The stupid thing you did that almost got you killed.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

One day, back in 5th grade, I was washing the family car. At the time, I had not learned several basic facts about electricity, and decided to vacuum the vehicle in the same spot where I had just washed it. I had no shoes on. A piece of paper got stuck in the (metal) vacuum nozzle. I stepped out of the car, onto wet cement, and proceeded to stick my fingers into the nozzle to get the paper out…
BZZZZZZZZZZZIIITTTTT!!!
As I lost conciousness, I could see my father running towards me. The next thing I remember, I was being given CPR by the doctor who happened to live next door.

I didn’t wash a car for several years after that.

2

Can’t think of any involving me right now, but I’m pretty sure they exist.

My friend’s mother and aunt grew up in an Indian village with a deep well that they were absolutely forbidden to go near. So of course, being little kids, the decided to play on it. At one point they got up onto the rim of the well and ran around it. If they’d slipped and fallen in they would almost certainly have drowned. Their father caught them up there and instead of getting mad said something along the lines of “Ahh, my darling daughters, come down; I have a gift for you.” Once they were safely off the rim he proceeded to pistol-whip the poor girls :stuck_out_tongue:

3

When I was 16 I was hiking in Utah’s Canyonlands in the back country – really rugged sandstone and lime country with many geo-wonders. It started to rain and I sprinted up out of the canyon I was in (flash flooding is a danger with rain) and, with my head down against the rain, up onto what I thought was a plateau.

I stopped to catch my breath and looked down: I had ran out onto a three-foot wide natural sandstone bridge that spanned a terrifyingly deep canyon :eek: If I had veered just a little to either side I would have been dead and my body would probably have never been found. I dropped to my knees and crawled the rest of the way across the arch.

4

I used to live in the sticks, and I was felling dead trees in a remote area of the property as part of a conservation program. Late in the day, I suppose I was getting tired or careless, and the chain saw kicked back and made a two-inch hole in the thigh of my (apparently somewhat baggy) jeans, but drew no blood. If I had given myself a serious injury this far from help, I certainly would have bled to death long before anyone found me.

I chain-sawed in shorter bouts after that.

5

I got so engrossed one time taking photos of an old building, I climbed up a rise to get a better shot, went down the other side – and stepped out into the middle of traffic. Fortunately, the traffic lights were on my side, along with the gods. I raised an apologetic hand to the startled motorists, and legged it to safe ground.

6

While driving from Kansas City to Seattle one December in a 280Z, I was in Wyoming. I hadn’t seen another car either direction for over an hour. It was blowing snow, just a little here and there sticking to the road. I was in the mountains with sharp curves, no guardrails and long dropoffs. As I started into a right hand curve, the car started to slide to the left, not fish tailing, just sliding sideways, toward a 200 foot drop. I tried steering to the left with absolutely no response. Luckily, I was only going 25 MPH starting into the curve. I caressed the brakes, without feeling any change in the slide. I guess it wasn’t my turn, though. I stopped as I touched the gravel on the left side of the road.
I considered staying there until spring, but moved on with no more problems.

My husband is a fire fighter. He has been in many dangerous situations, but none as frightening as the day he was where he didn’t belong.
He works for a major airplane manufacturer. One day he was up in the catwalks 100 feet above the factory floor. He got from one section to the next by taking a step or two on an I beam.
He started to step on one of the I beams to the next section. One foot fully on the beam, when, as he started to shift balance to the leading foot, the beam moved.
It was one they were in the process of replacing, just hanging from a crane lift.
He didn’t notice that there were only two support lines instead of the usual 6.
It gives me shivers to write this.

7

I was going to meet someone I had met online, mistook someone else for him, chatted him up, and almost got my gay ass bashed back to the Early Renaissance.

8

Back in h.s., allowed a drunk friend to drive me home…she was quite intoxicated (I hadn’t been drinking) but also quite good at hiding it. We drove off in full view of her mother, who didn’t realize that she was drunk, and I couldn’t think of any plausible pretext not to let her drive me home. No, we didn’t get into an accident, but that was absolutely the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. Please take my word for it: don’t let your friends drive drunk, and especially don’t allow them to drive you while they’re drunk. :frowning:

9

Something that still occasionnally gives me the shivers even though it’s about 34 years past.

