Ohhhh...that was dumb.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I just thought of a good one.

I was at work, and it started to rain. I knew I’d left my windows open so I headed downstairs to roll them up. I stopped and lit a cigarette and headed out to my car. I cupped the cigarette in my hand to protect it from the rain. It’s hard to describe to a non-smoker; I had the cigarette pinched between my forefinger and thumb, lit end pointing into my palm.

I rolled up the window, and uncupped my cigarette, and took a drag.

In my infinite wisdom, I had somehow uncupped “backwards” and took a drag of the lit end. I’d always heard the expression “hurt like a sonofabitch” but until that day, I never truly appreciated it. The worst injury, though, was to my pride, because I had a nice big blister on my lip, which of course drew questions.

D’oh.

I was cleaning out my car, and for some reason, decided I needed to move it less than a foot backwards, but had left the keys in the house. One of my previous cars had been a Chevy Sprint; this teeny tiny thing that weighed maybe 10 pounds. OK, I exaggerate, but you get the idea. In the Sprint, I had gotten into the habit of moving it by planting my foot on the ground and just pushing (while the car was in neutral, of course.) Well apparently on this day, I forgot completely that I no longer owned the Sprint, and now owned a car about 3 times its size. I slipped the car into neutral, planted my foot, and gave a shove. Nothing. So I figured, well, I’ll just get out and nudge it. So I get out of the car, and give it a gentle nudge, and sure enough it begins to roll. Suddenly, I remember that driveway, while very close to level, does have a very slight downward incline towards the street, and the car is not going to stop on its own. I race towards the door, trying to hop into the car a la Dukes of Hazzard, but am not fast enough. The door is wide open, and luckily, there was a very large cement urn-type planter on that side of the driveway. The door caught it, and the resulting slowing of the car gave me enough time to hop in and apply the brake. Having done so, I ran back into the house, grabbed the keys, went out and moved the car back forward; as I did, I heard the metal of the door pop back into its preferred position. The door is still very slightly out of whack, but completely usable, which is very lucky, considering my complete idiocy.

And one last one. When I was about 16, I was mowing the lawn with the standard gas-powered push mower. The stupid thing had a problem where the spark-plug cable kept slipping off the plug, so if I let go of the handle, it would cut off instead of idling. I was mowing along, and needed to stop to pick something up off the lawn, but I noticed the cable had again slipped off. My solution? Hold the handle down while leaning forward to put the cable back into position. From what I understand the look of shock (ha!) on my face was priceless.

42

Not me, and not involving pain or even stupidity but it was funny…

Me and a friend used to walk up the local hill with our binoculars. On this day my friend had his dad’s new pair. I happened to be watching him look through them. He’d finished looking and so moved the binocs away from his face, and let go.

Only the strap wasn’t around his neck. crunch!..
… only kidding, luckilly the bincos hit soft bushy grass.
Now to finish reading TellMeI’mNotCrazy’s post.

43

tellMeI’mNotcrazy’s ciggy story brought this one to the surface. . .

Once, I had a winter jacket that had a collar that zipped up around the neck. One time I put it on, whipped the zipper up while looking down, and caught my bottom lip in the zipper – so bad I had to tug at the zipper to get the pinched skin out. It turned into a big purple blister, about twice the size of a BB. HURT LIKE A SON OF A BITCH.

44

I have a bad habit of mistaking the air freshner can for my hair spray.

Of course I don’t get it until I’ve sprayed at least 5 pounds of hairspray onto my head, because its not getting sticky and my hair that was neatly curled is now becoming this flattened, wet mess. I’ll shake the can thinking that will help it and spray some more. When that doesn’t work, I will actually look at the can, see that it is air freshner, and spray my hair again :eek:

I have also mistaken the air freshner as my deodarant, but just thought “Huh well that smell is different.”

45

When I was four years old, I would stick my mother’s house keys into the electrical socket (only one key at a time fortunately). Now don’t ask me why, I think the words “perfoming a public service”. Nothing ever happened…until I stuck it into the outlet in the stove (a two prong job rather than a three prong with the ground). Lots of noise, lots of sparks. I wasn’t hurt at this point, but then I saw my mother coming down the hall way seemly oblivous. Rather than get in trouble, I quickly grabbed the key out of the socket and didn’t get zapped. That is until I realized my nervous system was telling me that hot brass was searing my skin.

Here’s the kicker. I was a pretty cocky teenager years later and thought my mom had never figured it out, until I mentioned it years later. She responded curtly,“Oh yes I did, because I noticed your thumb and finger were inflamed with a very peculiar scarring. I figured you were screwing around with some matches and got what you deserved. That is until I tried using the key to get into house and found it was partially melted. I immeadiately realized that odd blister was a partial mirror impression of “WESLOCK” a al Indiana Jones. That outlet in the stove never worked after that.”

