What is the fastest you have gone from buying something new and ruining it?
The first car I ever bought was a used Ford Explorer. It was from a dealer and was in great shape, practically new. I was literally driving it home for the first time and decided to go through a McDonald’s Drive through. I never owned a car so this was novelty for me and I wanted to do. I bought a Super sized coke (this was years ago when Super Size existed and I drank non diet soda).
Unfortunately the cup did not fit very well in my cup holder and the top was not on very well so when I turned out of the parking lot the cup went flaying and soda splashed across the dashboard and seats and carpet and everything.
I cleaned everything as well as I could but the stains never came out of the seats and carpeting and util the day I traded it in for a New car years later I would find new specks of congealed soda syrup.
One birthday, my six year old son got a remote control electric pterodactyl that, as the box said, “Really Flies”. It looked fantastic and my kid couldn’t wait to watch it soar majestically into the modern skies. We put it together, turned it on, and gave it a gentle toss, watching as it climbed about five feet before flipping over hard and nose diving into the tile breaking into many, many small pieces. It’s total life time was, seriously, around 0.6 seconds from start to finish.
And one “almost” case. Many years ago, I heard Jaguar was coming out with a new car. I followed the development for three years, read countless articles, scoured the internet for every spy photo, learned more about it than the people who designed it. When it finally went on sale, I was one of the first to order it, pretty much sight unseen. I waited months for it to be built and then more months as it made it’s way to America. The second time I drove it, a fully loaded Semi tried to make a lane change right into me. Missed me by centimeters… I think I would have killed him.
A Pentel mechanical pencil. In 1971, when they weren’t universally available. In Japan. When I was a wee lad.
We were visiting relatives in the Tokyo area and an uncle bought it for me at a little stationery shop. I loved it! It was so cool. It was literally the first mechanical pencil I had ever seen, and it was MINE!
And then, on one of the cross-town trains heading back to where we were staying, I took the pencil apart. Because that’s what I did with everything.
And dropped several critical bits on the floor. Of a crowded cross-town commuter train. The promptly hopped away out of reach and out of sight, in that impossible illogical amazing way that little dropped parts always seem to do. Don’t tell me small tubes and tiny springs and puny screws are inanimate. They move. They JUMP. They flee, like fleas.
I had that pencil for less than two hours before I ruined it. I was SOOOO MAD. I sulked about it all day after that.
Not so much broke as lost. My aunt once gave me a beautiful umbrella for my birthday. The first time it rained, I decided to give it a try and left it on the train. I never even had a chance to open it.
I also had a pair of earrings that I was wearing for the first time. When I got to work, one of them was missing. I got to wear it for under 45 minutes.
There was a leather jacket that I wore for the first time to get groceries (I don’t drive, so I had to carry everything). When I got home, I discovered that a bottle of cleaning fluid had leaked, leaving a giant, ugly, and permanent spot right on the front of the jacket.
I’ve broken a few tools the first time I’ve used them. Cheap tools, very expensive!
Just this past weekend, I break out a brand-new Singer sewing machine my wife had on a shelf for a few years, never used. Fiddled with it for about a half-hour, figured out how it worked, started my project… aaaaaand it packed up! Back to sewing by hand. Back in the box, back on the shelf. :mad:
When I was just Weeowulf, my dad and I built a box kite. It was made of balsa-wood struts and glued rice-paper. It took us quite a while to finish. We took it with us to Cape Cod (I can’t remember how we transported it there in the car - maybe we built it there). There was a stiff breeze blowing on the dunes, and we took it out with maybe 100’ of string on the spool and let it go.
It flew down the dune, with the string going “ZzzzZZZzzzZZZ” until it reached the end of the spool, at which point it exploded into a zillion tattered pieces.
My dad thought I was going to burst into tears, and apologized profusely, but I thought it was hilarious!