I was four and the family was visiting my dad’s folks in Miami. We got a bucket of chicken and headed out for the 'glades. Simple enough. Find a picnic table and hang out.

My sister and I (she maybe 7 at the time) wandered off and met a full-grown alligator at the waters edge. No parents around or nothing.

What did we do? Of course we fed it our table scraps by hand. In short, I spent five minutes or so hand feeding chicken bones to an alligator at age four.

Dad saw us, screamed, got us clear onto the table and we waited for the gator to take off. I still remember being in love with that gator. But the adult me cringes a bit in absolute fear every time I think about it.

10

Caught serious air in my mom’s '75 Malibu… On a relatively winding road with no shoulders, I hit a rise in the road at 110MPH. There were all sorts of sparks fizzing out in my rearview mirror after we landed, but I managed to keep the wheel straight enough to avoid getting killed.

11

I was driving drunk. This is stupid enough by itself that I could stop, but I was even more stupid than that. The lights were flashing at the railroad track. I looked to my left and saw no train, so I floored it. The train was coming from the right. It just missed us.

Thank Og I have grown up enough not to drink and drive.

12

Another horse related incedent.

I was doing a cantering serpentine on my half Arab gelding with flying lead changes at the center of each half circle, and he was feeling friky. He bucked while doing a lead change, and somehow, I’ll never know quite what happened , he came down with his front legs crossed, tripped himself and flipped head over heels.

I hit the ground first, landing on my back. This happened in a fraction of a second , but I swear it was like watching it in slow motion, seeing over 1000 lbs. of horse’s ass coming right down on top of me. I just KNEW I was going to die, right then, and just closed my eyes and waited for it to be all over with. But instead, my wonderful horse twisted his body HARD and landed right beside me, missing me by inches.

We both survived , me with only 2 huge bruises on the inside of my thighs from hitting the pommel of the Wstern saddle , and Star bit the side of his tongue badly enough that I had to use a hackamore on him for a month , as a bit hurt his mouth.

13

Hmm…really, it’s a tie between two incidents, but I’m about to post the second one to this thread anyhow, so I’ll go ahead and post what would probably be choice #1. Warning: it will probably be long. Generally speaking, I do not post things which are not long. Short version for the impatient: I dangled myself off the top of a 7-story building. Want details? Read on.

About five years ago, I went with my dad to watch the Super Bowl with some of his buddies at a local lodge. This particular group owns a somewhat run-down seven-story building in a seedy part of downtown, and was congregating on the fifth floor where the bigscreen, sofas, kegerators and snack fridges were located.

Now, I’ve never been what you’d call the world’s biggest sports fan. These days I can watch a football game in its entirety without falling asleep, but even now I have no particular desire to do so, and back then…well, let’s just say that watching the Super Bowl was not on my Top 10 List of Things To Do. Having been to this particular building before, and explored its innermost secrets (which largely amounted to dust, cobwebs and empty rooms), I knew of a way to get onto the roof, which afforded a very nice view of downtown Roanoke. So, taking my leave of the group of highly inebriated gentlemen whose attention was firmly affixed on the latest Budweiser advertisement, I headed on up to the top floor.

Getting to the roof was treacherous enough in and of itself; it involved climbing up a rickety ladder that descended from the roof into a cramped wooden room. This room’s primary purpose was that in contained the breakers for the entire building, and the ladder that led up to the rooftop was located past the circuit board. This board did not exactly represent the latest in wiring technology; more of a “six-foot-tall spark-spitting clicking lighting-arcing metal contraption of doom”, really. It was exactly the sort of thing you might see in the lab a 50’s Frankenstein-ripoff horror flick. Behind this board was a tangle of wires that would’ve been impossible for a human to get through (not that I’d have dared to try), and in front of it was approximately 12" of space between it and the wall. Because of this, getting to the ladder involved walking over to the adjacent wall, pressing your back up against it, and sidling ever-so-carefully past the Board of Death as it spat sparks against your face and clothing.

