I’ll ask:
What does being a Thespian have to do with hitting youself in the head with a wrench?
I was somewhat of a thespian in high school and I never did anything as stupid as… ok, well all the stupid things I did in high school had nothing to do with me being an actor!
When I was a young 'un, I liked to unwrap golf balls. Don’t ask me why. Just a typical 12 yr old thing. My last attempt involved putting the ball in a vice and stabbing at it with a very sharp knife. Turned out the ball had a liquid center which shot out into my left eye when I nicked it with the knife. My last memory is screaming while the doctor scraped that crap off of my eyeball and inserting 3 stitches.
About 17 or so, me and a few friends bored in a mid afternoon day. I have a home made pipe bomb of a spent CO2 cartridge and numerous fireworks donated gun powder. So we are here with a poorly built pipe bomb, 2 foot cannon fuse and it is lit. With my infinate wisdom I placed a tin trash can upside down over the bomb in the yard about oh 10 feet away. This was to “catch” the potential schrapnel from impailing us. Well after a while no explosion, so I start walking towards the upside down trash can in the middle of our front yard in middle class white suburbia. And BAM the loudest explosion known to man ignited. It was so powerful my ears were ringing for a week and I think my brain jiggled in my skull. So now the force of compacted explosive gas is seen sending the trash can in three separate pieces skyward, the two halves flew a good 10 feet in either direction and the bottom of the trash can did not reach earths surface again for a good 6 seconds. Neighbors all up and down the street come out to see what explosion rocked their neighborhood, I quickly hide the evidence of the trash can in the garage and play it off as a really large firework. Mom comes out of the house asking WTF was that and I just get away with a really large fire work that left a 2 foot diameter by 4 inch deep hole in the front yard and minus one trash can. On a good side note, no schrapnel damage, the can did its’ job and the only piece found of the original explosive device was the neck of the cartridge. And now some 7 years later I can say I have learned one thing…use more gunpowder, I love a good bang. There are so many more but they have been repressed into the subconcious memories along with the plans and execution. Fortunately they only come to light after a few drinks.
OK, OK, OK - I’m a BLONDE thespian!!!
No, really - at my high school, our “drama club” was actually a member of the International Thespian Society, and we were mightily encouraged to work “behind the scenes” if not acting in a particular show. I believe I was working on the lighting at the time of said head-whacking incident, and therefore had a lighting (fourth one down) wrench handy at most times.
Is that better?
I’ve shared any number of stories about my own stupidity here. I’ll add two more I don’t think I’ve used yet.
Scene: Me, young teenager, in bedroom, working on feats of physical skill and timing. I was now doing the thing where you bend your arm back so your hand is on your shoulder, stack coins on your elbow, and try to whip your hand down and catch the coins before they hit the floor. Since I have pretty good hand-eye coordination, I was doing fairly well, and had worked up a decent-sized stack of coins. I needed more, so I knelt, pulled a handful out of a dish I had handy, and, still kneeling, made a quite large stack on my elbow. Now, as you imagine me whipping my hand down to catch the coins, add to your visualization the fact that I am kneeling right next to my waterbed. The upshot is that I could not have slammed my elbow harder onto the wooden frame of my waterbed if I had been trying to do it deliberately.
Scene two: I’m walking down the street toward a bus stop. I’m groping in my inside jacket pocket for the bus schedule. I can’t find it. Still walking, I lower my head and use my eyes to help my search in my pocket. I still can’t find it. I also fail to notice that I’m walking straight at a telephone pole, and I knock myself silly by whacking the top of my lowered head into it at full walking speed.
This might be the single funniest sentence ever posted to the Dope.
[1] riding an old ten speed up a long hill with a middling grade, a ride I made every day (to school) and there wasn’t much traffic so I was relaxed, looking around and daydreaming. Whilst glancing to the side I rode v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y into the rear bumper of a parked car. The rear wheel pitched up v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and I went face first, dead centre, into the trunk of the car, v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. I could anticipate the impact but couldn’t seem to do much about it. My forehead made a sad little bonk upon impact. The bike fell sideways under me and I rolled off the car and onto the road. Couldn’t move for laughing for about 5 minutes.
