The stupidest thing I've ever done to myself

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

In college, summer stock theater, working on an outdoor production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” (not really relevant). I am on a long wooden plank suspended between two scaffolds, VERY HIGH UP! I am stringing heavy electrical cable along a steel bar and attaching klieg lights. I am much too young too think about how short my life could be.

Suddenly, I hear a CRASH! and I look over to see that the electrical cable is snapping free of its moorings, one after the other, SNAP!, CRASH!, SNAP!, CRASH!, and is heading right toward me. Imagine a one-inch thick black snake whipping toward you while you are balanced on 12-inches of wood. I can’t grab it, it is too heavy and moving too fast, and if I don’t get out of the way it will wrap itself around me and pull me to down to the stage below, which, as I mentioned before, is VERY FAR AWAY! Simply put, if I don’t move my ass, I’m going to die. The other scaffold is 25 to 30 feet away in the other direction. I have to move fast, but not too fast because, as I cannot stress enough, I am VERY HIGH UP!, moving along a 12-inch plank, while black death chases me.

I cannot really run, I just have to WALK REALLY FAST!, sticking my arms straight out on either side for balance. Got the picture? Obviously, I survived, but to this day I cannot explain this part:

As I am walking very rapidly away from a large black snake that wants to pull me to my demise, VERY HIGH UP!, both arms sticking straight out like an airplane, certain death mere seconds away, what do I do? I start whooping like Curly from the Three Stooges.

“Whoop-oop-oop-oop-oop! Whoop-oop-oop-oop-oop!”. My fellow theater tech, safely ensconced on the scaffold towards which I am now rushing, does not see the cable chasing me. He sees only a young man apparently taken mad, running toward him from VERY HIGH UP!, both arms stuck straight out and whooping like a looney bird. Honestly, I think he was more frightened than I was.

I hope never to have to stare death so squarely in the eye again, but if I do, I wonder if I will still keep my sense of humor.

122

Hey FairyChatMom!

I caught one of my chestal protrusions in my desk drawer at work too when I was leaning down to pick a pen off the floor once. It’s good to know I’m not alone…

Safety officers in workplaces everywhere take note. This may be another danger to add to your lists along with the ‘mind the step’, ‘mind your head’ and ‘don’t forget to bend your knees when picking up a heavy box’ signs.

Mind your boobs girls!

123

When I was 15 or so I was into radio-controlled model hovercraft. My first attempt had a big vertically mounted model airplane engine to lift it off the ground. I had not gotten around to attaching the throttle to an extension rod so you can safely adjust it when the hovercraft is going. (the throttle being on the inside of the hovercraft i.e. other side of the propeller). My parents were away and I was excited and had to try it out NOW.

My only excuse for the following events was that it was a very loud engine and I started it up in a very small, enclosed space and I argue that the noise impaired my thinking. The obvious happened. I started it, engine was to fast, I reached through propeller to slow it, I cut my index finger to the bone. The nurses at the hospital were very nice and sympathetic when they stitched it back together.

But wait, the really embarrassing thing is that my parents were away for one more day, and I had not had a chance to really see if my hovercraft worked, so I started it up again. Same place, same outcome. Except this time, before I put my finger through the blades I remember thinking, “I hurt my index finger doing that yesterday”. And then deliberately using my index finger instead. This time the nurses at the hospital were not nice and not sympathetic at all.

124

OK my first post here, but I had to register 'cause this is such a cool thread.

I was in high school and goofing around on the outdoor basketball court. The court had 9 Foot rims so some of us who can’t normally dunk on the traditional hoops were having a dunk contest. I made a full sprint towards the basket, dunked with both hands, did the Air Jordan (legs spread eagle) and held on for an impressive swing. Unfortunately my swing was even more than I anticipated. I swung all the way into the pole and racked myself good.

Now what is the normal male instinct when your twig and berries are disturbed? That’s right, you hold them with both hands to comfort them and protect them from further harm. Under normal circumstances this isn’t a problem and is probably a well conceived survival instinct to preserve the oh so important reproductive organs. At the time however you may recall my hands had the rather important tack of keeping my body suspended 9 feet above the cement floor. No Doctorate in physics is required to guess what happened next. I fell to the ground, landed flat on my back and the back of my skull made quite a sound as it smacked into concrete.

