found at http://www.db.erau.edu/~taylorg/Humor/stupid.html but this is the part that contains the stupidity, the rest is just back luck/timing.

Enjoy,


-Garrett Taylor

"I'm not driving fast, just orbiting low."

[Drum God]

Okay, it's not life-threatening, but it haunts me.

When I was in college, a girl I knew from class came over to my apartment to "study" for an exam. Sophia was tall, blonde, and gorgeous. We actually did hit the books for a while, but the whole evening was filled with touches, flirting, revealing things, (bends over to pick up pencil and reveals her breasts or rear, etc.). As the evening goes on, she decides she's "tired" and goes to lay down in my bed. Of course, I follow along like a puppy.

Cool, so far. Now the stupid part.

Earlier in the day, I had arranged to meet a girl elsewhere on campus. I say arranged, but really she just told me where she would be that eveing and I told her I might be at the same place. This girl and I were friends, but she was never interested in me. I knew this, but hope springs eternal.

Now, back to Sophia, the blonde beauty. So we're lying in bed, fooling around. Suddenly, I decide to get up and go meet this other girl. In other words, I left an almost "sure thing" IN MY BED to go meet a "long shot" who was NOT IN MY BED. I went to the place this other girl was supposed to be and, of course, she wasn't there. I didn't even know what I would have done if she had been there. I went back home, driving quite fast and feeling like a complete idiot.

Believe it or not, but Sophia was still there, in bed. By now, however, she was totally out of the mood. I imagine that her self-esteem was quite trampled by my leaving during an intimate moment. We fooled around a little bit more, but she ended up leaving a short while later.

Looking back, I regret abusing Sophia's feelings. I also regret missing what should have been a spectacular night with her.

Now I'm older, married (happily) to neither of the girls in this story, but I still look back at my night with Sophia as an adventure not taken. She and I continued to be friends. We even "messed around" from time to time, but nothing ever compared to that "study" date we had.

I don't know if this story really qualifies as a stupid thing, or just something I regret (sort of).

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I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I sought to make them better. G. F. Handel