Flat-out stupidest thing you've ever done

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It could have been unnecessarily risky, it could have been something done at work, with friends, a spouse, alone, to someone else, for someone else. Not necessarily embarassing (although that would be fun, too), but just really dumb, like running with scissors, sticking your tongue to a frozen pole, that sort of thing. The only qualification is that it has to be something that you did intentionally, either with, or without thinking about the consequences or ramifications.

Whatever it was, share!

I’ll start:

This was 20 years ago in a suburban town on Long Island. I was 18 (so no excuse for being too young), and I was walking about a mile to a friend’s house to shoot caps with my capgun that looked like a realistic 9mm handgun. (They don’t make 'em like this anymore.) I decided to walk around town with it, holding it out, but down at my side. Indeed, I decided to walk right by the KFC where the cops always hang out (they were just always there!) and walk right up to their police car from behind, walk past the driver’s side door, and keep walking past. Smart, huh? :smack:

The police officer asked me to stop (politely), at which point I did, and turned around. Not too fast, but not too slow, either. Incredibly stupid. He called me over, took the gun from me (again, politely - “let me see that,” or something), looked at it, gave it back to me, told me to put it away, and then sent me on my merry way.

And the thing of it all was, I did this intentionally just to see what would happen! :wally

I think this definitely would have qualified me for the Darwin awards if it had turned out the other way! :smiley:

P.S. After I did this, I continued to my friend’s house, whereafter we walked to the local candy/stationery store. I took out the gun, pointed it vaguely towards the person behind the counter, waited a beat, and asked, “Do you have caps for this thing?” Also my own decision.

I am married with a 5-year-old and plenty of insurance now.

2

I’ve got several potentials, I’ll let you decide:

  1. About 25 years ago, when working construction, I got to the jobsite first. Being Florida and the summer, it had rained the night before. Usually some stuff got left out, and this particular morning there was a power cord running along some scaffolding that was in a puddle of water. It was even humming or sizzling or somesuch sound. Young(er), stupid me thought “I should move that before somebody gets hurt”, so I reached down and grabbed the cord with my hand. My hand shot away from the cord like a cannon, doing a full “Three Stooges” rotation, before whacking into the low scaffolding overhead. It broke a bone in my hand and hurt like hell.

  2. A couple of years before that (this was in the days when drinking and driving was basically okay if you could get home without hitting anything), a friend and I had been out for a few beers. I was driving my mom’s 1966 Olds 88, a huge Cadillac like behemoth, one of the biggest cars on the road at the time. We were coming home and I was horsing around a bit. My friend, rightly, expressed his concern about my driving (back then this was something along the lines of, “hey, be more careful”, not, “let’s walk” – it wasn’t that far). So, to demonstrate that I still had my full facilities I drove the car up onto the sidewalk, using a driveway entrance as a convenient ramp and then drove the car between a telephone pole and the “guide/guy” (not sure which it actually is called). Probably just enough space to fit the car with a foot or so to spare. At 55 mph. My buddy didn’t say anything else the rest of the way home.

  3. Another time I was driving my 1970 Cougar with it’s big bad engine, after a night out, of course, and wanted to see just how fast it would go. So I found a nice, long deserted road (these don’t exist around here anymore) and sat at the light. This was about 3 am. When the light changed I gunned it and went just as fast as I could go. The speedometer passed the 130-140 mark, whatever was the highest number, and buried itself at 6 o’clock. Probably not an accurate reading, but let’s just say it was very fast. Now, you may think that’s the foolish part, but it gets worse. I saw the next light, about a half mile or so ahead. So I tapped the brakes. Well, the engine might have been rated to go damn fast but the rest of the car, brakes and suspension, couldn’t handle a quick stop from that speed. The whole car started to shake and vibrate. I realized, belatedly, that there was no way to get the car stopped before I could get through the intersection. So I got as slow as I could. I think I was going about 85 mph through the redlight. Fortuntately nobody else was anywhere nearby.

  4. A few years later, and I’ve had a bad night (but not drinking at all) and this is back in the early 80s and I’m fairly “punked out”. Now I’m a little over six feet, but I was wearing some big leather boots that probably had me at 6’3" or more. Not too wide, but big enough to be intimidating, and I’ve had people tell me I can look scary when I’m not happy. So a local cop pulls me over. I pull over to the side of the road, get out of the car and stomp back towards him. He gets out of his car and I snarl at him, “What do you want?” The cop, who is probably about 5’6" or 7", tops, and maybe 120 lbs, just stammers, “Er, I’m sorry, sir. Just wanted to let you know that you had a burned out taillight. You should get that taken care of as soon as you can. Have a good evening, sir” I think I might have grunted back a “Thanks” before getting in my car and driving home. I think his fear was the only thing that kept me from getting shot or arrested.

