The Stupidest Thing I ever Did

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Okay, PLD knows about this one from childhood and still giggles about it, but should anyone every meet my mom (yeah right), don’t tell her–she STILL doesn’t know the truth…its one of the few lies I ever told her (and I mean that literally) and one of the only ones I never came clean about.

I was about 9 years old, and I really wanted to stay home from school one Thursday. My mom was at Wednesday Bible study so shortly before she was due home, like a lot of kids, I decided to make my face warm so she’d think I was sick/feverish and let me stay home the next day. I rubbed it with a warm cloth. But she must’ve been chatting and didn’t get home at the usual time, so ever few minutes I went back to the bathroom and repeated this “warming method.”

When she finally arrived home she looked at my red little and knew right away I must be sick. However, when she went to touch my face, I shrieked and jumped back in pain–her hand BURNED ME. She examined me closely.

Can you guess what I’d done?

See, I’ve very thin skinned (in the physical not mental sense) as a few DCers can confirm, and I had managed to rub off in several places (cheeks, nose and forehead) nearly all my epidermis layer exposing the soft flesh and vulnerable dermis layer to the air (I also suddenly I noticed even just a breeze in the house burned too). I did get to stay home–Thursday AND Friday (at least I earned them). And I got to go to the doctor! ::sigh:: Somehow I actually convinced mom and doctor that I’d fallen into a mud puddle at recess and washed my face in the school hand soap and must’ve had an allergic reaction.

Topping the humiliation (keeping in mind that I had to go back to school for weeks with large scabs on my face), my grandparents and mom took me to the Autorama show downtown THAT weekend and I met Taxi’s Jeff Conaway (okay, but then for a 9 yr old it was a big deal). I swear he must’ve thought I was a batter child. Even let me sit on his lap for a picture. Proof of my ignorance. Talk about learning a lesson in trickery and fibbing. I’m pretty sure that after that I just asked my mom if I could take a day off of school and took my chances.

And yes, occasionally if I get a sunburn just right (which again is extremely rare for me–being a pale redhead, I avoid sun exposure quite a bit) you can see marks/scars from this stupidity.

42

The stupidest thing I ever did is almost identical to Coldfire, but in American terms .

I was im my '70 stang with a 351 driving cross country. I got to the stretch of I-80 near Chigago and Joliet. I always love the section, because the average speed is around 90 Mph, which feels great after the boring-ass trip through Nebraska. So I was driving along a a little faster than everybody else, but not to bad, when a 68 Camaro merged onto the road right next to me. Both of us being really stupid kids, we kept speeding up just a bit so that we were going faster than the other. We work our way to a piece of the road that is almost completely clear of other traffic having left everybody else behind us. The little bit faster thing had been continuing all this time and now became a true race(Having mostly driven my car in Denver, I was really enjoying the added power of being at sea-level. I pulled a little ahead, and looked in the mirror to make sure there were no cops or anything, and by the time I looked forward again, I had come over the crest of a hill, and saw a dead-stop, all lane traffic jam about 150 ft in front of me, right as I happened to notice my speedometer was in the 130 range. I’ve done enough stupid things in cars to know not to slam on the brakes, so I pulled a hard right across two empty lanes in the emergency lane, and pushed the brakes fairly hard. Itwas about this time I started to regret never having put a whole lot of time in working on the brakes, as those old Drums overheated and faded while I was still going over 90. If you want a good adrenaline rush, driving 90mph down a narrow emergency lane with no brakes, past the most surprised looked cop, will give you more than you ever bargined for. I noticed on the far left side of the jam the Camaro was doing approximately the same in the median lane. The worst part was our little race had encouraged all of the people behind us to go faster, and I saw a mass of other cars crest the hill probably going 100, but I seriously doubt they had the manuevering room for all of them to avoid the stopped cars in the jam. I had gone a quartermile in the emergency lane, before I was able to be under control, by then it had become an exit, so I just kind of drifted off into the closest neighboorhood scared as hell a cop would be looked for me, but nothing ever happened, so I eventually got back on my way, I have never gone more than 85 since that day.
As for humourous stupid stuff, The first time I moved into an apartment with a dishwasher, I had no dishwasher soap, but figured the hand dishwashing soap I brought from the last place would work fine. I came back an hour later to find that my apartment now looked like the set of a really bad Sci-Fi movie, and I wasn’t going to be getting my deposit back.