So anyway, I made it to the ladder and went up onto the roof. After appreciating the view of downtown Roanoke for approximately thirty seconds, my mind turned to other matters. I stepped closer to the edge of the rooftop and looked down over the side. Seven stories is quite a bit more distance when you’re looking down from it than up at it, I can tell you that. At this point I began to reflect upon those movies you see where people are hanging off a ledge at the top of a building. These people always seemed to be unable to pull themselves up without the assistance of others, thereby increasing the dramatic tension when the villain is the only one available to lend a hand. This didn’t seem especially realistic to me; I was far from the model of physical fitness and even I could do one pullup well enough to climb onto a ledge. With this in mind, I decided to test out the theory. My exact thought as to the potential downside? “Well, I might die…but who cares about that?”

With that, I grabbed firmly onto the side of the rooftop, dropped one leg over the edge, and then the other. I felt the strain on my arms, which somehow seemed far greater than it did when I was hanging from a pullup bar in gym class. I also noted that a concrete rectangular prism made for a far worse grip than a metal bar. Hadn’t thought about that. Still, I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Before making an effort to pull myself up, I decided to take a quick glance downward. Yeah, yeah, I know, “don’t look down”…but come on. Ya gotta look down.

Whatever the function is that determines the difference between the perceived height when looking UP at the top of a building versus looking DOWN from the rooftop, let me postulate that that function is exponential, and the next whole-number iteration past “looking down” falls at the x-coordinate of “looking down while dangling from the edge of the roof with your bare hands”, producing a y-value of “a whole HELL of a lot of down-ness”. With that particular value sharply in mind, I performed a jerk of the arms the like of which I shall probably never reproduce, and flung myself back up over the edge. I went back down into the building, sidling once again past the Board of Death – a task made much more difficult by my lightheadednes, shortness of breath and the fact that I couldn’t seem to stop shaking – and sat down with my dad to watch the end of the game.

While I wouldn’t recommend hanging unsupported from tall buildings as a matter of good practice, I will say that having done it and knowing the experience firsthand is quite the rush. I am wholly and completely unresponsible for the results of any attempts to corroborate this.

Never did say a word to anyone, let alone my parents, about this incident before now. Good thing they’re not Dopers. And just in case I’m mistaken…hi mom! :smiley:

14

:eek: !!!1

15

On the island of Crete.

Was staying in a house some friends and I had rented for a month.

Took a hike by myself up on the cliffs. Nobody around for miles - just me wandering along the cliffs. Went to a large overhang, went to the tip and looked out at the ocean.

Walked back to the cliffs and went about 50 yards and heard a horrible, loud noise.

The overhang, where I had just been standing, suddenly crumbled and fell thousands of feet into the ocean. A few minutes earlier and my body would be somewhere between Crete and Egypt by now.

I carefully backed away from the cliffs and walked back to the house, still shaking.

It was then that I knew it wasn’t my time to go - but it threw my mortality in my face and made me realize I had better enjoy every minute of life while I still could.
Also made me realize wandering alone on cliffs was probably not a real wise idea.

16

Allowed my wife to talk me into taking (half-assed) Laser lessons. That’s a very small sailing craft, for you non-nautical types. After watching a film and having about two hours lecture, we launched into Lake Victoria, on the Uganda side.

Long story short, I ain’t no sailor. The sea was angry that day, my friends, and I can’t swim. We made it out a fair distance with no problems, but then going straight ahead really requires no skill. When we tried to come about to head back, we managed to capsize and then turn turtle. In Lake Victoria where the hippos and crocs grow. Did I mention I don’t swim?

We’re both hanging onto the side of the boat (wearing life preservers, but I’m sure I mentioned that this is Africa, where nothing really works all that well) and trying not to get sucked under it by the swells, when my wife’s leg gets tangled in the sheets (that’s the ropes, for landlubbers [of which I am now firmly one]).

She’s trying to find her knife, and I’m getting weak from hanging onto the boat and kicking to keep from being dragged under it, when a motorized dugout finally arrives to save us. The instructor in the boat says “do you want to give it another go?” (so very British, don’t you know). My reply: “Get me out of this fucking lake!”

