My father taught me to LEAVE THE KEYS IN THE TRUNK LOCK when I unlock the trunk. It’s been almost 40 years ago. Now, I have managed to lock my keys in the car (with the car still running) a couple of times, but I’ve never locked the keys in the trunk.
Thanks, Daddy.
The other day, I went to get gas. Pulled up to the pump, prepaid on my card, started the pump, then went inside to buy a cup of coffee. Came back out, hopped in the car, pulled away.
Ka-THUNK.
I had forgotten to take the nozzle out of my tank. Fortunately, the pump had already stopped, and neither it nor my car were damaged. But yeah, I’m an idiot.
People use the trunk lock?
16 years old. I wanted to burn a large, simple design onto a sheet of plywood. But how to do it, quickly and easily?
Well … my dad was a muzzle-loading rifle enthusiast, so had a good quantity of black powder on hand. Bingo! So I “requisitioned” a quantity of the powder and carefully poured it onto the plywood in the design I wanted. Note: I had enough experience with black powder that I knew it would simply burn (albeit quickly), not explode, in the open air, being “unconfined” and all that.
But how to safely light it off?
Well … when my grandfather died, my dad “inherited” his supply of blasting caps and dynamite fuse (Grandpa owned a small logging company). So I cut myself a short (6-inch) length of the fuse, and used a cigarette lighter to light one end. The idea was that I could hold the burning fuse at arms-length and touch it to the black powder. Unfortunately, my incomplete understanding of how dynamite fuse burns was my undoing. You see, it doesn’t burn like it does in the old cartoons, that is, a nice steady rate ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss until it reaches the other end. No, it spits and sparks rather randomly, it turns out. And it spit sparks at exactly the wrong moment, just before I’d gotten myself into the desired position. Specifically, when I had my face directly above the lines of black powder.
WHOOOOOF!!
Fortunately for me, I was standing, not kneeling, when the stuff went off, so my face was far enough away to only catch the edge of the flame, and I closed my eyes in time. And it was an instantaneous thing - it went “WHOOOOOF” and that was it. Still, it was enough to singe off my eyelashes and my sorry, 16YO excuse for a mustache, and I had to get a haircut afterward. But my facial burns were no worse than a mild sunburn.
IOW, it was more embarrassing than anything. I didn’t receive any punishment beyond what I’d inflicted on myself - my dad correctly decided that I’d already learned my lesson 
Story of stupid thing done by running buddy. I was running with Joe and Larry. Joe was going to help Larry put up a fence around Larry’s back yard. They were going to rent a gas powered post hole digger that day.
Conversation:
Me: did you have the utilities mark where all of the lines are?
Larry: no, the cables and stuff are deeper than we’ll be digging.
Me: really, they like to do that, just in case.
Larry: We’ll be fine.
Next week, I am running with Joe.
Me: so how’d the fence thing go with Larry?
Joe: (laughs) we were going well, until we hit something kind of metallic. We looked down and saw some gas puffing up the dirt. We knew it was the gas line, so we went in to call the gas company. The phone didn’t work. [Note: pre-cell phone days.] Apparently, we had cut that earlier. Oh, and later that day, we found out the cable didn’t work either.
I dunno, it was a long time ago, and in them thar days if there was a strong enough wind the electricity went out. It wasn’t until the shame-faced gardener came to the door that we found out it wasn’t the weather!
I’m sorry, but I LOLed 
Either I don’t get it or that musta’ been some good fuk’n acid
Hilarious, embarrassing, and very funny. And also a very, very, close call!
Yeah, I grew up when we didn’t HAVE those fancy-schmancy trunk poppers, so when I’m shopping, I’ll bring the cart to the trunk, and unlock the trunk, and load it. What do YOU do? Get in the car and pop the trunk and then go and unload your cart into the trunk?
And get off my goddam lawn.
Well, I grew up before the fancy-schmancy devices too, but it’s 2012 now. Of course all I do is press the fob button while approaching the car. I don’t think I’ve even had the key in any lock on my car.