43

Scylla…very not funny. I don’t know if this is still true but a few years ago OSHA or somebody like that rated the family farm the most dangerous place to work with the meat packing industry coming in a close second. Evidently quite a few children are killed or maimed every year on a family farm. Since they aren’t subject to the same rules and regulations that other business are. Anyway, that’s just scary as shit, a farm accident seems like a real slice of the worst kind of nightmare to me. So with that said…

The biggest stupidest mistake I’ve ever made was getting involved with the second alcoholic man in my life. The first one was an accident. He was my husband and we grew up together. But the second one who turned out to be not only an alcoholic and a drug addict, that was beyond stupidity. When you’ve done the ALANON thing, had counseling and know you’ve been labeled a “codependent” not real bright to start messing around with another drunk. Guess I was just being a little thick.

As for just plain goofy stuff like hot glueing your fingers together or dropping a cigarette down my bra while I’m doing 70 on the interstate, that’s small potatoes. I did fall “under” the car one time. I went out on an icy morning to get into the car. I slipped and slid all the way under the car. Bumped my head pretty good too. When I shook off the daze I was laying there looking up at all the pipes and greasy stuff.

Needs2know.

44

Well, mine isn’t nearly so impressive as most of yours, but what the hell.

When I was a lad, my parents occasionally went to conventions on business and such things. At one such affair, the hosting organization had kindly provided golf carts for transportation about the grounds. I was riding with my sister and a friend of hers on one of these archaic devices when it overheated and rolled to a stop. Being sober-minded adults, they proceeded to pop the thing open and stare thoughtfully at the innards while praying it just started working again all by itself. Being somewhat less than sober-minded, having just watched a cartoon marathon, and being very, very stupid, I dashed forward with a gleeful grin, shouting “I’ll choke the engine!”

The portion of the engine that I grabbed hold of was the exhaust manifold. To those who aren’t familiar with car innards, this is the metal tube that carries the waste product out of the engine and discards it into the air. The heated waste product. They also tend to be a bit dusty.

So, a few seconds later I was rolling around on the ground, trying to scrape burning-hot dust off of my hands. Eventually my sister and her friend convinced me that water would be more helpful, so we stumbled off to a nearby building, where I was stuck until my parents arrived to drive me to the doctor. That was also fun, as my hands began to hurt quite a lot as soon as I removed them from cold water, and any non-running water was heated rather rapidly. The burns turned out to be not too severe - only second degree. Could have been worse. This still meant that I had to be fed and taken to the bathroom by my family for the next several days until they healed up, though.

45

a computer.
I’m a programmer, and any programmer who’s been around for a while can probably regale you with some pretty amazing horror stories.
Here’s one of mine, and it was perhaps not the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my career, but it was the most embarrasing.
One day, I need to go through a tape, one of the old reel-to-reel jobs (the old-time programmers & operators will know what I’m talking of here, the 6250 bpi tapes), and in order to get to the file I want to look at, which is well into the tape, without reading through all the other files, I modify the tape utility slightly to read only the file headers and skip the data until it finds this file.
This was, mind you, in production. This was many years ago, and there was no clear line at the time between development and production machines.
That night, they’re running, or better said, trying to run, the night cycle of jobs. Tape drive won’t read the files. Technicians are called in, they can’t find the problem. My boss, who was forced to stay late to try to figure this one out, finally starts calling around to see if anyone has any idea…
When she gets to me, I immediately tell her what I had done during the day.

Even now, telling this, I’m cringing.

46

Scylla - you really have been between a rock and a hard place, haven’t you?

47

One of my jobs was a grill cook. And one day during a dinner rush I had a server tell me that the wings that she had ordered were and appetizer and she was so sorry that she didn’t order them before, but she needed them asap.
So, I tossed them all into a basket to be dropped into the fryer. Waited four minutes to pull them, and as I was shaking off the hot oil one decided to jump out of the basket. Well, in my rushed state I did the first thing that came to mind.
Yes folks I reached in after it. Took me a few minutes to feel the pain, and the only thing that saved my hand was the fact that it was wet and the water burned off, not my skin. I have a scar down my wrist and that is about all I walked away with.

48

I’ve far too many awards in the pantheon of stupidity to settle on just one but here is an example for your consideration.

I’m leaving work late one night about 9 months ago and I’m parked on a poorly lit section of a dead end side street off the Downtown Plaza. It’s a moonless night and I’m tired and impatient to get home so I start backing up (which is how one normally exits this narrow one way street) at a high rate of speed. I happen to glance up in my rear view mirror and see a flash of metal coming at me at a ferocious clip. I squash the brakes and mentally I am waiting for the crash.

