Ever do something THIS stupid?

In My Humble Opinion
101

One day I had just arrived home from K-Mart after buying an audio tape. Back in those days, the foolproof K-Mart security system for audio tapes was to encase the tape in this big plastic doohickey that was about three times bigger than the tape. This way, K-Mart (and other stores) reasoned, people couldn’t easily sneak the tapes out of the store.

Well, back then they didn’t remove the doohickey. You did that once you got the damn thing home. Which wasn’t too easy.

So I’m hacking away at the doohickey with a steak knife. Saw, saw, saw. My grandmother looked at me and said, “Now, be careful with that knife! Be sure to cut away from you!” I said I would…

and promptly sliced rather deeply into my right index finger.

It bled a lot.

But I wasn’t going to let on! No sir! I grimaced. She asked if all was well. “Uh-huh,” I said through clenched teeth. Then I turned around and examined the damage. You never saw such red!

And I was pretty young at the time - 11? - so the finger wasn’t fully developed. So it’s now a little crooked. (Or maybe it’s always been crooked and I just use that incident to explain why. That’s more likely, huh?)

102

Now that’s dumb. Them, I mean, not you. Removal of the plastic doohickey should be part of the deterrent from stealing/incentive to purchase: if you pay, you get the plastic doohickey removed! If they truly believed no one could sneak the tape out of the store with the PD on it, they were high.

103

Well, me too. I wasn’t too careful. But seriously, that was SOP back then. It wasn’t till much later that they stumbled onto the cellophane shrink wrap/bar code sticker deal.

104

I must be just a little bit younger than you, or maybe from a different part of the country, because I do remember the PDs, but in my day, they were removed at purchase, with the implication that if you wanted to walk out with it as is…you were welcome to end up with a sliced hand!

As far your story, stop beating yourself up. My current dumb story also involves knives.

Customer asks Rilch to open this set of steak knives so she can see how sturdy they are. Rejects them and leaves. Rilch sighs and begins reassambling the box. Hm…this one knife doesn’t want to get back in its slot…I think I’ll give it a push…

Rilchiam at the first-aid kit: “I need a fingertip bandage. No, a fingertip bandage…Yeah, it’s a puncture wound. No, I’d rather not say.”

105

Oh, I didn’t mean to sound like I was beating myself up - I just wasn’t paying attention, and when you’re using knives (as you know!) you kinda sorta need to pay attention.

(This was early 1980s, New Jersey.)

Now, about your steak knives… you were pushing the knife back in by its pointy end? :eek:

106

Also in my current job, many items have a bulky plastic tag attached to them. If you leave with the item and tag, it will set off the anti-theft alarms by the doors, but I’ve also heard that similar tags in clothing stores will “squirt ink all over” if you try to remove them yourself. Don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that, ink-filled or not, you’ll have the devil’s own time trying to remove them with anything other than our equipment.

107

Yes. Well, actually, I thought my finger would be cushioned by foam rubber. I was, of course, wrong. All guns are loaded, and no knife blades are insulated.

108

So I’m sixteen, working a summer job at Hardee’s. Catsup dispensers for burger assemblers are these funnels with a hole in the bottom that you open by pressing a switch in the handle. When the dispenser on the dressing table is empty, you refill it from a wall dispenser that holds 30 lb. bags of ketchup.

One day it’s lunch rush and we run out of catsup, both dispensers. I get sent to change the wall dispenser. Being in a hurry, I fail to follow procedure. I remove the old bag, pick up the new bag, and plop it into the wall holder. It is only then that I notice that I forgot to change over the spigot from the old bag of catsup to the new bag of ketchup. I remove the spigot from the old bag. To save time, I reason, I can take the cap off of the new bag and just screw on the spigot in its place. With the bag still in the dispenser. With 30 lbs. of pressure on top of the opeining.

I carefully unscrew the cap, holding the spigot at ready (being a frugal employee, I didn’t want to spill more than a few drops). Suddenly, the cap is loose enough, shoots out of my hand, and a geyser of catsup hits me in the chest. Undaunted, I try to force the spigot onto the nozzle, against the firehose like pressure of the erupting ketchup, spreading the spray of catsup out so that it covers the wall, counter, floor, and a female coworker unlucky enought to have been close by. The bag completely empties before I can get the spigot on.

So I go back to storage to get a new bag, which I proceed to put into the wall mount without changing the spigot. To my credit, I did remove the bag before attempting the change this time.

109

Been there, done something just like that, Number Six, only it was Mountain Dew syrup. I still can’t remember if I was supposed to attach the gas first then the syrup, or vice versa, but I did it the wrong way. You haven’t lived until you’ve been drenched from head to toe in sickly sweet Moutain Dew syrup. It’s been nearly 20 years since I pulled that boneheaded stunt, and I still gag when I smell Mountain Dew.

110

Ever climb from the passenger side of a moving car over the roof and slide into the drivers seat? I have and lived to tell the tale.