My car is 10 or 11 years old. Low mileage, but old. And it doesn’t lock or unlock or start up at the touch of a fob button. Now, my husband’s car is much newer, and it does have those buttons, but I almost never drive his car, because my car has built-up pedals and his doesn’t. I can reach his pedals…but just barely.
So Mister Rik, did it burn the design in the wood like you wanted?
Well, the last stupid thing I’ve done was pick up a hot, recently-molten piece of metal too soon. Hey! Did you know metal is still hot after it stops glowing? I got a blister on my fingertip.
How did you open the trunk without your keys?
I took a great high school science class back in the Stone Age, and the teacher handed out a sheet of useful facts at the beginning of the semester. Things like “Before you call me because the equipment isn’t working, make sure it’s plugged in. Then check it again.” One of the facts was “Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.”
I tend to cook in glass pans, and I related this to my daughter when teaching her to cook. Even now, if one of us checks something in the oven, the other will hand over a pot holder and say “Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.”
Yeah, and I’ve picked up a bowl too soon after I’d taken it out of the oven as well. At least the oven was only set to about 70C.
No, no it didn’t. The powder burned too quickly, and of course all the heat went straight up my nose
This actually reminds me of my most recent attempt to set fire to my apartment. As a professional cook I’ve always hated cooking at home. The main reason is that, after cooking all day for a living, I don’t want to do more of it at home. The other reason is that trying to cook on home appliances when you’re accustomed to professional equipment is very frustrating.
Also, in professional work I’m accustomed to cooking with gas. So I came home from work the other day and walked into my kitchen to get a bottle of water from the fridge, and as I passed the stove I thought, “Hey, where’s that heat coming from?” That’s when I discovered that my best saute pan was sitting on a hot burner, and had been sitting on it since the previous evening when I had cooked my dinner. See, when you cook with gas, it’s pretty obvious when the burner is on, and when you turn off a gas burner the heat goes away almost immediately. Not so with an electric range. I’d reduced the heat under what I was cooking, and then after plating the food I’d washed out the pan and set it back on the burner. Of course, with the lower heat setting the electric coil wasn’t glowing, and the radiant heat just felt like the normal residual heat you feel as the electric coils cool down. So I left the empty pan sitting on a hot burner for more than 12 hours :smack:
A few minutes ago I managed to pee all over my hand and one of my feet, and I HAVEN’T been drinking. In fact, even when I’ve been throwing-up drunk, I still never managed to pee on myself (at least that I remember). WTF just happened in there? 
Two of my stupidest mistakes came while driving. I blew a red light and just missed getting t-boned by inches. I misjudged my right-of-way and turned left before my turn, nearly caused an accident and it would have been all my damn fault too. *I am very VERY ashamed of both of these incidents. *
I’m a little careless with sewing implements. I drop my needles and then find them by stabbing myself. I also sometime scrape my fingers with the vegetable peeler.
Isn’t anyone else wondering about the penis that ensued in post # 8? Or is it impolite to ask? I am kind of new here.
I managed to spend the last of my holiday money booking a train ticket back to the UK from Europe, that didn’t only leave from the wrong city, it left from the wrong country.
The place I was in, and planning to leave from, was Amsterdam which may possibly have had something to do with the error, but I managed to book a ticket that left from Brussels in Belgium by mistake. I did realise just in time, and made it, but I had to spend something like 8 hours in a ratty crowded cheap coach, and do a mad dash across the city.
Also, not me, but I saw a guy I know pruning a large branch off a tree with a chainsaw- he hadn’t propped up the ladder on the bit of branch he was cutting off, he wasn’t quite that daft; he’d propped it up on the bit of branch that was going to be left. So of course, as soon as he cut through, the bit of branch left sprang up as most of the weight on it had been removed, and suddenly the ladder wasn’t long enough, leaving the guy trying to hold on to the branch, the chainsaw and the ladder with only two hands…