So, which one do you think was the dumbest? I think they’re all pretty dumb, and I probably have some others if I think on it somemore…

3

ShibbOleth :

1 & 2: You obviously have some sort of deep hatred of electricity. Or a deep desire to be deep fried.

3: I’ve done something similar. We (it was me and this same friend as with the gun) were driving my car. We wanted to see how fast it would go. But on the side streets. Although this wasn’t quite a residential street, I didn’t know that, and I got it up to 60 on a street barely wide enough to let oncoming traffic pass by.

  1. Not stupid, don’t know what the word for it is. actually worked out kind of well. But a good story.

I am torn between whether 1 or 2 was stupider. I’d have to go with 1, because you hadn’t been drinking.

4

I was 23 years old (far to old to be this damn dumb) and back at the family homestead for Christmas. I was ironing my shirt for church Christmas morning. My family open presents then go to a noon mass. The iron didn’t seem to be hot. It wasn’t getting the wrinkles out. So I thought I should feel the iron to see if it’s hot. So I held it up near my cheek. I couldn’t feel any heat, so I moved it closer and closer still feeling no heat from the iron. And then… I very gently touched the iron to my cheek…… burning my face instantly. It was quite hot being on the highest setting.

Looking in the mirror above my right eye I could very clearly see a “^” from the point of the iron. You could see the burn from the edge of the iron running down the side of my right cheek. And in the middle of my cheek above and around my right eye you could very clearly see the steam holes from the bottom of the iron.

Now going to mass on Christmas morning was not the worst part. The worst part was returning to my apartment and my brand new fiancée (I had just proposed on 12/23) and explaining the whole thing. She wisely kept me from visiting her parents for a few weeks until I healed completely. Luckily I heal very quickly and don’t scar easily. And yes she still married me 11 years ago last weekend.

5

Oh, geez…I could put together a looong list for this one. Of course, they would all start out with “So me and my friends were totally bombed, and we…”

There were dozens upon dozens of incidents where there is no viable, reasonable, or rational reason that neither I nor any of my friends wound up dead or imprisoned. All I can do is be thankful that we were apparently the luckiest bunch of MF’s there are that we were never serious hurt, nor hurt anyone else.

I’ll say the topper of this list was barreling down a NYC street at 120 MPH, freely passing around a bottle of JD, catching a whole lotta air at every bump. Fricking moronic.

Pissing off of a restaurant roof and convincing the subsequently called cops that the restaurant owner was a loon for thinking we would ever do that ranks up there as well.

Oh yeah…the stairwell diving contest, too.

6

One day, while running late for work, I stopped to drop my son off at daycare. Usually I’d stay and chat with the lady for a bit, but I was really in a hurry. So, I left the car running. Got out. LOCKED MY CAR DOOR. With my son in the front seat. His door? Also locked. I stood there like an idiot saying “Oh, honey, mama is SOOOOOOOO sorry!!” while waiting for my husband to get there with keys. This was pre-On-Star, obviously. I think they followed me around to see what sort of functions they should include. :rolleyes:

7

One fine day I drove my car to school knowing that I had to work after school and that the car would get me back to my house in order to eat dinner and change clothes much quicker than the bus. This would allow me to be on time for work.

I parked the car in the parking lot next to the school, went to all my classes, had a pretty normal day, and then left school for the evening. I headed out the front door of the building and made an immediate right to the bus stop. I waited, got on the bus, and the bus began to drive. Approximately a quarter mile away, I realized what I had done and looked like a lunatic when I began asking the bus driver to stop the bus so that I could get off because I had just forgotten to bring my car home with me.

I have never forgotten my car anywhere again.

Few weeks ago though, I went to Wal-Mart, which I really, really hate to do because I find shopping at Wal-Mart to be a horrific exercise in stress endurance and stupidity coping. Thinking only of the hell I would endure once I entered the Wal-Mart, I exited my car, locked the door, and pushed it shut. When the door was half way home, I realized that there was something I had forgotten to do. Yup, shut off the car and take out the keys. I had to call someone to bring me the spare set, then stand there in the parking lot looking like a public moron for 30 minutes until my other key arrived.