[2] In the process of winemaking I was holding a 5 gallon glass carboy (big bottle) filled with soapy water in soapy hands over the bathtub. I was shaking it back and forth to clean it out, and it slipped out of my hands, upward in a fashion I can only describe as “cartoonlike” (with a nice accompanying sound that I can see written in the cartoon frame, like “fwip”) fell to earth and smashed into roughly 1.3 million bits in the tub.
A few seconds later I realised that I was bleeding. Couldn’t figure out where it was coming from 'cos it was splattered all over my hands. It turns out that this was because I was cut in about 10 places from the glass shards flying back up into the air. Around that time my wife says, “what was that noise?” and comes into the bathroom to see the carnage. She’s a brave lady but not so good with blood, and she turns white as a sheet. So there’s me bleeding like a stuck pig (if pigs had hands) (and made their own wine) and saying over and over again, “honey, don’t pass out, you have to drive me to the hospital, okay, I’m getting some socks and shoes, okay, I’m fine, let’s go to the car” and basically trying to keep her from freaking out as I try not to bleed to death.
27 stitches in 5 places on one hand. Left hand. Too bad I’m a lefty. Healed up okay though. Stupidest part was, I could tell the skin was healed but had been told to go back to my doc to get the stitches out, and had been thinking the whole time that I could just tease the stitches out with a needle and a pair of sewing scissors, or something. But no, I went to the doctor for the professional treatment, sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes and the exam room for another 30, so the doctor could come in and tease out the stitches with a small pair of scissors and a thin, blunt metal stick.
Nine years old. Found a new box of razor blades in the garage. Think “these are neat!” and put them in my pocket. Later that day, ride my bike with friends down to the shopping center. Pedaling motion causes box of razor blades to come apart in my pocket. At supermarket, reach in my pocket to get coins for candy. Later on reach in my pocket again for money. And a third time. Feel strange wetness on my hand. Look down to find hand covered with blood; razor blades were so sharp I never felt them slicing up my fingers as I reached into my pocket.
M
Being a clumsy by nature person, I have a bunch of these.
Running around the neighborhood, paying no attention whatsoever to the immediate surroundings, I rounded the corner around a neighbor’s house. Being around 6 at the time, you can imagine how well the position of my head was in relation to say, an open window. As I rounded the corner, accelerating up to full bore, my little legs pumping furiously to bring me ever closer to mach one, sweat pouring off of my little furrowed brow, a bright flash enveloped me.
Seemingly instantly, a oddly surreal view confronts me, one of clouds. After laying there for a few minutes, in a complete daze, I realize dull thumping pains on both the back of my head, and my forehead.
Seems I had forgotten that the neighbors had an air conditioner sticking out of their wall.
Another time, as a young modro, I became acutely aware of feng shui, and how the placement of the furnishings in one’s home really can affect your daily life. Perched precariously on the arm of our chair, I was rocking back and forth, doing what, I have no idea. Oddly enough, I discovered gravity kicks in once you lean backwards far enough, and you fall.
This is where the feng shui part comes in. You see, my parents decided, for whatever reason, to place the chair near our mantle, and of course, they had the obligatory fake fireplace, and the obviously necessary Big Pointy Brass Things of Doom to hold the logs up. These things even looked like monsters, brass spindly points, on top of cast iron pedestals with curved legs and little feet.
As the now gravity stricken little modro descended, he decided, of course to land on top of one of these spindles, firmly entrenching the aforementioned Big Pointy Brass Thing of Doom into the soft flesh of his left butt cheek…
Wanna see the scar?
yeah, i know of all the stupid things i have ever done in my life this has to be the dumbest…
Lake hugo oklahoma…me…learning to ski for the first time…nobody informed me that when you fell off your skies that you were supposed to LET GO.
yes folks…i was being pulled around a public park lake by a ski boat, afraid to let go because i was unsure of what to do next…
granted i was 12…my lifevest had stripped me void of any clothing…and the park was filled for memorial day weekend…
:wally
Welcome to the boards, gavain!!