There I lie, dome cracked and the boys racked but nothing hurt as bad as my pride.

125

Small hijack -

I cannot believe how many new posters this thread has coaxed out of the woodwork. And now a purely academic question: what is it that makes so many of us jump and and yell, “I’VE BEEN EVEN MORE STUPID THAN THAT!”?

126

I was changing a tyre once. This is something I’ve done many times. It’s routine, you jack the car up, get the flat off, get the new one one, hand tighten the nuts, let the car down,tighten the nuts properly. It’s not difficult. This particular day, however, something broken my rhythm. I threw the flat straight in the boot, after that I let the car down, and drove away.

What had I not done ? Errm, umm, yes, the “tighten the nuts properly” bit. And I’d left them really loose. So ninety seconds after I started, I see my left front tyre vanishing into the distance. I could have claimed the damage on insurance, but I’d have felt too stupid. And my insurance guy would have laughed at me for the rest of his life. So I paid for it myself. This is why this qualifies as being stupid to myself and not to my car.

127

I do plenty of stupid stuff like walking into a closed glass door, hitting my face with doors, spilling my drink checking my watch, etc, etc.

BUT the funniest thing I’ve ever heard of happened to my brother-in-law. When he was a kid in school he used to run into the gym and up to the bleachers and sit down and slide down the bench. Weeeelllll . . . the bleachers were wooden and once after doing this successfully countless times he got a splinter. Now the word splinter really doesn’t convey the true message here. There was no blood and you really couldn’t see anything amiss through his pants but a several inch long stake had gone completely through one cheek and quite a ways into the other essentially pinning them together!!!

Since he always tried to get out of class none of his teachers would believe him about the splinter but he just couldn’t sit for very long and finally went to the nurse. He ended up having to go to the hospital and have it cut out.

128

I retract my previous post in this thread, becuase it is no longer the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

Today. We’re doing a lab in chemistry, testing the reactivity of various metals in various compounds. One of the metals is calcium, which, when comes in contact with water, reacts very violently and very exothermically. We finish testing one metal in various test tubes of compounds. I wash out a few test tubes, and as is my usual habit, shake the excess water off of my hands, wipe them on my sweatshirt, and get back to work. Oops, lab partner just spilled some calcium nuggets on the lab table. Sure, I’ll grab a paper towel and clean it up. In fact, I’ll use the paper towel to sweep the calcium off of the table into my still-wet hands. Water on my skin is still, in fact, water.

“Hey, what’s that sizzling noise?”

This also reminds me of a previously-forgotten bio lab last year. Waiting for our reality-challenged teacher to get out a jar of plants for us to look at under the 'scopes…I’m bored bored bored…Fidgeting…Hey, that’s a glass slide, not my pencil, probably shouldn’t be twirling and tapping it like this…crack…hey, what was that?

The slide had, amazingly, broken! I managed to slice open the side of my index finger (next to my middle finger). Wrapped three paper towels around it and still left a trail of blood droplets all the way to the nurses office.

129

Gee. Such a panoply of choices.

My brother, sis in law and their kids are visiting. She’s brought a HUGE tray of homemade lasagne, all the way from Philly to New York. We’re hanging out, the lasagne is doing its baking thing. I kneel down in the kitchen, in full view of all guests and say, " Let’s just see how this thing’s doing". I open the door, and pull out the oven rack. Too hard.

The entire tray of hot lasagne slides straight out, flips over and lands face down, oozing everywhere. I just stared…and they all busted up laughing. When I regained a modicum of composure, I said, ’ Who wants pizza for dinner??? " :eek:

I was cutting a matte for a photograph in High School, using an X-Acto knife. There was a tiny burr in the metal straight edge I was using, and as I pulled fast towards myself, the knife skipped up and gashed open my left index finger. Gawsh, what a mess. 5 stitches. I’ve still got a scar.

I suppose the act with the greatest ramifications is the time about 2 1/2 years ago when I stood up on an extension ladder, installing a floodlight on the eaves up above the new deck I’d just built. It was a clear warm nice dry day. I didn’t have a spotter.