I don’t hear the expected explosion of metal meeting metal so I get out of the car and investigate. Behind me is one of the most beautiful cars I have ever seen. It is an immaculate, brand new, pitch black, top of the line Jaguar (I’m guessing $ 60,000+). Spanning my thumb and middle finger I can cover the 10 inches that remain between my rear bumper and the black Jaguar’s grille.

I drove home slowly that night.

49

Back in 1985 I was living in northern Minnesota and going hot and heavy with this nympho dancer who had just moved to town. One weekend we drove to Minneapolis without making any plans. I remembered the address of a college buddy and we drove around until we found his place. Luckily for us, he was home and his roomate had just moved out, so we had a place to crash. He even gave us a key so we could come and go as we pleased. The next day we found out that the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band of all time, The Replacements, were playing at First Avenue (as seen in Purple Rain, the Prince flick), the last night of a five night run they were doing in their hometown to promote the release of their first major label album, Tim. Of course, it was sold out, but we went down there hours before show time and stood around with the rest of the losers who were hoping to buy tickets from scalpers. A guy appeared from nowhere and walked past everyone else right up to me and my dancer. He had two tickets and sold them to us at no profit to himself! The tickets said “7th St. Entry” on them and we took that to mean that that was the door we had to use. That night we went in the 7th St. entrance to find a small room where a band was just finishing their set. We each remarked how great it would be to hear the 'mats in such an intimate space, then proceeded into the main ballroom, where Prince had played in Purple Rain, to await the arrival of our heros. Scheduled starting time came and went the band never showed up. Instead, dance music continued to blare over the PA, much to the unconcern of the crowd, mostly gay men, who continued dancing. We figured they were just building tension, like the Stones used to do. Finally, someone told us that the Replacements WERE playing back in that small space (a space known as the 7th St. Entry). We ran in there just as the band left the stage. The whole atmosphere was electric. People were sweating, hugging each other, giving high fives, crying at the greatness they had just witnessed. We had missed the entire concert! I could barely keep from bawling. I’ve never felt like such a schlemiel. The 1/2 mile walk back to the car was arduous and silent. Couple of prize chumps!

50

I was shaving with a straight razor, and had just taken off a good section of wiskers, as is normal with these things.

Anyways, after rincing it off, I noticed some gunk still on the edge, and so I got the simply brilliant idea to wipe it off with my finger. I was going to run along the edge on the flat part of the blade, but instead, without thinking I ran my finger along the length of the sharp edge.

Anyways, I learned that day that you can cut surprisingly deep into your finger with a straight razor before you notice what you are doing…

51

I’m working as a busboy at a chain restaurant in the northeast. Among my duties is serving soda/coffee/water to the “guests” as we called them.

It was late. I had been working for 7 hours, and I was tired. My hands were wet, the glasses were wet, and the customer wanted another Pepsi. I reached up to the shelf where the glasses were kept. As I pulled down the glass, it slipped from my hand. Things were moving in slow motion as I saw it plummeting towards the counter. Not feeling like cleaning up such a mess, I did the first thing that came to mind. I snapped down at it with the hand I had used to reach for it with in the first place.

My hand shoots straight down faster than I’ve ever moved it before in my life. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite fast enough.

There is a SPECTACULAR crashing noise as hand, glass, and stainless steel counter come simultaneously into contact with each other. My hand, moving at what must have been 50 miles an hour goes right through the glass, and slams into the counter, upon which were scattered the remains of the glass I had just crushed with my poor, poor palm.

Meanwhile, my face is doing the logical thing: closing it’s eyes to avoid any bounce back, and screaming more profanities than you can imagine, quite close to the dining room of a family restaurant on a saturday night. Thankfully, when my manager saw my hand, he understood, and let me go home, without firing me :slight_smile:

52

The thing I did voluntarily that had the worst impact on my life was to attend Hampshire College. A year of my life down the drain, and nowthe mere sight of hippies makes me quake with rage.

A few months ago I gave started to trim my hair with clippers that had no attachment on them; I was bent over, so by the time I looked so much damage had been done that I had no choice but to do the whole thing that way.