NYS Thruway, Full size Ford Station Wagon with cruise control. As I have aged I look back on things like this in awe. “How did I ever get this old?”

111

wow… I’m inspired!
I certainly have a list … but y’all have managed to surpass many of them!
Grabbing an overhead light socket … with my thumb firmly inside the socket, for grip … and before it dawns on me that means there is no bulb … I go ahead and flip the switch on the socket to on … lighting ME up …
Dropping two paper clips, connected together with a third clip, into a floor mounted electrical socket.
Two bare wires, found in the closet of an interestingly wired house a friend had purchased … after touching them to the prongs of a lamp plug (didn’t think to test the lamp to be sure it worked) and getting no result … my inner genius came up with the thought to touch them together … “just to see…”
Major burns where the bits of wire splattered up the friend’s wife’s nicest dress …:smack:
Riding down a 4 lane boulevard at about 60, leaning out the passenger window … to about my knees … to hand some girl a pack of matches, as she drove the car next to us …
Though I’m still horrified when I think of crawling to the front room, burdened with harsh hangover, to look out the window to see if I drove my car home … burrrrrrr
But, perhaps the best/worst … Setting a $1200 mulit-port high-speed tape duplicator down next to my car, because my hands were full with other crap … then forgetting to pick it up again, before I head into the building … bye bye

112

This is the story of a chat, a lemon, and a bottle of tequila. It is also the story of a bottle of water, an ancient mini-fridge, and a knife.

The night before The Event, my friend downstairs and I had been keeping company with Jose Cuervo. When we parted for the night, we decided it was best if we split up the booze, so that if someone got busted than the other person wouldn’t loose the money they put in. (We lived in a dorm, and went halvsies on the cost of two small bottles.) I go up to my room, post on my LJ about how non-drunk I am, go to bed.

The next night, I’m doing the usual chat with a group of Buffy fans. Someone informs me that friend and I were foolish to have been using limes, since tequila is so good with lemon. Well, I have to try this out for myself. Besides, every chat needs a drunk poster, right?

There’s discussion of shot glasses - I don’t have one, and am drinking from one of my many plastic cups. Friend downstairs had one, but she’s off at another friend’s apartment, trying out Corona. I get quite enjoyably drunk, and some other drunkards join the chat, and we have a good time.

I’m starting to wind down - I get sleepy when I drink, and that night was no exception. However, I didn’t want to wake up hung over, so I had to drink some water first. I can’t stand the taste of tap water, so I bought bottled water in bulk from the grocery store. Trouble was, I’d gone through most of my water last night. I had a bottle in my regular fridge, and a bottle in the mini-fridge.

For those who have never experienced dorm-room grade mini-fridges, they have two settings: freezer, and defrost. This one was on freezer, and my second bottle of water wasn’t quite frozen solid. I don’t want to sit around waiting for it to melt enough to drink, so I come up with a brilliant idea: I’ll hold the bottle steady with one hand, and jab the knife into the bottle of water with the other.

Predictably, I miss, and gash my finger. I report this to the people in chat, who are understandably alarmed. I also report this to friend downstairs, who I’ve been IMing with. She’s even more alarmed. The wound gapes when I bend my finger - I’m pretty sure I need stitches. I can’t go to the RA, since she might report me for having alcohol. I can’t drink myself, not only because I’m drunk but because I’m elevating and putting pressure on my finger. (Ahh, girl scout first aid skills.) Friend tells me to go talk to the guys around the corner, since they drive.

All four guys around the corner are pretty cute, so I have no problem with this. They take forever to answer their door - seems they’ve also been indulging in substances, although theirs were more of the herby variety. They look at my finger and agree that yes, I should probably get that stitched up, and isn’t it lucky that one of them wasn’t smoking?

Lone sober boy takes me to the nice people at my HMO’s ER, who glue my finger and don’t give me a tetanus shot. I don’t mention alcohol in my story to them - I figure that they probably see all kinds of interesting knife wounds at 3AM, and mine isn’t all that exciting. I go home, reassure people that I’m not bleeding to death, and go to bed.

When I go home for the weekend, I tell my parents what happened, minus the alcohol. What’s scary is that they accepted that I would do something like that when I was sober. What makes this story worthy of this thread is that they’re probably right.

113

Wait, I have another. Just happened this morning.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table eating my oatmeal, reading my paper. I have my foot resting on one of the connecting pieces on the bottom of the chair (it’s a wooden chair, part of an IKEA dinette set).

  • CRACK *

Profanity ensues. My foot broke the wooden dowel off, and a quite-sharp nail had cut into it (my foot, that is). At first, the gash seemed inconsequential, and as I recovered from my shock, I let it sit for a few seconds. But it continued to sting, and as I looked again I saw blood coming out. After cleansing it and bandaging it, I’m a happy camper, more or less.