The ladder slid out from under me, and I fell straight down, landing on my feet and breaking my L-3- changing my life forever with a single dimwitted move. :rolleyes:

Cartooniverse

130

Wow. My Tales of Woe pale in comparison, but I’ll give it a go…

In my lifetime I have burned myself while cooking exactly three times. All three times were due to distraction. The first was about six years ago, at age 17 and a half… I was baking a meatloaf for supper and was getting ready to take it out of the oven. I had the potholder on my left hand. As I reached in my dad said something to me, and I forgot what I was doing and reached in with my right hand. Ow.

The second time was under similar circumstances, in December… I was baking Christmas cookies this time. Potholder on left hand, I reach into the oven, my husband asks me a question…and I grab with the right. Yeah.

The third time was about a month ago. I was baking a homemade pizza and went to take it out of the oven. I reached in and before I grabbed anything decided I’d better put on potholders so I don’t burn myself. While thinking this I pulled my arms out of the oven, miscalculated and bumped the inside of the oven with my right arm. I have a really cool scar there now, but explaining how I got it is fun.

What else… when i was a junior in high school I twisted my ankle while walking to Homeroom. At my high school Homeroom was a 25-minute period between second and third hours. My second hour teacher let us out a little late, and I didn’t want to be late to Homeroom so I was walking a little faster than usual, stepped on my foot wrong, and went tumbling. The doctor thought I broke it, but it was just a twist. Got me out of PE for three days though.

That same year I also came very close to breaking my finger while trying to pry apart frozen burritos with a steak knife. While it didn’t break I had trouble moving it for a few days afterward.

Other injuries involve bumping my head on a fireplace and requiring stitches at age three; and bruising my foot while doing laundry by stepping on a SNES console. But, I won’t get into those… :slight_smile:

131

My even stupider act (which I’d banished from conscious memory for quite a long time, until I read this rest of this thread):

Scene: My (quite nice, actually) three-bedroom basement apartment. Every room is standard height except for the bathroom. The bathroom is built under a lowered section of the floor above, so it has a very low ceiling.

The bathroom door is precisely my without-shoes height: I can walk through it in sock feet and feel the lintel brush through my hair. The ceiling of the bathroom inside is a few centimetres higher. Having a shower in this bathroom is interesting because the shower-head is at chin level…

One day I am getting ready to go out. I’m in the bathroom, and I decide to jump into my pants, forgetting the low ceiling. I jump, and feel a very strong, but not particularly painful, pressure on my skull and through my neck. I return to the floor a little more quickly than I expected, but other than that I’m just a little puzzled.

I turn and look up. Above me in the drywall of the ceiling is a perfect elliptical hole, just small enough to fit between the wooden joists of the floor above. I look at this until it dawns on me that in jumping, I’d rammed my head through the ceiling… :eek: A couple of centimetres to either side and I would have knocked myself out.

132

Oh boy. Reading these just brings back soooo many repressed memories. I was a train wreck as a child:
My mother would often take me shopping when I was a wee lad (5 or 6 or so), and she would linger forever, looking for bargains, trying things on, etc. I would often wander away only to be recalled by an announcement through the Store P.A. Well, one time I wandered away and began playing with an escalator. This is the late 70s, so safety requirements weren’t quite what they are now. This particular escalator was coming from the floor above us, towards me. I put my hand on the black rubber hand rail and tried to push against it, to see if it would stop. It didn’t. So i touched the rail with my fingertips and followed it downwards towards the floor, to see where it would go. It went into this tiny crack, just big enough for a 5 year-old’s hand, on its way back up to the top. So now my hand is stuck in this crack with the escalator belt running over it, slowly burning my hand. I’m screaming and crying, alarmed shoppers are gathering around, unsure of what to do (this was in the day before they had those big red buttons that would stop the escalator). Eventually, a manager was informed and the escalator was shut off. As soon as my mom heard a commotion, she figured I was the cause of it (I was in the hospital A LOT) and took me to the hospital, where I got treated for second degree burns.
Fast forward to age 17. I’ve got my first car, some Earth-colored hunk of metal out of Detroit, and I’m up for anything. I just put a brand-new stereo into the car, and I’m blasting the latest Bon Jovi or some such. So I pick up this buddy of mine and we go out driving around. It’s summertime, the windows are open, he pulls out a bunch of little bottle rockets (about the size of an index finger with a long wooden stick attached to them) out of a bag and asks if he can set some off out of the window. Sure, why not, I’m up for anything. So he lights one, and in his infinite wisdom holds it forward out of the window, into wind. I’m going about thirty, and of course the wind blows the rocket right back into the car, it fizzed around, lands right in front of my face in the corner where the windshield meets the car. The rocket is still going, I’m doing 30mph, my buddy’s screaming, and I’ve only been driving for a couple of months. So with my left hand i’m tyring to get at the rocket without touching the explosive part, while trying to drive a stickshift and pay attention to the road. I didn’t make it; the rocket explodes, cracks the windshield and blows my brand-new right front speaker, I freak out, put the car in a ditch, we both bang our knees really badly and our ears ring for two days. And my parents took the car away for the rest of the summer.