This one isn’t me, but it’s pretty funny.
My ex’s cousin had a HUGE glass water cooler bottle in his bedroom filled with coins. One evening, he decides it will be a good idea to turn the bottle on its side, and try to balance on it (a la Lumberjack log roll?) and walk forward. Well, he was a big guy, and his foot went right through the glass, resulting in about a million stitches. It was awful. There were bloody footprints in the rug for years.
thats just one of my more incredibly stupid stunts in my life. I could recall most of them for you here, but why go through that torture? I will tell you this one though…i was in chula vista california when i was about 14 years old, riding my step-dads bike down the road. the style of the bike was called a bianci. These bikes were the first that i had ever seen that had quick release wheels…those that are familiar with this type of bike please reply cause i ain’t seen one since that worked right…so anyway there I am doing about mach 2 down the road, and just about to get across a major intersection in said road…I pull up on my handlebars to get enough lift to get onto the sidewalk when my wheel drops off compleatly…what goes up must come down. When the forks of the bike hit the sidewalk i was immediatly launched over the handle bars and sent down the sidewalk into a sprawliing heap. The entire left side of my face was scraped and damaged, my lip was busted(i still have the scars), and my pride was seriously wounded again. The result in all of this was that when i went to school the next day, i was immediatly taken into the nurses office and asked if my step father had beaten the tar out of me. That was tough to explain because he was of the habit of actually doing that…
I worked at this on-campus pizza place in college. One day, while working the oven I had the misfortune of handling one cast-iron “plates” that you put the pizza on before placing it in the oven.
Except this plate JUST came out of the oven.
That was probably the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Only one of my fingers were affected. And there are no noticeable scars.
But it was pretty stupid…
When I was about, oh, 14 (otherwise known as the ‘height of stupidity’ age), I decided to toast some marshmallows. No campfire or anything, so I decided to toast them over the gas flame on the stove. I got a fork out of the drawer, laid the bag of marshmallows nearby, and went to it. The first few were great, delicious, perfectly burnt. On about the fourth one, I put the fork in my mouth, only instead of coaxing the marshmallow off with my teeth, as I had been doing, I closed my lips completely on the white-hot fork. You haven’t really lived until you have heard your own lips sizzle!
Rainy days and oily spots don’t mix! My wife (Tiggamoo) and I had stopped at the local supermarket on the way home in the middle of a major thunderstorm.
As I pull into the lot, I’m excited because I see a parking spot close to the entrance. I park the car and grab my umbrella from the back seat. Then, being the chivalrous guy that I am, I walk around the car to let said wife get out of the vehicle under the umbrella. At this point I step on a spot of oil which has been magically transformed by the rain into a tiny spot of friction free hell on earth.
When I hit the spot my legs decide they no longer want to be associated with each other and would prefer a new location, possibly in separate zip codes. I wind up flying through the air as I perform the fat guy version of the splits before landing on my side in a puddle.
My pants exploded!!! They did not rip. Calling what happened a rip would be like calling the Pacific Ocean a mud puddle. They burst apart as if someone had planted plastic explosives in my anus.
So, there I was, lying in a puddle with my Tasmanian Devil boxer shorts exposed to the world, yelling something that sounds a lot like brother duck and looking up at my wife who is caught between compassion and explosive laughter. Thank god the parking lot wasn’t all that crowded at the time.
Oh, the horror stories I have!
When I was at McDonalds, years ago, I was carrying an armful of dishes to the back room, and a pair of metal tongs fell into the fry vat. I reached in and picked them up…out of the 335 degree oil. Scorched my left hand pretty good.
At my ice cream job last summer, I was cutting lemon wedges for the tea. Start to drop the knife, which had been sharpened that morning. Catch it by the blade…severely severe my finger, and just barely avoid stitches.