I now believe that it’s true what they say about engineers being out of touch with reality. I used to laugh about an engineer at Westinghouse who couldn’t find his own car in the parking lot and had to be walked to it by a security guard. No longer, I tell you.

8

Warning…very long…

The following is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done, and actually lived to tell about. (although, until this day, I have never told another living soul IRL because I am still embarrassed about it. In fact, the two friends I did this with and I made a pact to never discuss it again because honestly, we have no idea what we were thinking about when we did it. It’s also very long, so my apologies…

(I am going to use fake names from here on out to protect the innocent, as well as the guilty)

It was the summer of between my Junior and Senior year IN COLLEGE. I was in my early 20’s, and I should have been thinking more clearly. I had a friend, Kelly, whose parents owned property on a lake. In the summer, Kelly her boyfriend Dave and I would go out to the lake once or twice a week to tan and eat cheetos, and just hang out. She had an old rickety pier that we would laze around on and dive into the water from.

For descriptive purposes, I was the chubby one of the group, Kelly was the tall, skinny, bikini wearing one, and Dave was the short one. He is just over 4 ½ feet tall. The water was at least 15 feet deep and Dave couldn’t swim. To make him feel at home with us while we splashed around in the water, we bought him an inflatable boat. (he would just fall off of regular floats, so the boat was the only thing he would get in. Even then, he still insisted on wearing a life vest (even though the lake was very smooth and there were “no wake” laws so boats couldn’t make waves supposedly).

One fine summer day, we were splashing around in the water, Dave sat in the boat with his bag of chips and we were in heaven. To keep him from drifting away from us, we had his little boat tied up to the pier with a rope. Dave finished his bag of chips and tossed the bag into the water. I immediately chastised him and told him to retrieve his trash so it could be disposed of properly. He eventually grabbed his little paddle and began to track down the bag which was rapidly floating away. After about 10 or so feet, he had the bag safely back in his possession. It was at this point, the seed was planted, and the hamsters in our brains began to wear their little wheels out.

Dave marveled at how long the rope was that allowed him to venture so far away from the pier and yet still be connected to it. He asked the question, I wonder how long this rope is? Which led to the next question, “I wonder how wide this lake is? Which led to the next question, “I wonder how far out into the lake we can go with this rope still tied to the pier?” We didn’t’ take time to weigh the pros and cons. We were hell bent on seeing how long that rope was, and indeed how far we could get out into the lake while still being tied to that pier.

The three of us piled in his little boat. It must have been quite a sight. Since I was the strongest one I grabbed a paddle and began to pull us out toward the center of the lake. Dave said “This rope is mighty long.” Kelly, who was in the back of the boat chimed in, “Yeah, and we still have lots of it left.” I said, “Ok, I’ll keep paddling then” The rope must have been 100 or more feet long because when I looked back towards the dock, we were just about half way across the lake.

Dave and Kelly were laughing and giggling, when all of a sudden I heard this buzzing sound in the distance. “Shhhh,” I said “do you guys hear that?”

Everyone got quiet. At first they didn’t hear it, but suddenly, Dave’s eyes opened as wide as saucers. “Oh my God,is that a…???” He couldn’t even finish his sentence. We all knew what it was, it was a motor boat, and it was heading towards us….very fast. Now, there was a 50% chance that the boat would go around us, toward the side that wasn’t tied up to the pier….but there was an equal chance that we were in deep doo doo. Kelly and Dave grabbed for the rope to try and pull themselves back to the pier. Since I was heavy, I dove out of the boat to lighten the load so they could go faster. I swam behind the boat and tried to push it towards the pier.

It soon became abundantly clear to us that the boat wasn’t going to go around to the other side of us as we had hoped, and poor little Dave started to panic. In sheer terror, he screamed and jumped out of the boat. This left Kelly alone in the boat, lighter without the two of us, but still tied up to the stinking pier and still about 100 feet or so away from it. I had to turn my attention to Dave who was now helplessly thrashing about in the water since he couldn’t swim. And then, it happened. The motor boat was coming right smack dab between Kelly and the pier. I yelled at her to brace herself, and she plopped down in the little boat and held on for dear life, all the while screaming at the top of her lungs “oh Jesus, help me,help me Jesus….aaarrrghgghhhh)

The front of the motor boat passed over the rope at probably around 25 or 30 MPH. Whatever speed it was, it was way above the speed they were supposed to be going (remember the “no wake” law). The motor of the boat picked up the rope that was laying slack in the water, and then suddenly, the raft that Kelly was in jerked violently in the direction the motor boat was traveling. Suddenly, the rope snapped and Kelly sailed like a rag doll through the air and landed in the water.