133

My vacuum cleaner wasn’t sucking up the parrot seeds on the rug as fast as I thought it ought to, so I turned it over to see if the beater bar was rotating. It was. Did I mention that I had a lovely hip-length auburn braid hanging down? I will say this. When the thing sucked up my braid and slammed me in the head, splashing blood on the wall I didn’t go for the scissors to free myself (as Mr. 'Addi suggested), but spent a good hour with a screw driver taking the thing apart, still hanging in front of my eye, to extricate my precious, thoroughly foul smelling, fried hair.

134

When I was about 7 years old, I invented a new game using our metal swing set. One swing had two benches so two people could sit on it facing each other. It was the biggest and heaviest of the swings. I hunkered down on my knees behind the swing and gave it a mighty push, the idea being that I’d turn around and scamper/scuttle away before the swing would swing back. I lost that game. The swing conked me on the back of the head, resulting in my first trip to the ER and my first stitches.

Is chasing sheep a stupid thing to do? How about while barefoot? When I was 13, the neighbor’s sheep escaped from their pasture into our yard, and I took off chasing them sans shoes. Unfortunately, I stepped in a gopher hole and broke my big toe. The nail still grows all funny on that one.

135

OK, I don’t see how I could have avoided this but I still consider it a pretty stupid injury…

Once, while seated on a stool, hands busy with a delicate task, I threw my back out shifting my weight from one butt-cheek to the other, left to right if I’m recalling correctly. I distinctly recall hearing a small snap! before turning into a spasming pretzel for about two hours. Hurt like hell but eventually faded. Unfortunately there was a witness.

Same thing happened once while sorting socks in front of a chest of drawers: turned my head to sneeze sideways, thus cleverly avoiding spraying socks, and practically put myself in the hospital.

No injury I have given myself through more legitimate means [toting heavy things, changing tires] has come close to being as painful as those.

Sportsbra-related injuries are a whole separate category. Putting them on, taking them off, whether oneself or someone else, is a risky venture. Very easy to bloody a nose; you could put your eye out!

136

I’m new too. This board is providing a wonderful service by allowing us to anonymously post our darkest secrets so we can finally heal. Oh wait, that’s the S&M room. I guess it’s just nice to know there are other dumbasses in the world.

Anyway, here’s the scene: Israel, 1992. Me, 18, on a Jewish teen tour of the country. Many cute girls on the trip. Much competition among the guys.

We go for a swim in the Sea of Galilee, in deep water. One guy suggests we all take off our suits and wave them over our heads at the ladies. What a show of manliness! So we all carefully remove our suits. And all of us, with one notable exception, raise our suits high and yell with glee!

It makes me happy, in some small way, to know that somewhere at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee, among the detritus of many an ancient Israeli civilization, is one very embarrassed kid’s swimsuit. ;j

137

wipes tears from eyes Hoo boy.

During the course of my life, I have done more stupid things than I can begin to shake a finger at. For example, at the age of 11, I was walking down the platform at the metro station immersed in a book (note to self: this is a dumb thing to do) and walked off the end of the platform. Escaped with bruises, but unfortunately there were several witnesses. I also managed to give myself a lovely nick just under the left eyebrow when I left the microwave door open while picking up some trash I’d noticed on the floor and then stood up slightly too quickly. Oh, and then there’s the time when we were at a ski resort (I was 12) and I decided to try the big slope before I realized I did not know how to control my speed. I did stop, though… when I hit the snow pile that had been plowed to one side of the parking lot, and which had subsequently frozen rock-solid. Knocked the wind out of myself pretty good there.