The other day I went to put a paper in a professor’s mailbox at the department office. On the left, I see names beginning with early letters of the alphabet; on the right I see the end of the alphabet. The prof’s name begins with a Y, so of course, I figure, it’ll be to the right. No such luck. An office worker asks if I need help finding anything, and I tell him I’m looking the name… “Bottom, second from the left.” Then I proceed to look at the third from the right. God only knows why, but he eventually had to come over and point to it. I muttered “thanks for your patience” and left, completely mortified for the next half hour. I am a fairly sharp guy by most standards, but sometimes my brain just seems to shut down.

53

This doesn’t really compare to the rest of yours, but here goes…

Back in 7th grade, we were starting Volleyball in PE. Before the actual drills, the teacher wanted us to do some running across the gym, so he had us line up and would tell us different ways to run. Run, skip, crab walk, etc…so finally we came to the last one: Backwards running.

The first person in line runs over and back; no problem. Second one does the same. Then it’s my turn. I start to run, but then about half way across I start to think, “I’d better speed up”, so I do. Then I trip over my own feet and it sends me falling to the ground. Naturally, I put my arms behind me to stop the fall. The make contact, and shortly after I do as well. At this point, a dull pain is in both arms. I lay there for a second, then realize that I’ve gotta finish. So I get up, and start running again. I finish, but at this point, both of my wrists have swollen up so I can’t move them, and it hurts.

I’m getting worried at this point, so I go over to the PE teacher and say, “My wrists really hurt, and I can’t move them,” to which he responds, “Just walk it off. Maybe it’ll go away.” At this point, I probably would’ve been crying, had it not been for my body being in shock and unable to feel the full brunt of the pain. I go back to my line.

Now the actual volleyball drills. We start going over the basic ‘bump’. (For those who aren’t familiar with volleyball, this is basically where you clasp both hands together and hit the ball with your wrists) I’m sitting here in such pain it’s almost blinding and now I’m supposed to hit volleyballs off my wrists? So finally my turn comes up in the line. I’ve got to somehow not hit the ball with my hands. So the person throws the ball up, and I hit it with my head. (Pretty easy, since I’d played soccer for 6 years previously) By then the pain was pretty overwhelming so I go talk to the girl’s PE coach and she tells me to go to the office. I call home, and my dad comes to pick me up. We then go to the doc’s office.

By now, it’s about noon and I have a slip-shod splint on one of my arms. (The one that hurt more) It was about 11 a.m. when we made it to the doctors office. After being run around for 4 hours, we finally made it into someone who could take x-rays. It was revealed that I had broken the radius bone in each arm. By the time I got casts put on (neither had to be set, thank goodness) and got home (where the pain-killers were) it was about 6 pm.

BTW, taking a shower with two casts on your arms is NOT fun…but that’s another story.

54

The stupidest thing I’ve ever done:

In college, I worked part-time at a furniture store. Some of the furniture was delivered to us in boxes that were a combination of heavy cardboard, particle board, and wood slats. We would unpack it, and throw the boxes into the big dumpster outside.

One day, after unpacking many pieces of furniture, the dumpster was almost full, and we needed more room to throw away more packing material. “Ah Ha!” I thought, “Here is my chance to get in good with the boss!”

While everyone else went on break, I decided to see what I could do to compact the trash in the dumpster (I am uniquely qualified to do this, at 6 feet 4 inches, and 320 pounds)… I decided to get in the dumpster, and jump on it to compact the refuse…

I clambored to the top of the dumpster, took careful aim, and lept as high as I could…

As soon as I touched the top of the boxes, the whole structure collapsed… leaving me pinned, upside down, against the inside end of the dumpster!

I wriggled for several seconds, but every time I moved I slid several inches farther down into the dumpster, and the wood slats poking into my body were wedged further into it (most painful!!!). It occured to me, suddenly, that no help was likely to come for quite a while (remember, everyone was on a break)… and I could not breathe!

On the virge of passing out due to lack of air, I decide to risk it all (fuck it! I’m gonna die upside down in a dumpster!! Imagine the headlines in the local paper!) I gave a gold-medal struggle, which resulted in my head finally coming into contact with the bottom of the dumpster, giving me the leverage to free myself, slowly, from the wood slats and cardboard, and right myself…

No one from the rest of the crew knows how close I came to death that day…

55

This one is a bit less painfull than some I’ve read here, but it’s still the stupidest thing I can ever remember doing.

