We’ve all seen people, even ourselves, do really stupid things, like . . .
I was in the elevator of a hotel in Niagara Falls, Ontario. A family got on and as the doors were closing, one of them pushed a button. The doors opened again. As the doors were closing again he pushed it again, and the doors opened. As they started to close again he pushed the button, and they opened again. This time I looked to see which button he was pushing. I actually had to point out to the guy that you’re supposed to push the floor you’re going TO, not the floor you’re coming FROM.
For the record, there were Amish people in the hotel, and they knew how to use the elevator.
I constantly see people in NYC walking around while reading their phones or iPads or Kindles (or sometimes even a newspaper). Completely absorbed in it, paying no attention to where they are going.
I am someone who can barely avoiding tripping and bumping into things while I am concentrating with laser-like attention on my surroundings; I don’t know *how *these peoples’ bodies are not littered all over the sidewalk like recycling waiting for pick-up.
We were setting up a party at work. A co-worker was using the little, tiny kitchen sink to fill up big aluminium trays with hot water.
I told her to turn around. She still didn’t get it. I told her to open the door to the utility closet. She does, and remembers the big utility type sink in the utility closet.:smack:
I saw someone win a tennis match and get so excited that she leapt the tennis net. Except that you could see that she actually CHANGED HER MIND HALFWAY OVER, and of course did a header into the concrete.
The fact that I saw this from the first-person perspective doesn’t make it any less stupid.
While I was visiting family for the break, I saw a pretty stupid one. It was the first big snowstorm of the year, and the roads were an absolute mess. A car had stalled by the side of the road, and a guy in a van was trying to help. By pulling up behind in the rear-wheel-drive van, and pushing the car with it. And did I mention that they were about to cross a bridge?
Last I saw, the van was spinning out of control on the bridge, but we decided it was prudent to not stick around such stupidity.
I once stopped in a park to watch a knife juggler. Stunt jugglers are pretty cool but this guy just wasn’t that good at it. He needed at least a few more years practicing with soft balls before he tried anything like that especially in front of an audience. He had several near misses with messing up badly and hurting himself and even got cut once. When he broke out the balance ball to stand on while he juggled, I made everyone in my group leave because there were some small children with us and they didn’t need to see an accident like that.
I won’t say who did this, to protect the idiotic, but someone I know went to Walgreen’s and bought bath beads, thinking that they were the very dangerous drug that is only *called * bath salts, and attempted to snort them. So, so stupid. :rolleyes:
Probably the classic stupid thing we’ve all seen: people getting off an escalator, and just stopping there. And then getting angry when people start walking into them.
It was snowing heavily. I was driving on a highway, and a truck pulling a prefabricated house (no, not a shed, a house as big as the one I grew up in) zoomed past me.
Let yea who is without the sins of fire cast the first stone. It certainly won’t be me. I have done that one more than once (with missing hair to prove it) plus I accidentally started one big forest fire and came super close to starting a much larger one. Thank God for those nearby Russian day laborers who did everything in their power to put it out before it burned an entire town forest many square miles big. In the first year we got our house with lots of wooded land, I personally got over 5% of the year’s burn permit for a town of 13,000 people. Having the fire department show up at my house was at least a monthly occurrence as well.
When I was growing up, my whole family was told that the volunteer fire department wouldn’t respond to any more calls for our land after three other family members started three forest fires in a one month period. I don’t feel it is my place to judge people on fire related matters these days. I think I am really good with fire though. 90% of mine succeed without any outside emergency help needed.
When I was a kid, my school hired an ‘entertainer’ for the Christmas party. He was someone’s uncle, a street performer, and crap. In retrospect, someone should maybe have realised, when he managed to drop a flaming torch into the waste paper bin behind him and set it on fire, that he maybe shouldn’t be doing this stuff, but no. He carried on. Fire breathing. In front of a school of 28 kids aged 4-11 years old, including two of his nieces.
He spent two weeks in hospital.
I now actually do fire performing myself (I basically wound up with a phobia of street performers, and eventually decided to have a go to get rid of the fear- it worked quite well ), though not fire breathing- but I’ve friends who do, and no-one can work out how the hell he managed to set his chest hair on fire.
I’ve encountered some stupid shit since by people playing with fire, (don’t walk up behind someone spinning hot burny things and try to take them out of their hands without warning, it’s rarely a good plan) but nothing to beat that.
I also can’t work out why any school, even the weird little village one I went to, would let such an obvious idiot do that, especially with a ‘safety gap’ of only around 1.5 metres between him and the very littlest kids sat on the floor in the front row, and no safety gear but a bucket of water.
hangs head I am guilty of this particular act of stupidity.
To add a corollary in my defense, though, reading while crossing the street – now THAT would be even more amazingly stupid. Thankfully, I’ve stopped doing it. Recently.
I live up in the mountains and get tons of snow. Walking our dead end road one day, I came upon a stuck Nissa Xtera. It was at the end of the road, trying to get up a driveway. They were so, so lost.
Anywho, it was sort of off the drive in a ditch pointing up hill. This fellows ‘friend’ was ramming the Xtera from behind with a Ford Expedition. Not pushing, ramming. It was crazy, they were just making things worse pushing the Xtera into deeper and deeper snow. Not to mention beating the crap out of both vehicles.
I told them to don’t do a thing a got my car and a tow strap. Pulled them right out. They were kids, I suspect Dad would be pretty unhappy about the damage to the Expedition.
), though not fire breathing- but I’ve friends who do, and no-one can work out how the hell he managed to set his chest hair on fire.