Of course, my darling little brothers have not gotten off so easy, either. :smiley: Seeing as there are four, and all of them are vicious little buggers when it comes to social interaction and completely clueless when it comes to Not Hurting Oneself, they have provided countless moments of fright, pain, and amusement. I give you two examples.

The Prepubescent Dr. Demento story

It was the summer of 1997. The second day of summer vacation, Prepubescent Dr. Demento climbed our backyard fence and tried to run its length, despite being told numerous times to get down and stop it. He fell off, breaking the knuckle of his left middle finger. Three weeks in a cast.

Two days after the cast came off, he went to see his friend in the park. Mom told him, “Do not run in your new sandals, they are one size too big for you.” He ran anyway; halfway down the hill next to our house, his sandals got caught in each other and he rolled down the rest of the hill. He broke a bone in the side of his left palm. Three weeks in a cast.

Three days after the cast came off, we were at my parents’ friends’ summer cottage on the coast. Prepubescent Dr. Demento and the hosts’ daughter were balancing on the porch railing. He fell off. Broke a bone at the base of his left thumb. Three weeks in a cast.

Two days after the cast came off, we left for Texas. :slight_smile: Not much of a summer holiday for him. The tanning patterns were quite interesting, though.

The Child Genius story

So we moved to Texas. Mom and The Youngest arrived three weeks after everyone else; they had to wait in Finland until The Youngest had the operation to close his cleft lip. The next day, Mom and Dad left to go shopping for household items. (Because having only four plates is slightly inconvenient when there are five people eating.)

Of course, being energetic little boys, The Brothers set out to wreak as much havoc as they possibly could. I commanded, I cajoled, I yelled, I screamed, and finally I sent The Eldest, then age 10, to his room. This left Prepubescent Dr. Demento, then not quite so prepubescent at the tender age of 6, and Child Genius, age 3, alone downstairs. They set out running in circles in the living room (because they are energetic little boys, and they are stupid). I returned downstairs just in time to hear a horrific crack, then a stunned silence, and then the most god-awful wailing known to mankind.

PDr.D pushed CG into a wooden chair in the corner of the living room. The corner of the wooden chair caught CG smack in the middle of the forehead, right under the hairline. It was a heavy wooden chair. The cut went down to the bone. Blood was gushing out all over the wall-to-wall carpet, the walls, my clothes, etc… I rushed to the medicine cabinet, only to discover that it did not yet contain anything other than cotton wool and tape. So I cotton-wool-and-taped the cut and then called my parents. They came home quite quickly, CG went to the emergency room and got 5 stitches in his forehead. We cleaned the carpet, the walls, my clothes, etc.

But wait! The story is not over yet! Two weeks later, the stitches were just ready to be taken out. Mom and Dad had gone out shopping for furniture (because books need shelves, and dining rooms need tables). The Brothers set out to wreak as much havoc as they possibly could. I sent The Eldest to his room. Returning downstairs, I heard a crack, a stunned silence, and the most god-awful wailing known to mankind.

PDr.D pushed CG into the corner of the same chair in the corner of the living room. The corner of the chair caught CG in exactly the same place. Blood came gushing out. Again. All over the wall-to-wall-carpet. Again. The cut went down to the bone. Again. There was still nothing more than cotton wool and tape in the medicine cabinet.

The doctors at the ER were in awe.

138

I had a small following at work for telling: ‘One of the times my Dad tried to kill me’ stories… You know, you’re running tools and holding stuff for your Dad and things just sort of go… wrong. :>)

I used to keep a list of stuipidest things I had done in my life, most of them fortunately did not result in serious injury. Here’s one from near the bottom of the list that I did to myself and although it did not result in scars or maiming, I’m quite certain took a year or two off my life.

I was in my early 20’s and had just rented a bedroom while attending University. I had purchased a waterbed a couple years earlier and had chosen this place because it was the only place that didn’t hassle me about the bed. (landlords thought the weight was bad for the floor or some such). I set it up. The very first night I’m reading in bed when I hear this ‘schschschcchccsh’ back and forth above the ceiling. Well, the little beastie seems to have made about 30 trips back and forth across the room and I’m beginning to get annoyed because I’m at a really good place in the book and it’s distracting as all get out.