When I was around 15 years old, my father owned a sawmill business, the whole of which was sitting in what could be considered our “front yard”… of course, our front yard was about a hundred acres, so we had plenty of room for one there. Anyway… as you can imagine, a place that puts a house on a 100+ acre plot isn’t exactly what one would call an “urban” area, and it’s not surprising to find that the person next to you has a large number of cattle.

Now, this person had a tendency to replace his cows every so often (I’m assuming he sold them, although considering how few he usually had, I don’t see how he made a profit off of it)… so point is, one could never anticipate how many cows they would see upon entering his property.

One day, I was outside with my brother and a couple of the children of the people who worked at the sawmill. We were throwing around a small football-like thing, when I accadently tossed it up over the barb wire fence that seperated the cow man’s “yard” and ours. I said something along the lines of “One sec, I’ll go grab it”, jumped up on the stump that sat beside the fence on our side, and hopped over the fence.

Everybody screamed at me a few seconds after I did this… I was just picking up the ball, when I turned around and found myself face to face with a bull that was just about as tall as I was (and I’ve always been a tall guy).

Having watched a lot of cartoons, I knew that sudden movement would make this monster dash at me, so we just sorta sat there staring at each other for about 2 minutes before I made my move. There was no stump on this side to jump from, so the only way to get back was about 35 meters (~100 feet) down the fence, where one of the fence posts had a “step” in it. I slowly walked around the bull, and backed up away from him. He followed me. The whole way.

I tell ya, that was the longest 35 meters I ever walked.

The owner of the bull told me later that he was a generally calm-tempered one, and he was letting him wander around into the main field to mate with some of the cows. Luckily for me, I looked nothing like a cow, or the tone of this post could have been entirely different.

  • FrozenEmu
56

Crusing down NY State Thruway 65-70mph (100-110kph?) My friend Rick is driving his fathers huge old station wagon. Rick is getting sleepy, not doing the smart thing and pulling over to switch, I tell him "Lower your window, put the cruse control on, I’ll climb over the roof, slide into the drivers seat easy. Rick is very sleepy and agrees. It works smooth simple. Three hours later get home and wake the girls in the backseat. After a short explanation of why I was driving, and how the switch took place, my lady said she never wanted to be seen with any one that stupid again. Rick married his girl. How 17 year old males get any older is a mystery. MTS

57

In my senior year of highschool, I was living with my grandparents in a very small town. It was a big change for me to go from having 3 younger siblings to being an only child again.
One of the best things about it was that when I got one of my odd urges at 2 AM (like to go watch TV or to bake a pie) I could just go do that, as long as I was quiet and didn’t wake my grandparents.
One night I had a girlfriend over and we were up pretty late. It was probably about 3 AM when I got the idea to make lollipops.
My girlfriend came from a family where most food comes from boxes, and she was woefully uneducated about home-made goodies. She didn’t know that you could make lollipops. She thought that you had to buy them.
In an effort to show her my skills as a 18 year old culinary genious, I started a batch of hard candy to make lollipops with. It wasn’t the first time that I’d made them, and it’s a simple recipie, so I didn’t even need to look it up (further impressive!)
We got to talking around the kitchen table about the other things that are yummy when home-made. I had just found out that she had never made a pie, and had never seen anyone else make a pie when I looked up to see…

Yup. Thick gouts of smoke rolling out of the pan on the stove. I yelped and jumped up. I yelled (quietly!) for her to start waving the smoke away from the smoke alarm while I snapped off the burner. I grabed a pot holder and yanked the smoking syrup off the heat, but it was very hot and the heat quickly leaked through the padding and started to singe my hand. Thinking quickly (but not very clearly) I ran to the sink and dumped the mixture in. I was figuring ‘hey, it’s a nice stainless steel sink, so it won’t do any damage!’ I turned on the water to help wash it down. Even the hot water was cool enough to set the lollipop mixture. I could almost hear it hardening with a snap. Finally, all the smoke was gone, and my girlfriend came over to the sink. Looking over my shoulder at the sink curiously, she says, “Hey look at that! It did harden! …say, what’s that going to do to your grandparent’s garbage disposal?”
Filled with dread, I reached up and flicked the switch. A low pitched hum resulted. No grinding at all. My grandfather always gets up about 4 AM, and he has no patience at all for his 18 year old grandaughter’s not-thought-out actions. And he always uses the garbage disposal to dispose of his eggshells from making his breakfast…in about 20 minutes.
Mentally swearing all the while, I start running the hot water down the drain to erode the hard-set candy while bashing at the trails of it that I can see with the wooden spoon. Every once in a while I would try the disposal.
Five minutes before 4, with Grandpa stiring upstairs, sucess! The disposal crunches up the rest of the candy, and then whirs itself clear! I snapped it off, and then we ran to hide in my bedroom about a minute before he got up.
I still got in trouble, but it was because I ran out most of the hot water. “No more showers after midnight!” I would have been in a lot more trouble if he’d known what had really happened!

