Oooh! You are so brave! -or- Why the hell were you so stupid?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I thought I would like to start a thread about the Bravest thing you have ever done. These very often can be the most stupid too (or at least in my case). I will tell the one that comes to mind with me and I would love to read others.

About 4 years ago, I lived in Vancouver. I was going coming back from a store and getting back onto my motorbike in preperation to leave. My bike was parked in front of a liqourstore (The Eldorado to those that know Vancouver). I noticed some guy walking in wearing one of those grey sweatsuit jackets with a hood and sunglasses. Almost immediatly thereafter people starting running out and one guy yelled “robbery!!” I called 911 on my cellphone and took a bit of a peek through the door to see what was going on. A teller came running out yelling for help. She ran to the nearby bar. I saw that a guy was struggling with the robber and he had his hands full. At this time the woman on 911 was telling me to stay talking to her on the phone and let her know what was happening since the cops where on the way. I made a judgement call and told her I couldn’t since I had to help the guy in the store. I tossed my phone to a bystander and ran in and jumped on the robber. Shortly after I got on him a bouncer from to bar ran in and joined us. We subdued the asshole on the ground, and the original guy who did the struggling with the robber just started pounding on his head (I found out later because he peppersprayed him). We held him down for about 3 minutes until the cavelry came and handcuffed him. They thanked us and took our statements. Upon searching him, the cops discovered 2 knives in his pockets and drug paraphenalia (sp?). He was a herion junkie or something. He came in, peppersprayed the teller and “guard” (bouncer from next door), and basically the bouncer tried to do his job…pretty damn good to considering he was more or less blind at the time from the spray.

Upon telling the story to my folks, girlfriend and coworkers the next day I was more or less chewed out for being stupid but brave at the same time. In hindsight I can understand why.

Anyone else? Thoughts?

2

… When you are a Grandpa…

3

Wow. The most I’ve ever done follows:

I was going into a liquor store in Edmonton (at Westmount Mall, for those who know the area), around 10:30pm. Nothing unusual, I just wanted a 6-pack to enjoy during a football game the next day. I noticed a very large, very intoxicated man leaning against the wall in front. He didn’t bother me, never gave him much more than a glance.

In the liquor store there was one clerk, and a lady who was definitely a senior citizen. She finished with the clerk, and I paid for my beer, maybe a minute behind her. I headed out, and heard the drunk harassing her, asking her for some change; apparently (according to his demands), he wanted a beer. I headed over, figuring I’d tell the guy to back off, maybe give him a couple bucks to shut him up, and he’d go away. Well, he turned around, gave me good two handed shove while hollering obscenities. I fell on my ass in a puddle.

I assessed the situation; I was at least 50 feet from the liquor store. There was no-one in the immediate vicinity, as the movies hadn’t yet let out. I had a choice; be more assertive with the drunk, or go back to the liquor store for help. Being as he was getting physically threatening with the lady, I had no practical choice. I came up behind him, grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, and hollered “You F*cking well lay off!” He took a wild swing, and caught me a glancing blow on the chin. I pasted him with everything I had in a right, caught him square on the cheek.

At this point the lady started shrieking, attracting the attention of people at the far end of the parking lot near the supermarket. The drunk ran off, and next thing I know I’m being interviewed by a cop, then off to the hospital to be treated for a broken knuckle.

My male relatives commended me, while the female relatives were more neutral, pointing out that I’m no fighter, and lucky I didn’t get killed. Now, any time Elkwoman and I see an altercation of any description, first thing she says is “Stay out of it”. Ah, well, I’m proud of what I did, anyways.

4

I’m just waiting for something really spectacular to happen around me so I can go into psycho mode without fear of a prison sentance :wink: In the meantime, the best thing I have to share is probably something that happened to a friend of mine while on holiday in Spain, I wasn’t with him unfortunately.

He was standing in line outside a disco with his friends and there was a pretty nice girl in front of him. He was just glancing at her when all of the sudden this big guy that he hadn’t even seen coming just smashes a bottle in her face! She fell to the ground and there was blood splattered everywhere. Then the dude starts to kick her as she’s lying on the ground! He was obviously with some hard types that were standing around him so no one jumped him immediately.

When my friend had wiped the blood of his face (he was a couple of inches behind her when the bottle hit) he immediately punched the guy in the back of the neck and he fell. Then the guy got up and kicked him so hard in the balls that it sent him rolling over the hood of a car that was parked behind him. He was completely out of commission for about week after that, pretty lucky there was no permanent damage.