Well, I look around and see my Nerf ball on the headboard. The bedroom has a drop ceiling so I thought maybe I could ‘pop’ a tile and scare him to go run somewhere else. So I wait for the thing to start making it’s way back across the room - from the end towards the headboard - and when it sounds like he’s right over me, I chuck the Nerf ball as hard as I can at the ceiling.

Imagine my shock when:

    1. The ball impacts the drop ceiling tile so hard that the entire tile jumps, slides up and over a few inches.

     2. A very surprised looking mouse - apparently on the tile that I hit - falls down through the gap and lands on my chest.

      3. Mouse immediately runs away from loud noise emanating from large head and runs under the sheet between flailing legs.

       4. Mouse discovers that waterbed sheets are sewn together - no place to go but back up between flailing legs.

At this point, I leaped - and I mean LEAPED - out of bed, heart going about 200 miles an hour. I’m not quite certain where the mouse wound up, but I must have checked my briefs at least five times just to make sure he wasn’t there.

I honestly do not have a fear of mice, but there was something about the way the two of us were brought together that really got the old motor running.

At least it didn’t ruin my affection for my waterbed; in fact, I’m writing this from that same waterbed 20+ years later.

139

Brilliant stories, just brilliant. And now for my entry into the hall of doofus.

New Year’s Eve, 1989. I was not but a few years out of high school, young and stupid (I’m not young anymore). Several of my friends and I chose to spend our holiday evening camping. Since we are mostly under the legal drinking age, this made perfect sense at the time. A nice quiet, out of the way spot to have a raging campfire and drink ourselves stupid. Stupider.

Several cases of crappy beer and two large bottles of Cuervo later, the festivities are starting to draw to a close. Having rescued one friend from a small ravine he couldn’t climb back out of after stumbling into, and surviving the ripped off side-view mirror of someone’s car, we decide to bed down for the evening. A lovely night it was, clear and crisp, the stars twinkling, or perhaps that was just my eyeballs happily unable to focus.

Since our event planning sadly lacked anything tentlike, we settled for sleeping bags and the nice firm earth to cradle us off to dreamland. Eight stinking drunks, in various stages of alcohol induced coma, sprawled around the smoldering remains of our campfire.

I remember that night quite vividly. I woke up, or came to, at some point in the wee hours of the morning. I remember thinking to myself, “My feet are nice and warm, how very nice and snuggly I feel.” Then a few ticks of the clock go by. “Wait a moment” I say to myself, “My feet aren’t warm, they’re downright hot.” The clock silently ticks a few more times. I finally look down at my nether half.

And I am on FIRE!

The bottom half of my sleeping bag is blazing away merrily, crackling and chuckling to itself. I remember leaping into the air like a salmon trying to go up a waterfall. My entire body flexing to thrust me into the air, at which time I perform a wonderfully balletic movement pulling the flaming bag completely off of my body before touching down. Once back on earth I peel the socks off of my feet, watching as they shrivel and melt.

I examine my base appendages, and they appear to have sustained no serious injury barring a bit of pinkness to the color. I grab a new bag, and make haste to a point where the killer campfire cannot see me before bedding down once again.

What of my friends, you say? Only one did stir during my near death experience, and he only awoke and looked up long enough to say “Cool” in an approving voice.

My friends are bastards.

140

You know, one would have hoped that all of this stuff would have been weeded out through evolution by now. I shudder at what we must have been like 30,000 years ago. Well, for me let’s see

I ran full speed into a tree. I just didn’t notice it. Busted my lip open and got me three stitches. I was just happily going along kicking a soccer ball when suddenly the next thing I knew I was laying in the dirt looking up at this tree that had just appeared. Blood was everywhere.

When I was about 5 I was having fun pulling nails out of an old piece of wood with a crowbar. Yup, I was pulling it towards myself. Yup, it had a nice set of claws pointed right at my face. Yup, the nail came out and the claw popped me right on the forehead, I go flying backwards and theirs blood everywhere. Remarkably I have no scar from that.

When I was about 8 I was swimming underwater in a swimming pool at night and swam right into the wall full speed. I turned that eerie blue water an eerie color of red with a broken nose.

The blows to my face are a real theme in my life as I’ve also gotten hit in the face with a 10 foot long, 2 foot in circumfrence log which had broken loose as we were building a log tower when I was 11. Thankfully I’ve finally learned to break that habit while I still look great.