Stupidest thing you ever did to yourself

In My Humble Opinion
101

When I was a kid, my dad and I were buring tree clippings on a bonfire. I was in charge of making sure that the fire stayed within a confinded area by using a rake to push and pull fallen limbs back into the fire.

Now, setting the rake down to add more limbs to the fire…entire pile shifting and falling…turn to run…rake…foot…cartoon-like result.

I managed to hit myself with such force that I broke a tooth, split my lip, and split open the skin on my eyebrow. I did, however, not even fall over (I think I may have even knocked myself out momentary). That is when I learned that while I may not be a fighter, I can take a punch.

My dad still laughs at that story some 20 years later.

102

I was cutting up some vegetables for a stir fry with my relatively new, VERY SHARP, knife.

I was using shitty knife technique, and so my left index finger decided to sort of jaunt out on his own along the cutting board and promptly got a large chunk taken off of him. I saw it before I really felt it. I lopped off a large chunk of fingernail and the tip of the skin, was like “shit, this is going to hurt like Hell and bleed a lot—OH FUCK THERE IT GOES OH SHIT OH SHIT!”

The worst part was because of all the onion and garlic juice on the board and knife, it stung even more than it should have, and I knew I had to rinse it off in the sink, which I did with trepidation knowing that that, too, would make it hurt like a bastard.

The result: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/axpauction/finger5.jpg

103

Here’s my best one:

3rd Grade - riding bikes with my friend Mary Carol. She had siblings who taught her how to ride without using the handlebars. I did not. That did not stop me from trying, though.

Rounding the corner into the court where my Grandmother lived, I decided it was a good time to try that “no hands thing.”

Well, I didn’t know to move my body to accomodate the balance on the bike and rode straight into a curb. BONK! Yowza.

I stand up, gather my bike and start walking to Grandma’s. Then I notice it (and this was my exact train of thought):

(Notices drops of blood on road) “someone is bleeding” (Pause) “You are the only one here” (Pause) “It must be you” SCREAM! and run to grandmothers.

Turns out my teeth went right into my gums on impact and slashed them. I was taken to the hospital and had stitches put in and ended up losing a tooth in the impact. My teeth remained messed up until I was offered the option of braces as a teen. I said “no thanks” and since my mom was busy with my very sick/dying dad, she accepted it and moved on.

Moral of the story: Don’t try doing stuff you don’t know and get the braces. You’ll be glad you did.

104

Years ago I was working as the customer service manager at an office. I was friendly with the service tech guys though and one day I was B.S.ing with the one guy, who was naturally curious about the world like I am. I said “Don, do you think salt will burn?” His response, “I’ve got a torch in the parts room, let’s find out.” So we heap a pile of table salt on a metal plate and he puts the torch to it. Turns out salt doesn’t burn at those temperatures, but melts and turns glassy like a marble. OK, cool we thought…now we know. But me, curious monkey that I am, notices that the salt stopped glowing shortly after the flame was removed. I want to see how smooth the surface of the salt half-marble is, so I touch it with my index finger. And oh how it burned. I pull my hand away and the salt half-marble sticks to my finger. :eek: Still burning, still burning. I shake my hand several times and the half-marble flies away. It took weeks for my fingerprint to grow back.

Of course there was also the time I convinced the same guy that the best way to remove the stubble from his shaved head was to use Nair. I can still smell the chemical burns.

105

A torch works for that too.

106

When I was 10 or 11 (can’t remember exactly) I … okay, let me backtrack a bit. You know those liquid B vitamin supplements that come with an eyedropper in the bottle? My mom used to give those to me and my sister once a day. I really, really liked the taste of the liquid. It was the very embodiment of dark red! (yes, colors have flavors)