A while back, I needed some part for my car. I went to the car part store to get it and my roommate came with me out of boredom. Purchased said part, got in the car to go home, roommate was holding the box. Got on the road and up to speed and roommate started shaking the box like an xmas present, just sorta fucking around and bloop! The part went flying out of the box and out of the window and into some field/ditch never to be see again.
Roomate felt like a total jackass and his face turned bright red. We turned right around he bought a new part.
My friend gave me a beautiful glass ornament for Christmas one year. I managed to get it home from her house and promptly dropped it on the hard tile floor.
And one I’ll never forgive myself for – we got a new fridge (a huge event in our house) and I put a little scratch in the front with the corner of my metal tool box. It was brown so it would have been in the 70s – and I still feel horrible for ruining one of the few new things my mom got.
I bought a set of security cameras. While I was trying to get one set up under the eaves, I nearly lost my balance on the ladder. I saved myself, but a $100 camera crashed to its doom before I even plugged the damn thing in. To make it doubly worse: I had tied off its power cord on a nail to prevent just that kind of disaster, but the cord broke off where it connected to the camera.
We wanted chairs for the deck, and I really love Adirondack style. Home Depot was doing a clearance on all of their outdoor furniture, and they had two Adirondack chairs without any labels on them. We had to call several people over, go through some hassle, and finally got them for an incredibly low price.
We took them home. Put them on the deck. Sat down. The arm of one broke off.
My first Cox-engined control line model airplane…a P-40, if I remember correctly.
We fired up the engine, I grabbed the controls, my friend gave the model a little push and…
The plane flew straight up and I freaked out. I over-corrected and it flipped over on its back, flew upside down for a second and then smashed into the ground.
As a young girl, I rarely got new clothes and so I cherished this brand new pair of wild colorful bell bottoms that I’d saved forever to buy.
The first time I wore them, I joined the neighbors for a game of softball. First base was a rose bush and I slid into base. The thorn ripped a 3 inch slit in my beautiful new pants. My leg had a pretty good scratch too.
In November and December of last year I looked high and low for a wrapping paper container that would accommodate longer rolls. Finally, after a few weeks of scouring the internet Lowes had some. So I went and bought one. When I got home and tried to put it together, I found out that one of the plastic tabs that holds the top to the body was broken off, so the top wouldn’t stay on. Bummer. I brought it back and exchanged it for a second one - they had two others, one of which was already broken too.
And within 30 minutes of having the one that wasn’t broken, Mom knocked it over and broke one of the tabs off. Sigh.
I had owned several cars since I turned 16, but the one I bought in 1980 was the very first brand new car I’d ever owned. It was a Camaro, blue, coupe, and I thought it was absolutely wonderful. I stopped by a friend’s house to show her my new baby. Shortly after I arrived, her dad came home from work, somehow pressed the gas instead of the brakes while parking and slammed right into the back of my brand new car! His insurance paid for my car to be repaired, but it was never quite the same after that.
It was November 1977, and I was driving my brand new 1978 VW Scirocco home from the dealer. I was going through an intersection, and a woman went through a stop sign, right into my passenger side. It was a few months before the dealer could get a replacement for the door of my “new” car. And when I finally got one, it never sounded right when it closed.
To make matters worse, the woman looked exactly like one of my coworkers, whom I couldn’t stand.
(1) I purchased a low-end voltmeter back in 2013 to test the current load of a small DC motor. Brand new out of the box I hooked up the leads incorrectly and burned out the current test components.
(2) My nephew, around age 17, purchased what I call a “trap net” for his fishing hobby. This is a hand held net to sweep the catch out of the water into a bucket. He dropped the net into the ocean the first time he used it.
I can’t think of any that happened to me, but I remember two from my youth that happened to other people.
My brother got a remote controlled car for Christmas one year. He put the batteries in and off it went. Within seconds it swerved under a radiator and fell into the wall cavity (it was a weird in-the-wall radiator). Gone forever.
A friend bought a new Camaro and floored it as he was turning out of the dealer’s lot. He hadn’t bothered looking before entering the road and a car ran right into him and totaled the Camaro.