K.

58

Stupid huh?
OK here goes.

When I was 8 years old I had a toy cannon that shot small red balls. It was a favorite toy and I shot many things with it (The cat, dog, hamster…don’t ask) It came with 3 balls originally but I had lost all of them and was trying to find something that would work. A rubber bouncey ball from a set of jacks seemed just the thing. I fired and…nothing. Undetered, I stuck my hand in and grabbed the ball and the trigger released the rest of the way and the plunger locked my hand in the barrell. I pulled and pulled to no avail. My mother tried soap and cooking oil with the same results. My father was called at work (Imagine the conversation…“Boss, I have to leave now. My boy has a cannon stuck on his arm.”) By now my arm had swollen and the whole thing was quite painful. Off we go to the emergency room where x-rays of arm and cannon were taken. The doctor came into the room laughing hysterically. Everyone who saw the x-rays started laughing. At 8, I had no idea what was going on, here I was about to die from a cannon on my arm and they are all laughing! Finally, the doctor came over and asked me to let go of the ball. Let go?!? I didn’t want to lose that ball.
“Let go or we cut the cannon off with a saw.”
My arm came right out. The ball had made my fist too big for the barrell.

My mother moved out two years later. She took my three siblings with her and left me with my father. 30 years later, I still think it was because I hadn’t let go of that ball.

59

When I was about five or six years old my best friend and I were playing in her backyard. We had been playing on her toy slide (a plastic semicircle about three or four feet in diameter – picture half of a plastic doughnut). The slide could be turned upside down to be used as a seesaw, with one child sitting on each side of the arc.

Now we must have watched the circus recently on TV or something, because we quickly got bored and decided to play acrobat instead. I was going to stand on one end of the seesaw, and my friend was going to jump down on the other end and propel me into the air.

So I stood on the edge and prepared to do some type of backflip or other spectacular aerial maneuver. Unfortunately when my friend jumped down on the opposite side, I lost my balance and fell over backward. The end that I had been standing on flew up and whacked her right in the face, breaking her nose.

Twenty years later we’re still best friends. That was the very last time we played circus, though.

My most recent stupid act was about a year ago when I was cooking. I needed to open a brand new bottle of chili powder that was covered with a platic disk. When I couldn’t pry the lid of with my fingers I looked around my kitchen for another utensil, and I grabbed the first item I found.

It wasn’t until after I’d sliced my thumb open that I realized that opening a container with an 8-inch butcher knife isn’t such a great idea. Luckily I was able to stop the bleeding myself. I would have felt stupid explaining it to everyone in the ER.

60

Man, I’ve done a lot of stupid things, or at least been party to a number of them. Seriously, it’s a miracle I’m still alive and not horribly disfigured. A (kind of) quick one:

Sixteen years old, hanging out at my friend’s house on a summer afternoon. His older brother had given him a jar of gunpowder. Some would call this stupid, but sixteen year old boys LIVE for blowing things up and/or burning them, and gunpowder was like manna from heaven to us. We were making bombs all afternoon, and then we started a fire in my friend’s bonfire pit.

It’s important to mention that the gunpowder was in a glass jar with plastic screw-on top that had a spout in it. Anyway, we start a bonfire and start throwing pinches of gunpowder on it, just to see it burn up. My friend decides to eliminate the middleman and just pour some of the gunpowder on to the fire.

STUPID ALERT Pour a little bit, the fire flares up. Pour a little bit, the fire flares up. Pour a li— The fire travels up the stream of poured gunpowder into the jar itself. Time slows down and we look at each other with our jaws agape; then we barely have time to look away from the jar. My “final” thought runs through my mind: “Well, I guess that’s it. So long, world.”

Next thing we know, we hear a loud FOOOOOM and I turn back to see that my friend’s hand is still somehow attached to his arm, and his arm is even attached to his body! We’re not dead after all! All that happened was that the gunpowder lit and shot the top of the jar about a half mile into the air. The glass bottle didn’t even break! We were both fine, but shaking. I have a longer story, somewhat similar, that’s much better and involves gasoline on a fire.