The people in the motor boat, ahead of this at this point, knew they had snagged something, but they had no idea what it was. I had David by the top of his life jacket and was trying to calm him down, and Kelly surfaced and said she was ok. We all headed back to the raft and somehow managed to hoist David back up into it. He was still freaking out, Kelly was yelling at him for abandoning her, and I was just coming to the realization that we all could have died.

With David safely back in the boat, we hauled him over to the pier. We were watching the people in the motor boat as they inspected the motor and pulled out a large chunk of rope. I can only imagine what they were thinking, but they never suspected that three 20-something year old people had tried to cross a fairly high traffic lake in an inflatable raft with a rope tied to it, the very rope they dangled in their hands. We all felt very stupid, and we never told any of our mutual friends what we did. To this day when I think abou it, how scary that boat was heading toward us, I know we are all so lucky to be alive.

9

Many, many years ago a coworker had to point out to me, moments from me doing it, that sticking a paper clip into an electric outlet was a bad idea.

I can’t remember why I was going to do it - maybe something was stuck in there that I was going to fish out?

10

Yep, my sister did this. In her police uniform. In front of the police station. :stuck_out_tongue:

11

As I always say honey…I am so glad I didn’t know you back in those days. If I did, we would NOT be married now. :stuck_out_tongue:

12

I was fifteen, which, if this question were posed on Family Feud, would clearly be the number one answer to “at what age were you the stupidest?”. Every day I walked home the mile and a half from school with the same two friends, Dave and Paul. We would shoot the breeze and do minorly unadvisable things like throw glass bottles at bottles discarded on the ground to see if you could break the other bottle and keep your’s intact (we even had a name for that game).

Twice we managed to get into somewhat more serious trouble. There was a creek running along the outside of an apartment complex, and bordering some nice houses. In Virginia in the heat of mid summer we would sometimes take off our shoes and walk through the creek. I was bored and started to take the Virginia clay from the riverbank and build a makeshift dam. The other guys followed suit. So every day we made the dam higher and higher, and the sun baked it hard.

On that weekend there were torrential downpours. Come Sunday morning I get a knock on the door. Hello coppers. We built such an efficient dam that the water backed up and seriously flooded several houses. The neighbors idenified us easily as they saw us every day. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but I didn’t imagine that my engineering would be so effective.

The second offense was more serious, but at least I can blame it on Paul. Walking the same route we passed a house with a swimming pool. The pool had a huge dense curtain of bamboo. The neighborhood rumor was that the owners swam nude and didn’t want anyone looking in. Paul smoked and was flicking matches at me. They would arc and flame and I would dance away. He flicked one and it landed deep in the bamboo (again in mid summer, it was all brown and dried). We thought nothing of it and kept going. As we crested a big hill we heard fire engines and looked behind us to see smoke billowing. The next day all that was left was the bare concrete wall surrounding the pool, and it was charred black by the fire. It didn’t get to their house and no one was hurt. Needless to say we didn’t turn ourselves in, but I still feel bad about that one.

13

Hmm. When I was about 9 or 10 (so youth is an excuse), we had just moved into a “new” house. (The house was old; we were new to it.) In one of the outlets was a broken off plug. It was rusted. I thought to myself, “Oh, I’ll just pull that out.”

And I did. I got shocked, but not too badly, because I tried again. I think it must have been the rust that saved me.

14

But . . . did you ever get to see them sunbathe naked? :stuck_out_tongue:

15

Hee hee. I’ve got a couple of these, maybe someone can learn from my mistakes, or at least get a laugh out of them.

One time when I was in fifth grade a buddy of mine and I were taking apart a coffee maker. We had it down to the hotplate, and thought ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be neat to have a light between the plug and the hotplate so we’ll know when it’s hot!’ All we had was a little LED, so I decided to hold it to the bare wires while my buddy plugged it in to the wall. It felt like I sat there and shook for minutes before he realized what was happening and unplugged me. :smack:

The second time was just six months ago, so I really have no excuse. My girlfriend and I were in Big R, a ranch/hardware supply store, looking at cattle prods. I really have no idea what possesed me to hit the trigger and put my hand on the electrodes, but when my GF was able to get off the floor and stop laughing she told me it was the stupidest thing she’d ever seen me do. :-/

16

I once absentmindedly stapled my ear in a dull meeting. :smack:

17

Oh god, the deep dark secrets this thead has dredged from the recesses of my memory.