Well, I thought, that was the end of that–but good ol Mom wasn’t finished, “of course the one stupid thing that I never forget was when you were two years old and you had grabbed the electric mixer with the beaters from kitchen when I wasn’t looking. You plugged it in the outlet in the garage and started stirring water with it.” I asked, “what’s so stupid about that?”, I replied. “You were sitting in a puddle of water while running the mixer. Along with you brother.”

46

*Morons hate it when you call them morons. *

flamingbananas, your sig is especially approporiate. :smiley:

47

Why yes, yes it is.

How long until the spots go away?

48

While not injurious to me or others, this was pretty embarassing.

I put on “all” my ice hockey gear, including skates, grabbed my stick and was about to leave the locker room. I’d forgotten to put on my pants. You can’t look dumber than wearing shoulder pads, shinpads and stockings, skates and a jockstrap.

49

Oh yeah, I was about 40 years old.

50

I grew up on a dairy farm in Missouri. When I was about 7 years old I was fascinated by the BB guns and often target practiced while the cows were being milked. I stepped outside the barn, took aim at the building across the small cow lot from me and pulled the trigger. Good thing I had good aim. . .that bullet came back to smack me right between the eyes :smack:

OW!!! Tears came. I quietly learned a valuable lesson about the forces of science.

I never told my father.

On to my next stupid act. . . :slight_smile:

51

Now that’s something you don’t hear every day!

52

At least, not in the first person.

53

Great thread! I was just thinking of opening a similar one.

The most off-the-wall stupid little thing I’ve ever done was when I was out shooting pictures with a camcorder. At one place, I thought a “portrait” orientation would be more effective–so I rotated the camcorder 90 degrees, as if it were a still camera! I knew better, but the habit of being able to do that with a still camera was overpowering, evidently.

54

I KNEW I was onto my next stupid thing!!!

It was a BB. . .it only felt like a bullet :smack:

My boyfriend pointed this out to me over lunch. Needless to say, I was expecting some feedback :smiley:

55

But dear as I told you over lunch that hole in the middle of your head looks nice!
I hardly even noticed it til you pointed it out :smiley:

56

This happened just today. My friend and I were lighting insense with a lighter, so I told her that when you lick your finger and run it fast through the flame you won’t get burned. Well she tried it, only she went right to the base of the flame and held it there. Nice little burn on her finger today. This is also the same friend that stuck her finger in candle wax that had been burning for a few hours. Also a nice burn on her finger.

57

Here’s my self-inflicted stupidity story - even though it involves a chainsaw, you can relax, the injuries were (* Que “Holy Grail” theme*) merely a flesh-wound. A couple of years ago I was cutting some fallen trees with the fore-mentioned tool. It helps to realize that I’m left handed and on this particular saw the starter cord is on the right side of the saw body. For my first try at starting the saw, I used a cross handed grip, my right hand holding down the saw body on the ground and my left gripping the handle of the starter cord. Leaning forward, I gave a mighty heave and managed to give myself a backhanded smack on the jaw. Thinking “Boy, that was pretty stupid” I next tried to hold the saw down by sliding the toe of my right-foot boot into the trigger guard. This time, when I yanked the cord, my toe slipped neatly out from the guard, allowing the saw to flip upwards so that the tip of the chain caught me on the forehead. Although the resulting cut was tiny, as you probably know scalp wounds tend to bleed…

58

This probably only really makes sense to UK Dopers, given the electrical plug arrangements we have. Basically, unlike US plugs (I think) UK plugs have a replacable fuse inside. Also, our power supply is 240 volts, rather than 110.

Anyway, whilst I was at university, my kettle broke and I decided to replace the fuse. All went well, except I wasn’t totally sure it was the fuse that was at fault and didn’t want to go to the trouble of putting the plug back together if it wasn’t - especially as I’d had to take the one from my TV plug to test it.

The obvious solution was to put the plug in the socket and push the fuse in - if it came to life then that would reveal the fault. If it didn’t, I could just take the fuse back out and put it in the TV.

Suffice to say it came to life! There was a bit of a bang, and I next remember leaning up against the opposite wall while my arm did an involuntary twitching dance that was unique, but painful.

59

Another remembered one. It’s not really ‘dumb’ as such. merely an oversight - Not realizing that sliding about on laminate flooring ontop of a cushion for a good few hours builds up raaaaaather a lot of static electricity.

I was putting down a new kitchen floor. Wanting a break I got up and leaned on the metal radiator. “SHIT!” accompanied with a large jump that made my mother flinch.

60

A light bulb had burned out a couple of weeks ago in my apartment. I didn’t get around to notifying maintenance until now, because their office hours coincide almost exactly with my work hours, and on weekends I just forgot, 'k? Finally, yesterday, I went down and set up a work order for them to change the light bulb. Today I got a call from them, saying they had gone up to my apartment and the light bulb was fine- they had changed it a week ago. :smack:

It clearly takes more than one of me to determine if a light bulb is burned out or not, let alone change one…