I decided one day while I was watching tv with my slightly-younger sister (and both parents were at work, we were latchkey kids) that I liked it so much, I was going to drink the whole thing. There was a little over half the bottle left. I downed it and it tasted delicious! Unfortunately, there was none left, but I was still satisfied. Not long after, I started to feel hot. Really, really hot. And tingly. And weak. I sat down on the couch and tried to stop feeling like I was going to die, but I couldn’t. I was convinced that this hot, tingly, horrible feeling was a precursor to imminent death. I didn’t want to scare my sister though, so I didn’t say I was feeling bad. I lied down on the couch and kept watching Garfield and kept getting hotter and more tingly. I remember telling my sister I loved her, and just kept watching Garfield. I remember thinking “what a stupid way to die, mom’s going to kill me if she ever finds out what I did.” (my mom was a nurse so I waaaay should have known better, but that liquid seemed more like candy than medicine)

I still have a total flashbulb moment of that day. My first (perceived) brush with mortality! Of course it was just a bog-standard Vitamin B flush, and I woke up feeling just fine when my mom got home. I never told anyone about it. Then years later I found out how a B-vitamin flush makes you feel. Boy, did I feel like a jackass!

Oh, and then when I was 12ish I decided I wanted to see how hot a just-blown-out red hot sparkler felt. Worst 4th of july fireworks ever!

107

When I was young, we moved into a newly built home in the suburbs. There was a farm next to the subdivision. The entrance had a nice big hill with a large open field next to the farmer’s property, which he had fenced off with three rows of barbed wire.

We used to play in the field. Frisbee, football, whatever. It was fun. Once, the Frisbee went over the fence. I ran to get it and was going to be soooo cool by vaulting over the top by using the top wire as my launch point. What I didn’t realize that while the bottom two wires were real barbed wire, the top was actually electrified so the cows wouldn’t get out.

I don’t quite recall the actual sequence of events, but I know I was airborne and then got the biggest shock of my life and then…
…. Much later I awoke. On the wrong side of the fence. My friends nowhere to be found. A cow is just staring at me. I figure out what probably had happened and finally took a good look at the fence. I notice the different wire. For the first time I notice insulators on the fence posts.

Of course, to *truly *find out if it were electric, I would have to touch it again, right?

At least that time I was smart enough to use the back of my hand, so when I got shocked the muscles would contract away from the wire.

That is by no means the *stupidest *thing I’ve ever done to myself, but I’m comfortable enough to put this one here.

108

Please tell me your friends went for help and didn’t just leave you there to die.

109

I was a high school student working after hours at an auto mechanics’ garage. I had the coolest gig! My boss treated all the mechanics to pot and beer at closing time, which was just a few hours after my arrival after school but they included me in!

Sometimes on slow days we’d get an early start, there’d be a sixpack or two out and I’d snag a bottle along with everyone else and keep working. On the day in question I was bleeding brakes. You’re wincing, you already know where this is going, don’t you? Yes, the EMPTY beer bottle made a perfect receptable to bleed the brake lines into. Yes I was drinking from the identical-looking beer bottle while doing this. And yes, brake fluid, well-used or otherwise, tastes absolutely positively undeniably HORRIBLE.

110

I’ll admit I didn’t read the thread in my eagerness to to offer up “wedding ring up the nose” thread.
Dopers, can you help me?

111

As they were not on the scene when I came to, I would assume, in the typical “you-didn’t-see-it-you-can’t-prove-it” kid method, they ran like roaches when the kitchen light is turned on.

But I can’t verify that.

112

I got a ceramic (As Seen On TV!) knife for Christmas. (Yeah, I’m the lucky one, aren’t I? Who needs jewelry or perfume?) No, I really wanted one, badly, couldn’t wait to try it out. And I am happy to say that I have now gotten that first stupid ‘slice your finger’ thing out of the way.

113

You mean this thread?

114

From another thread, I felt this should be included. I was getting my bachelors degree in chemistry and living in a house for the first time. I went through a phase of attempting simple science experiments in the kitchen. At least one of my roomates was often impressed. One of these experiments was creating a cloud in a jar.

The cloud was really cool. You could see streaks from ionized particles fly throughout it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Then I got the brilliant idea of an alcoholic shot that you could inhale. I can’t exactly remember how the experiment worked, but I think it involved heating up the Everclear in a jar, then dunking it in ice water. The cloud wasn’t nearly as good as it was with water, but I called it good. I took the lid off and took a big breath of this concoction.