How about this:

  1. Having a drunken pool party, one member of the gang became too inebriated to walk, let alone swim around. So what better friendly thing to do than tie him to a lifesaving device (not a vest, one of those baywatch-esque tube things) with some handy rope and float him back out into the deep end. He spent about more hours floating lifelessly, babbling to himself. At least his head was above water. :smack:

  2. Driving a fully loaded large truck down a steep, windy, one-lane cliff road that sits above a lake. In summertime, in the afternoon, after working all morning. Can you see where im going with this? zzzzzzzzzzzzzz… Drifting in and out of sleep.
    I woke up to the horrific sounds of the truck running up an embankment, smacking into boulders, etc. Amazingly, only the left front tire was shredded, no other damage, even though I went about 15 feet up this boulder-strewn hillside. An 8 mile stretch of road, I hit the one 100 foot section where there is an obstruction between me and the cliff (with the lake at the bottom). Apparently I drove about 2 miles of that road sound asleep. If I had not been making the trip on a regular basis for 10 years I would not be alive. I believe I am not one of the world’s leading consumers of Red Bull energy drinks in the summer months when I am driving.

18

There’s a long and inglorious story to go with this, but I once lit a rocket indoors.

19

I’m sure I’ve done something stupider, but this springs to mind.

When I was 11, I joined a summer tennis camp. There was a 12 year old girl there that was a bitch and pretty much everyone disliked.

On the last day of the camp, she was getting a drink of water at the fountain when I ingeniously ran up to her and hit her with my racket. Not as hard as I could (I wasn’t out to break bones or anything), but I’m sure it hurt. She started chasing me, and I ran away as fast as I could.

Unfortunately for me, I also thought what I had just done was the funniest thing to ever happen in the history of the universe. I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t run, and I fell on the ground in pure conniption. At which point she caught up to me and laughter turned to tears as she started to beat me with her racket. Repeatedly.

Finally some adult came along and broke it up. Sobbing, I staggered off into the nearby school building where I got a drink of water and collected my thoughts. Hurt, crying, and angry, I remembered my swiss army knife (recently received as a present) was in my pocket. I charged back out to the courts and drew the knife on her.

Fortunately an adult broke that up quickly too. I don’t think I would have stabbed her, but I was so emotional who knows what could have happened.

Also up there on the list of stupidest things of all time was the night I drove home after trying to help my friend finish off a keg. Thank goodness it was a short drive. :wally

20

Now, allow me to tell you of my stupidity. This was my junior year of high school. It was the spring, so it was track season and my coach had recently told me how much I sucked at high jump and he told me to go be a pole vaulter. That’s not the story however, so on with that. I told my pole vault coaches I would be out for the next couple of days as I was having my wisdom teeth removed. All four were going to be dug up out of my gums and I would miss school that day and miss practice for the next couple of days. I got my wisdom teeth out, I was enjoying myself as I was on drugs and felt very good. I decided, I want to go to school and see all my friends and such. So, I went to school at the end of the day, told everyone all about it, all the fun it was, yes. Then, being the very intelligent person I am, I decide I want to go visit the track team. Note the following I did of my own accord, I do not blame my pole vault coaches for this at all. I watched the rest of the pole vault team get all warmed up. I thought it would be fun to mess around on the side and do some practice drills with the pole. So, if you’ve ever seen pole vault or a practice of this sport then maybe you have seen the drill where you run and plant the pole in the ground while you’re holding very low to practice your take off and running form and all that good stuff. Well, I’m doing that over on the side as the rest of the team goes about their practice. Then, on one of my practice jumps I accidently land funny and the pole gets swung up into my face. I get hit and in a daze for a couple seconds then I realize I didn’t hit my nose or forehead, but rather my mouth. So, I start feeling over my teeth with my tongue and I feel a gap where my front teeth were. I apparently had knocked them out, so I decide I’m going to go ask my pole vault coach about it and she is in shock at the fact that I knocked them out. Mind you I can’t feel the pain as I’m still decently drugged up. Then, part of the team goes searching around for my teeth on the ground and I go to show the head coach. So, I call my mom and she’s all upset and we go to the dentist the next morning and $5000 later I have new front teeth. Yay. Then the next week I get a mouthguard that I’m supposed to wear, but I definitely only wore it every so often. I continue to pole vault to this day, a freshman in college.