Some of his friends got chased down and attacked by those crazy guys in the mayhem that followed, but the police eventually broke things up in some nearby park.

And no one even knows what the hell the whole thing was about, but the guys were some sort of skinheads, there are so many kinds these days.

I just hope that fucker went to jail for what he did to that girl, she must have needed some serious hospital time.

— G. Raven

5

Quite a few years ago we were at the bar with a bunch of friends and as we were leaving we got jumped by a gang of about twenty white guys. It turned into a hell of a scrap and I figured that we were outnumbered about two to one.

Lola grabbed one of the guys who was with us who had taken quite the beating and ran for the car. She went by me and I heard a couple of these other guys yell “Get that bitch!”

If you look in the book of “Feynn’s Really Stupid Things To Do” going after my beloved is #1.

The first guy came running from my right and I hit him with a backfist to the face. His head stopped and his body just kept moving until he hit the pavement and didn’t get up. After seeing his friend hit the ground one of these guys grabbed me (for about .1 seconds) so I took him out at the knees. He fell and screamed like a girl. The third guy grabbed me by the shirt and actually yelled at me to leave his friends alone. He looked about seventeen, was drunk, and was scared shitless… he had his hand pulled way back as if to hit me but I knew there was no way in hell he’d be able to pull the trigger before I crippled him too. I told him he didn’t want to do this and better let go NOW. I think he realized that the guy he just grabbed had dropped two of his buddies in a matter of seconds so he let me go and backed away.

The fight went on a little longer and the guys who jumped us took a shit kicking from the guys in our group and a number of other patrons who joined us. A few of these shit heads ended up going to the hospital while we all made it home and enjoyed some beers. I discovered later that I probably dislocated my shoulder hitting the first guy.

Funniest thing was that on the next Monday I went to McD’s to visit my nephew while he was working there and who did I see but the three guys I got into the fight with. They saw me come in and I just waved at them with a smile. They looked pretty beaten up and one guy had a pronounced limp. They had apparently told my nephew that they got jumped by a bunch of indians on the weekend so I told my nephew that they had really made the mistake of going after his aunt and I was the “bunch of indians”. He just looked at me and smiled saying that he would be “talking” to these guys after work about picking on his aunt. I almost felt sorry for these guys… almost.

Brave or stupid? I don’t know.

The right thing to do? You bet.

6

There are some things I can’t stand by and watch without doing anything. If I did nothing, I would hate myself forever.

It doesn’t always require fighting. I’m just an ol’ hippie at heart.

Once I saw this young woman coming out of a Thrifty’s, young son in tow. The son, a spoiled little brat, evidently wanted to be picked up and squatted on the ground. This shirtless dude, who apparently didn’t know them, decided to stick his nose in and said, “Hey, get up, kid!”

So the shit-for-brains Mother-of-the-Year yells at the no-shirt guy, “It’s none of your business, so fuck off!” This provides No Shirt with (in his mind) a perfect excuse to follow her to “explain,” waving his hands around and “accidentally” touching her breasts.

After Miss Perfect Mom started yelling “Don’t touch me!” I decided I couldn’t abide this scene any longer, and I managed to “stumble” in between them. Perfect Mom got away and No Shirt, angry that I had ruined his feel-up party, pushed on my face and made excuses for himself: “I was trying to save this kid!”

I was waiting for my bus, so I wasn’t going anywhere. No Shirt walked around nervously for a while, alternately checking to see if anyone in the Thrifty’s was calling the cops and warning me not to fuck with him. I just stood there nodding, “Yeah, OK, sure.” Eventually my bus came.

Basically, I used pacifist methods to defuse a meaningless confrontation between two pathetic excuses for human beings.

Until now, the only person I ever told about this was my sister. she was not impressed. She said I should have called the cops.

7

It was either the time I went in a burning apartment to rescue a dog (which turned out to not be in the apartment) or the time I put myself between a girl and her boyfriend’s shotgun and stared him down.

8

About a year ago a friend of mine and I were going to “gentleman’s club” near the office after work. Since we go there fairly often, I know most of the girls by sight if not name.

We were walking across the parking lot and heard some guy yelling. I looked over and on the other side of the lot was some relatively scrawny biker yelling at one of the girls, who was curled up arms around her calves and crying. Since she was in her street clothes, I figured she was probably on her way home and the guy in question was an SO of some type.

