Monumentally stupid things you did in your youth (AKA I'm Lucky To Be Alive)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

When I was a teen, I had a car that needed a new starter. Being adventurous then, I decided to replace it myself. So, I jacked my vehicle up and slid under the car to remove the old starter. There I was, under the car being supported by nothing more than a cheap bumper jack, tugging at the starter. I remember the car swaying as I wrestled with the stubborn bolt.

A neighbor happened to be walking by at the time; he yelled at me to get out from under the car. He then left and returned with a pair of jack stands for me to use.

Man, I was clueless. He may have saved my life.
mmm

2

When I was 6 someone left a ladder against the garage roof. I got a pillow from my bed, and a blue dish towel. I placed the pillow about 10 feet from the garage wall, then I climbed the ladder and, like superman, fell directly off the edge. To this day, I’m sure if the dish towel had been bigger and red, I would have hit the pillow.
I wasn’t hurt, except for my pride.

3

Climbed a radio tower when I was in the Army (after scaling the razor-wire topped fence) once at my Kaserne in Germany while high on amphetamines and drunk on gin, and yelled at the world when I reached the top. Not my proudest moment. And I got to spend the rest of the night in the brig and enjoyed the fruits of an Article 15 for my troubles.

4

I remember driving home from a bar, completely wasted, and giggling at how the orange traffic barrels made it seem like I was driving in the middle of a video game.

Wheeee!

5

I went through a phase not too long ago when I was really into parkour. I found this one spot on my school’s campus where I could get onto a building’s roof, jump across a gap to a nearby wall, and then hop down to the grass below, landing in a tuck-and-roll. The wall was only about 10 feet above the grass, so that wasn’t particularly dangerous, but the gap from the building roof to the wall was about 4 feet wide and maybe 25 feet deep, with gravel at the bottom. If I had missed the first jump, I most certainly would have broken a leg, possibly worse. Luckily, I managed to avoid falling and also did not get arrested! a winnar is me

6

As mentioned in the “I Have…” thread:

Once on a week-long backpack trip we arrived in a high mountain camp, tired and somewhat late in the day. A brown bear invaded, and wanted my backpack. I stared him down, growling at him. He backed away and took my buddies backpack instead. We chased him down banging pots and pans. Why he didn’t kill me, I’m not sure.

7

Anyone who has seen A Christmas Story probably won’t believe me, but as God as my witness this true.

First of all, I have been blind in my right eye since birth. Born premee, too much O2, etc.

Now then. When I was about twelve or so, I was outside with a BB gun shooting whatever random stuff I could find (we lived in the country). Pine cones. Blue Jays. Neighbor’s free-range chickens. I had one of those cheap pneumatic guns that wasn’t supposed to be pumped more than 10 times. Yeah, right.

So I’m walking around, shooting random stuff. I spy a basketball that some kid had let roll into the hedges between the properties. Whee! Put a hole in the basketball! I pumped that stupid gun probably 50 times, loaded a BB, aimed carefully, and… fire!

Half a second later I felt a nasty sting under my left eye, on top if my cheek.

I am convinced if that BB had been an inch higher I would fully blind today. Maybe with some brain damage, considering how hard it hit.

And no, my kids do not have BB guns, and it will stay that way.

8

When I was 5 I had a stuffed pink rocking horse. While my mom and sisters were outside watching the New Year’s fireworks and I was supposed to be sleeping, I somehow got the rocking horse onto the top bunk and started rocking. I fell off head first and landed head first on a very hard toy.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious because the last thing I remember was rocking and the next thing I remember was sitting on a chair in the kitchen with my mom and sisters freaking out (and one of them trying for get me to eat these.
I got out of it with a fractured skull and an annoying fear of top bunks and an extreme revulsion to pastel mints.
That was the last intentionally stupid and reckless thing I’ve done. I learned my lesson early. Unfortunately it doesn’t change the fact that I’m naturally clumsy so while it was my worst ever injury, it wasn’t my last.

9

When I was 16 or so a friend and I climbed a nearby telephone relay tower. About 300’ high, with an open framework with a triangular cross section. We climbed the ladder inside the tower, then, just to show how stupid I was, I climbed down all the way on the outside.

In addition to the danger of falling, I might have gotten the Phone Cops after me.

10

Had my car airborne at 110MPH. Fortunately I (a) was sober and (b) stuck the landing. Stupidest thing I’ve ever done (I was 17).

11

Two for you:

  1. Pre-school age. Feeding fried chicken, alone, to a wild alligator in the Everglades having wandered off from a family reunion. The gator was missing one of its back legs and didn’t appear to want to take it out of the water, thank God. I was less than two feet from it when my dad spotted me (about four pieces in).

  2. Age about 31 or so (so not really in my youth though it feels that way). Working at a small dot-com about 1999. We connected to the net via a rooftop dish. In a driving snowstorm it went out and I went to the roof, climbed the 40 foot pole without a harness, and chipped off the ice from the dish all freehand. Likely about 150-200 feet above the ground right at the edge of the roof. Man, that was cold.

12

Crazy teenage antics included roaming around the streets of 1970’s NYC with one or two friends at all hours, sometimes even alone, at varying levels of intoxication. We’d take the Staten Island Ferry at 2 a.m. and hang out in various parks, trusting that we were part of the native fauna and would be safe.