Got me out, and by then the Ms. had freed herself and got pulled out after me. We lay in the bottom of the dugout like a couple of beached whales, thanking Og that no hippos had seen fit to come out for a look-see. We both still have nightmares about that.

17

Not really near death, but the things that you read about if things had gone differently, and wonder how the person could have been so stupid…

When I was 10 or 11. We were visiting relatives in New Brunswick, and my cousins and I decided to go downtown for comic books. Their father warned us not to go over the railroad bridge. It was a bit like the bridge in Stand By Me. Once away from the house, and being the oldest, I of course made the executive decision that it would take far too long to walk the loop around the road when the bridge was a straight line. We walked across the bridge, bought our comics and turned around. On the bridge on the way back, one of my cousins lost his footing, and was able to grab one of the bridge supports. We all watched his comic book spiral down into the racing river. It seemed to take forever before it hit the water and was swept away. Unlike Stand By Me, we didn’t see a train; they were active tracks, but perhaps it was because it was a weekend. My cousins wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of our visit. Years later, my brother and I were driving through the town. He had heard the story, saw railroad tracks and started laughing; they were less than ten feet above the water. I pointed to the old, abandoned bridge supports further downstream and he stopped laughing. I think they were 20 or 30 feet above the river.

When I was in college. I would get together over winter break with a friend. We went out for beers, and by the time I headed home it was quite late. The highway (Route 2 west of Littleton for those who know the area) had a straight stretch of road, there was snow on the sides of the road, and the moon was shining full. For some reason I got the idea that there would be enough light to drive even if I shut off my headlights. There was and I did, steering my car by the light reflecting off the snow banks and the white lines. I drove for a mile or two until I suddenly realized that if there was a stalled car or a pedestrian I would never see them until it was too late. And yet, the next winter break I couldn’t resist doing it again.

A few months ago. I was washing clothes, and went into the basement to find a pool of water around the base of the washing machine. I couldn’t tell if it was a hose or the machine itself (which was over 20 years old), because the light wasn’t good in that area. No problem, I had a drop light. So there I was, standing in a puddle of water with an electric light in my hand.

18

I suppose not getting the brakes checked when I knew they were acting up qualifies as stupid.

This was back in '89. It was one of those chilly, rainy mornings, the kind where it’s hard to get out of bed. Especially when it’s your fiance’s bed, it’s Monday morning, and you’re facing a three hour drive to get to work. Reluctantly I set off…two hours later I was exiting the freeway onto a sharp curving off-ramp, doing about 65 mph, when I eased into the brake pedal to slow for the 25 mph cloverleaf. No good…the pedal went right to the floor, and I and my Olds Omega sailed off the side and down the grassy slope. What followed is a sound forever embedded in my brain…my own screams, followed by the most awful mix of crunching metal, shattering glass, and Don Henley with Axl Rose belting out “I will not go quietly”. When the car came to a stop, I had flipped over one and a half times, corner to corner, and landed on the driver’s side with the nose pointed back up the steep bank. I remember all that quite clearly, but I can barely remember actually climbing out of the car. I must have stood up and hoisted myself up through the broken passenger window, then hopped down to the hillside, hoping the car wouldn’t flip over on top of me as I leapt.

I made a point that day of thanking my Dad for always making me wear my seatbelt…other than a sore elbow, a couple of scratches and the obligatory whiplash, I was OK. What hurt the most is that it was my first car, and I had bought it for $900 cash just three weeks earlier.

19

Lots of things but for close, according to the people beside me, the 6 foot cottonmouth snake got to within 1 inch of my face.

I don’t know for sure but I could see the fangs dripping real well.

Jeez, I’m 62, close in cars, airplanes, boats, guns, cliffs, rodeo’s, ARMY, woods, electrical stuff, …

Just live a bit longer and you will many stories …Lots of things but for close, according to the people beside me, the 6 foot cottonmouth snake got to within 1 inch of my face.

I don’t know for sure but I could see the fangs dripping real well.

Jeez, I’m 62, close in cars, airplanes, boats, guns, cliffs, rodeo’s, ARMY, woods, electrical stuff, …

Just live a bit longer and you will many stories …

20

Wel, that spell check went well didn’t it?