I didn’t even shoot Joe a look and started walking across the lot as innocently as I could (which, admittedly, isn’t very when my adrenalin starts to run and there is the chance of a lady being in danger). I walked up and said something dumb like, “How you doing, ‘Karen’?”

The guy, who had been screeching at her the whole time I was walking up turned on me and told me to mind my own business. I told him that I was doing exactly that, as the girl was a friend of mine (minor exaggeration here, but who cared at the time). I then told him that I was talking to Karen and he’d just have to excuse me for a moment. I asked her again if she were okay, and she looked at me, looked at him, looked back and me and said, “Not really.”

I suggested she go back into the club and possibly let Ham (The head bouncer) know that she wasn’t doing well. The guy said he didnt’ think that was going to happen. Right then, I giggled. One bad reflex I haven’t been able to break after all these years is that I giggle when I know things are about to get ugly.

He grabbed her arm and started to march her away. I reached over grabbed the thumb that was on her arm and pulled it backward, breaking it and letting Karen get away. Various and sundry violent acts ensued on both our parts (the difference was that mine connected). When Karen came back out with Ham and two of the three other bouncers on staff I was standing next to the guy as he lay on the ground.

Police were called; statements were given; he got hauled away; she ended up getting a restraining order and a divorce, etc. I got to testify, at his dv and assault trial, which was kind of fun in a weird way. He also ended up getting kicked out of his motorcycle club, I found out later.

Funniest part of the story was when I finally went inside the club and found Joe I said something sarcastic like, “Thanks for getting my back out there, asshole.” His response, “I was right there until I heard you laugh. I figured then that it was better if I left, since I couldn’t be asked to testify about what I didn’t see.”

9

This is conceivably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. About 20 years ago, I was headed into the bar. I had parked on a dark side street. A car slowly drove by me, and a guy yelled out, “How do I get to so-and-so street?” Of course, I walked over to the car and started to give him directions. All of a sudden, he pulls out this little gun and “shows” it to me. He didn’t point it at me, just said “Give me your money.” Well, I didn’t WANT to. I had $30 on me and I was about to go DRINKIN’, for God’s sake. So I say, “Oh, man, you don’t want to do this to me.” I start arguing with an armed gunman. Real swift, huh? So I’m standing there, all cocky, with my thumbs hooked into my back pockets. He threatened to “shoot me in the leg” if I didn’t give him my money. THAT pissed me off even more. This stupid punk! I wasn’t quite ready to just walk away, however. At that moment I felt the two or three dollars I had in my back pocket. So I said, “You want my g-damn money? Here!” And I threw it in his face, turned and stalked away. He didn’t shoot me. The white car peeled out, and I didn’t even think to get the license plate. I did call the cops. All they said was, “That’s what you get for being in this neighborhood.” Thank you so much, officer.

That should’ve put me in the running for the Darwin award (except I lived).

10

One time during a military exercise, I had just been released to go home (a process that could take an hour or more, depending on whether you were “attacked” on your way out and how many people had to process out of the exercise area). Right as I exited the building, I spotted an object sitting in the middle of the parking lot, near to one of the simulated bunkers. It looked like a section of pipe wrapped in electrical tape with a wire hanging out the end. I looked around for the exercise inspectors, figuring it was an exercise input. If it had been an exercise input, they would’ve handed me a card telling me that I’d found a pipe bomb or that I’d just been blown up (or something along those lines).

I didn’t see any inspectors. This wasn’t all that long after the Oklahoma City bombing, and we had been in a heightened state of alert since before the exercise. There was a real possibility that the object in front of me could be a REAL bomb. I sent one of the guys with me over to the Security Police building (right next to ours – how convenient!) to get someone to look at out “package” with an expert eye. I stayed near the package to warn people away, just in case it really was a bomb.

Eventually, one of the SPs came over to look at our discovery. It was getting dark, so I wound up holding the light for the SP while he gingerly inspected the package. I was no further than 10 feet from it. Since it really looked like it might be a bomb of some sort, the SP was nervous. I was nervous because the SP was nervous. After several minutes of examining the object, the SP finally determined it was a dummy bomb that must’ve fallen out of an inspector’s vehicle.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief and went home.

Yeah, it wasn’t real, but I thought it was.

~~Baloo

11

I thought I’d find some interesting suggestions but all these adventures require to much set up. I’m looking
for something more along the lines of …first you do this and then you do that and then…Boom!!!

“Youth must be served, frequently with roasted chestnuts.”

Mama Maroon