When I was 4, I laid a sparkeler against my leg in an effort to get the sparks away from my face. I still blame my mom for letting me play with fireworks at such a young age…
When I was 7, while pulling a shirt over my head, I bent down. I happened to be standing by the foot of my bed…whacked my 2 front teeth out on the footboard. Years of surgery still hasnt comepletely fixed my jaw and teeth structure…
Oh, I could go on all night…
One day while doing some yardwork at my grandmothers house I started to drift off and think abou the simpsons. THe episode that came to mind was when Sideshow Bob chased Bart, and they moved to terror lake. THe part when Bob kept steping on all the rakes and getting hit int eh face struck me as really funny. But then I started to think…“How the hell did he not see the rake before it hit him in the face? I mean really how fast could it be moving? oh look a rake, I bet I could step on it and NOT get hit hit in the WAP”:smack:
Well, I could go on for hours, but this one strikes me because I was an adult (well, 19) when it happened. I was driving back from the lake where I’d been hanging out (Tawakoni, east of Dallas) when I decided to stop for a beer.(drinking age was still 18 then). I forget exactly where it was, but it was sort of a mecca because a lot of the counties around there are dry.
I was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when this guy started rambling about people not liking him and not caring about him. He turned to me and said “You don’t like me, do you?” I said "I don’t know you, so I couldn’t say one way or another.
He repeated “You don’t like me. I’m gonna put this beer mug upside your head” I, thinking it a joke, said “Well, you’ve got the talking part done…” I no sooner got the words out of my mouth, then WHAP!! The guy hit me in the forhead with his beer mug. I reached out to swing at him but I got blinded by blood running down my forehead.
Luckily, the bartender got out his baseball bat and kicked the guy out of the bar. It turns out, as the bartender told me, “he just got out of Terrell”, which was, at the time, the location of a state mental facility.
I guess the moral of the story is “Don’t encourage crazy people.”
having lived in the tawakoni area, about 1/4 mile from the lake…i understand exactly what your saying…must have been a while ago because drinking age in texas changed to 21 in 86’ i believe. Yes Terrell is a strange place, been through the town several times. Nothing has changed, it’s still the home of the state mental facility.
last stupid thing i ever did? As a child or an adult? i was probably 17 years of age and going nuts because i lived in balch springs, there was nothing in that po’ dunk town to do…so i shaved my head with a razor…except for one little streak right down the middle…my mom was furious with me…she immediatly went into the closet and got out a baseball hat, and put it on my head…said i looked like a cancer patient…
Woodworking class. Working with the Bandsaw. Here a noise on the other side of the room, look up, then look down when I feel an odd feeling on my thumb. It didn’t get cut off, and the cut was only a mm or 2 deep, but its the principle of the thing. Stung like a bitch.
Then theres the time I was ski-dooing, and while I was going about 40 km/h, I thought " I wonder how far I would roll if I jumped off." I rolled very far… right into a frozen snowbank, hitting my head and making multitudes of pretty birds fly around.
Or the time I was looking at my mom through the door, talking to her, with my head just outside of the door and my upper torso in between the door and the wall. Withdraw my head, go to slam the door(my mother and I were having “words”), and WHAM. right boob turns sligthly blue and purple, with little bits of yellow.
Go to dive at my cabin. Theres a dropoff, but(we’re talking about a lake, here) to the left theres this humongouse rock. I dive, and start flailing my feet around when I’m under water so as to get to the surface quickly, as the water is cold. hit my foot on the rock, end up with 7 stitches.
Middle of the night. I have a glass of water beside me bed. My room is cold, so I get up to open the heat register, and kick my glass, breaking it. I go to the kitchen to get a broom, and a lady that was staying there screams for some reason. I look behind me, and whadaya know! Theres a huge trail of blood! I had impailed my foot on some broken glass. We were at my dads house, and he was about half an hour away from civilization, so it took us 15 minutes going fast to get to the hospital. I got 12 stitches. And a cuddly stuffed animal.
The list goes on and on… I haev so many scars on my body that the guys in my class are in awe of me.
“Grace” is definetly not my middle name…