But the inhale didn’t get far. It was like I had inhaled fire. Every muscles reacted to expel this toxin from my lungs. I coughed so hard I couldn’t stand up.

115

Too many to count, but a classic is:

In college, I got a large white globe that was really a street light covering from my hometown. Think about the size of a basketball.
So, I put a large plastic cup, attached a bare fixture to put in a light bulb, plugged it in and put the large glass globe over it.
Looked quite nice, but the bulb inside was slightly crooked.
So I lifted the glass globe and then…
I put one thumb on one shiny copper contact of the light fixture, and the other thumb on the other shiny copper contact to straighten it out.
Did I mention the light was still on?

I flew backwards and landed on my ass in a daze.

116

Owie.

I’ve been told that repair techs, at the time when CRTs were still commonly used as computer monitors, admitted that everyone touched the capacitor once. Very, very few ever touched it a second time.

117

Evidently the SpikeTV show “1000 Ways to Die” is NOT bullshit after all…

118

Too many to mention, but highlights as follows:

About 9 yrs old, riding my bike through the local dilapidated playground when my friend cycles under the assymetric bars. I follow, of course, and because I’m shorter than him I’m clearly going to get through without ducking. I came round on the floor, with a raised lump right across my forehead - filled with rust and gravel. Apparently, your head goes higher than your eyes - who knew!?

At university (I know, I know) I was struggling to get my kettle to work, and decided it must be the fuse. I had a collection of fuses but had managed, through my lack of organisation, to mix up dud and working ones together. After going through the ritual of unplugging lead, unscrewing and taking apart the plug, taking out the fuse, replacing with new fuse and plugging back in about 3 times, I reasoned that as long as I was careful I could just leave the back of the plug off and put in fuses as necessary until I found one that works. This plan - efficient as it is - results in you flying backwards across the room seeing stars and experiencing shooting pains up and down your arms for a few hours. In hindsight, I think I got off lightly.

Around the same time, skiing in Austria with my cousin, we decided to challenge ourselves by going off-piste. It was about 3pm, so plenty of time to get right to the top of a mountain and back before all the lifts shut. Skiing off-piste in waist-deep snow turned out to be much harder than we’d thought, so that every turn resulted in sinking down and having to drag yourself out (which, in turn, is ridiculously tiring). It got dark and we were still struggling down - noone around. Finally, after hours of this, we made it back and only then noticed what the signs next to the orange spinning lights meant at the bottom of the lifts: ‘Danger of avalanches - stick to prepared routes’…

119

I once went outside to urinate.

I forgot I had just chopped up about 40 jalapeno peppers for freezing.

120

I usually tell this same one .

I was fifteen years old and home alone. I decided I was going to cook roti - flatbreads - and surprise my mom! So, I started cooking. I used waaay too much oil. More is better, right? So I took the roti, after it had cooked on one side, and flipped it over dramatically.

That was the day I learned a) too much oil is not better, b) do not ever flip a roti dramatically, and c) if you must, flip it away from you, not toward you.

Hot boiling oil splashed all the way up my hand and arm. I screamed.

In about five minutes these huge puffy blisters had shown up on my arm, and the pain was excruciating. but, I didn’t want my mom to know what I had bene doing, so I first painfully cleaned up all of the evidence, crying and sobbing as I did it.

Finally about half an hour later I called my mom to come get me, as the blisters were not going down, and it still hurt. She didn’t believe it was that bad! And told me to put some ice on it.

I hung up, tearfully, and did so. I waited like an hour before calling her again and begging her to come home. She did, and to her credit, I will never forget how her face fell when she saw how bad it actually was. She felt so bad for leaving me. She took me to the emergency clinic, where the guy had to pop all the blisters and then I had to keep it covered for three weeks. I had nightmares where they took off the bandages and my arm was scarred black.

Now, eighteen years later, you can hardly see the scars, only if I point them out to you.

There are other dumb things, but that’s the one that always comes to mind.