The stupid aspect is that I was really leaning on the dowel with my foot, foolishly thinking it couldn’t possibly break off… :wink:

114

Hmm… at my cousin’s house one time I was looking over her cd collection and picked out about 20 albums to borrow. As I was driving away, my cousin and her brother were waving goodbye in an excessive fashion like they usually do, I smirk and leave. About 15 seconds later I hear something hit the roof, a few more similar noises follow when I decided to stop the car and see whats happening.

Turns out I put all the cds on the roof and forgot to take them inside the car when I left. The road was littered with broken jewel cases and scratched discs. Thankfully my cousin didnt like most of the cds and I only had to buy her 3 new ones. They also weren’t waving goodbye either.

115

Well, yeah, me too. Would a guy admit he’d pissed all into his pants while trying to take a leak? Wouldn’t that be like saying, “Yo, dude, check it out, my dick is so small I can’t even get it out past my fly.” :wink:

Not like my scenario is any less embarrassing: “Why, yes. Yes, I was concentrating on bracing myself against the bathroom walls and not paying attention to my stream of urine arcing its golden way onto the seat of my pants. Yes, I only realised it once I’d pulled said pants up and cinched them round my waist, and yes, I did run like hell out of the dive bar. Womanhood is a beautiful and glorious thing.”

116

I have to tell you what my friend did last week. She is a free spirit, really fun-loving person, female, age 51. All her friends refer to her as the Princess because they think she always gets her way, and her husband adores her. We work together at a church.

Last Friday she went to lunch and when she came back the guy who runs the lawn service had been raking the leaves. He knows my friend pretty well and said to her, “No running through the leaves!” Well, my friend took the dare! She went over to a big pile of leaves and did a frontal free fall into them.

She has a broken rib.

On Monday at breakfast she showed me the little pillow she is carrying around to hold against her rib when she laughs–the pillow said, “What part of Princess don’t you understand?” She got it for her 50th birthday. I said to her, “What part of 50 don’t you understand?”

117

My “Brady Bunch” moment:

While living alone, I had just loaded up the dishwasher when I noticed that I was out of dishwashing detergent. I did however, have a bottle of dishwashing liquid.

Dishwashing detergent, dishwashing liquid. Close enough for me! I squired a goodly anount of lemon-scented soap in the dispenser and went into the living room to watch TV.

From where I was sitting I could see the dishwasher, and it wasn’t long before I noticed a large mound of suds, steadily increasing in size, making its way across the kitchen floor towards the living room. :eek:

Turns out that dishwashing detergent is designed not to produce suds. Took me an hour and a box of baking soda to get the soap out of the dishwasher.

–Patch

118

Stupid thing, eh? Hm… this happened two days ago.

 So I'm dismissed from school. My HS is on a VERY huge, VERY steep hill.

 I decided to skateboard down it. 
 Never mind that there was an intersection right at the END of the hill. Never mind that there was no stoplight. Never mind that I didn't really know how to skateboard that well. Never mind that my skateboard is a cheap piece of crap. Never mind that I didn't know how to stop on a skateboard.
 Ohh, no. Never mind all that.
 WHOOOOOOSH!! I skateboard down the hill, and I see the street coming towards me at about 15 miles an hour. I jump off and the skateboard rolls under a parked car.
Which would be fine. If it stopped.
The skateboard goes INTO the street, and this dick sees my skateboard, yet he STILL (read still) runs OVER it.
As if I was watching in slow-motion, my five-dollar skateboard breaks in two with a sickening CRAAACK under this BEHEMOTH of a car's tires.

There was a crowd outside watching. All is silent for ten seconds, and it seems time had stopped. Then, I hear the loudest "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH!" that could ever be heard at a Catholic all-girls school.

 When there were no cars coming, I ran out into the street to retrieve my board. As an insult to injury, there was a HUGE tire tread mark running along the board. My friend, Lei,  runs down the hill to me and she says:

 "Skateboard: 5 dollars.
  Skateboard lessons: 10 dollars
  Seeing your only skateboard being run over 
  by a cheap assed car: Absolutely Priceless."
119

Thats exactly what happenned to my stepdad one time. I make it a habit to read the manuals for everything and I already knew that dishwashing liquid was a no-no. Guess he didnt :smiley:

120

My dad once used dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher too. He knows the difference, I guess he just wasn’t paying attention.

A few weeks ago, I was nuking up some veggie wings and accidentally set the microwave for the wrong time. I don’t know exactly how long I set it for (they’re supposed to nuke for a minute), but it had been at least two or three minutes when the plate exploded. The kitchen smelled like burnt plastic for days.

Fortunately, my roommate, her fiance, and I had all been watching a great deal of CSI (we’d rented the DVDs) and instead of them laughing at my stupidity, they saw it as an opportunity to use their mad forensic skillz at figuring exactly what caused the explosion. We put the shards of plate together, like a jigaw puzzle to find the origin of the explosion. It was fairly entertaining.

We’re geeks, okay?

Also, I once stepped on a rake. In my defense, it was in high grass and I couldn’t have seen it. Still.