Nothing ever happened to me, but others in my cohort weren’t so lucky. For the most part the innocents among us were treated with care, but one or two were victimized terribly.

13

Me, a crazy friend who is now into BASE jumping, and a bottle of cheap brandy, on a rickety old Chinese ‘cruise ship’, climbed up the top of the radar mast in the middle of the night and swung from it before we were rousted by the crew. The sad thing is I was 28 at the time.

14

Climbing trees. A bunch of us used to scramble up tall fir trees, with the ultimate objective of getting a hand above the very top. This involved bending downwards the very top. I shudder to think back on how precarious the “branches” we stood on.

Edit: from about the age of ten to twelve.

15

When I was around 18 or 19, I got mad at my boyfriend and went out for a walk (in Anchorage, in the dead of winter, at night). I was mad enough not to be too cold, but it was below zero and by the time I’d walked it off, I was good and cold.

That’s not the stupid part.

As I was deliberating on whether to continue on to where I knew there was a Quik Stop (old Anchorage version of 7/11) to call him and make him come and get me, or maybe turning around and going back, a man came along and offered me a ride.

Yeah, I was VERY naive. As he pulled up beside me he rolled down his (electric) passenger window and said “aren’t you freezing”? (or something along those lines). I was and said something to the effect of I didn’t care I was furious at my boyfriend blah blah blah.

He said “well get in, we’ll get you home”. We didn’t go to my house, I ended up hanging out at his house until I warmed up, he was a perfect gentleman thank God! All we did was share some ahem herbal refreshment (what? it was legal in Alaska at the time) and then he took me home.
Every time I think of that, it scares the hell out of me. Especially since I’m rather a Forensics Files fan. I think “that’s EXACTLY how hundreds of thousands of girls end up raped or dead”.

The silver lining is, even at that age, I KNEW that I’d been lucky and dodged a bullet, and I have been ultra careful when it comes to that sort of thing ever since. But sheesh! What an IDIOT child I was.

16

Walked along a railway line that crossed a lagoon. When trains came, the only way to get off the track was to cling to the sides of the steep supports, which were moss-covered rocks.

To be so close to a train travelling at speed is a very frightening and foolish thing to do. Especially at dusk.

Then we walked through the tunnel. :rolleyes:

17

Stuck a bent paper clip into both prongs of an outlet at once in middle school. I knew it was stupid so I used a wooden clothespin instead of holding the metal with my hands. I don’t know WHAT possessed me to do it, I KNEW how stupid it was. That outlet never worked again…

18

At 14, I forgot a shotgun was loaded, even though I was the one who loaded it, just a minute or two earlier. Blew a ragged, 2-inch hole clear through the wall of our kitchen. No one else was home at the time, so I moved the calendar about a foot over, and finally told my mother a few days later after the guilt became overwhelming. It was one of the few times I ever saw her cry because of something I did. I felt like shit.

19

We used to do this at about 12. We called it tippy topping and you could cross from tree top to tree top. Then one day a bud broke the top from a sweetgum and fell 20 feet or more. Luckily breaking limbs on the way down slowed him enough not to be killed but for about an hour he couldn’t remember anything you told him and had to be told what happened over and over.

I have climbed water towers and microwave and fire towers and many many trees. I nearly flipped, and I mean by a fraction, a cotton picker. I swam with dozens of water moccasins until someone noticed them. We used to play chicken by turning off our motorcycle lights on moonless nights until someone broke. Luckily the guy behind me did just before I would have hit the bridge bannister.

Lots and lots of times I’ve nearly died but the most amazing was the friend who fell from the tree found an old double barrel shotgun in his grandmas closet and pointed it at my face as he pulled the trigger. He laughed and then got a funny look on his face when he broke it open. It was loaded. I thought he was joking till he tossed the heavy old buckshot shells to me. Both had misfired. I beaned him on the head with them.

Lots lots more. We still get together and wonder why we aren’t dead sometimes.

20

Back when I was 16,

I had a road near my house (this was a suburban area, lots of houses and whatnot) that had what would be a hairpin curve. Nobody else tried to speed around it, because they were smarter.

One day when I was 16 - I decided, let’s see how fast I can take this curve. This was easily the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I wasn’t thinking straight, because hey, I was 16 and male.

So there’s a straight length of road leading into the curve. So I floored it. I was going fast when I got to the curve, and well, I didn’t make it. I lost traction and skidded into a light pole on the outside of the curve. Said light pole also happened to be in the yard of a guy who was currently out in his yard, mowing his lawn.

The light pole was cement or concrete or something like that. It shattered where I hit it, just like it should. And here’s the terrifying part - it fell.

Now - it could have fell in two disastrous ways - it could have fallen on the dude mowing his lawn, killing him. Or it could have fallen onto my car, possibly killing me. Thankfully it fell onto the dudes lawn, just inches from him. He pulled me from the car, first asking whether I was OK, and when it was clear I was, slapped me across the face. I deserved it.

I left the busted car, walked the block back to my house, cried a little, called my dad and tearfully told him I fucked up bad, come home immediately, and then called the police. I told them what I had done, then went back and sit on the curb next to the wreckage. I honestly expected to be arrested and to have to spend a few nights in jail.

The officer was very nice, but I still got taggd with the damages. It was about 4k. Lesson learned, I’ve been a good driver ever since.