If 17 is “hardly the age of wisdom,” <i>isn’t that the whole fucking point?</i> He did a REALLY STUPID THING! And he was 17, which makes it somewhat less surprising but certainly no less stupid…
Obviously 19 is not the age of wisdom, either, if proper coding skills are a function thereof. 
Wait, so that’s suppose to prove that you do have a brain?!
[sub]duck’n’run[/sub]
The poor man’s Batmobile.
I think of that scene every time I go to the gas station.
:eek:
(because :blue steel: didn’t work.)
Oh man, I’ve got a story to tell that will make everyone here think I’m an idiot. But I feel like sharing.
When I was twenty, I worked as a tow truck driver, and the towing operation was part of a corner gas station/garage. Most of the time, it was pretty slow, and me, the other driver, and the pump jockey would always just hang out at the station and talk.
I only smoke occasionally, but nearly all the other employees (and customers) smoked all the time, even near the pumps. I kind of started to realize that even though it’s not a good idea, it’s not quite as risky as the signs would have you believe.
I’m sorry for making the story so long…I thought it’d be nice if I brought in an old Hibachi I had, along with charcoal, lighter fluid, hamburger rolls–the works.
There was this Pontiac Safari station wagon we’d impounded for whatever reason, and no one had come to pick it up in a long time. So we’d pull the wagon out front, about twenty feet from the pumps, set the Hibachi on the hood, and have ourselves a good ol’ cookout! Flames coming from the Hibachi while cars drove up and down Broadway, no doubt staring at us.
This all went well, and we repeated it several times, until I accidentally backed the Pontiac over the Hibachi shattered it, which, in retrospect, was probably a good thing.
Coincidentally, Tragic Gasoline Fight Accident is one of my favorite Japanese avant-garde hardcore bands.
Of course, my uncle Eddie would scare the shit out of us kids when we were little by dropping a lit cigarette into the tank of his beat up old motorcycle.
Since gas needs an actual spark to ignite, the cigarette always just went out and he would fish it out. Then my sister and I would go put on clean pants.
He thought he was hilarious.
I still think it was about the most ignorant thing he ever did. The cigarette could always have hit wrong and sparked and he would’ve blown himself into next week. But he was known for stupid crap like that.
This is gonna sound like one of those, “I read somewhere” statements, but my colleague Brad, who has a few friends that work in the industry, says that it’s actually a lot more dangerous to talk on a cell phone than smoking a cigarette while pumping gas. Apparently the cell phone has more of a chance of sparking or whatever. Take that for what it’s worth.
Well, matt_mcl has already identified himself (though to be totally honest, matt, running for Parliament is more to be categorized as noble than intelligent! ;)).
How about Jester? Or Yue Han? (Both of whom were at 17 composing intelligent, mature, thoughtful posts at a rate far higher than many people here double or triple their age.)
In short, your stereotyper has some keys jammed.
– Poly, who at 53 knows wisdom when he sees it, regardless of how many years the bearer of it has been alive
This is, of course, nonsense, and has already been debunked here on the boards. If the low voltages present ina cell phone were dangerous around gas stations, then starting your car (Much higher voltages and greater potential for sparks) would be even worse. Yet we don’t hear about gas stations exploding from cars or cell phones across the country.
Okay, I smoke (generally chain-fashion), but I have never brought an open flame anywhere near an operating gas station.
However, I have managed to do something even more collossally stupid.
Picture this:
Some moron (me) decides to mow his lawn. He’s going to be clever and forsightful, because he remembers that the gas can for the mower, is almost empty. This is because he got frustrated the last few times he tried to fill the mower the can had to be nearly completely up-ended to get any gas out of it. So, our moron goes to get some more gas. He drives down to the station, fills the car and the mower gas can, drives home, and pats himself on the back for planning things out in such an efficient manner.
Upon returning home, our moron (still me) hauls the mower out of the shed and checks the gas level. Half a tank. Well, happy day, the moron can start mowing and fill the tank later when he needs it.
It’s 95 degrees on the Farenheit scale and near to 100% humidity, and the moron is going to get tired and dehydrated. (Those of you still reading this post will see where this is going.)
The moron ran out of gas about an hour into the two-hour mowing process, so he then went to get the gas can that he had so cleverly filled beforehand. He didn’t wait for the engine to cool down or remember that he now had a full gas can.
So he completely upended the full gas can and poured two and a half gallons of gasoline all over everything, including the (very hot) muffler.
Then he ran to the garage to get the fire extinguisher.
That dang mower still works.
[sub]Sorry for the length, I’m sill new.[/sub]
Thank you Jeff. 
Musta missed that one… I can’t get to Snopes from work anymore so…
AndrewL, take notes. This is how you tell someone who doesn’t know whether they are wrong or right that they’re wrong without coming off like a total jackass.
Yeah, people can do some silly things with gasoline. When my friend Matt and I were 16, we built a flamethrower. We took one of these garden pesticide sprayers, the plastic kind with a hand pump on the tank to pressurize it, filled it with gas, and then lit the plastic nozzle. We were able to get a good 12-foot flame out of that baby. Utterly stupid, that was us.
Of course, nine years later, Matt got killed when he was struck by lightning, so there you go.
Our favorite was always gasoline and styrofoam.
Homemade napalm.
G-d we were dumb.
so what is Rhode Island sized stupidity?
I think I once qualified for a Rhode Islander when, while riding as a passenger to the beach while ridiculously intoxicated, the oil light came on in the car and we stopped to top the car off.
Nobody else knew how to add oil to a car, so I think my fellow travellers deserve honorable mentions.
Since I could barely stand up, my girlfriend and the driver held me by the shoulders while I performed the delicate operation. I removed the oil cap, dropped the top of the bottle in, and, in a moment of brilliance, punctured the oil bottle with a knife in order to speed up the pour.
But I stabbed too hard, crushed the bottle, squirted motor oil all over me and more importantly, all over the manifold. Flames shot three feet high, and since my pals were holding me in place, I couldn’t jump away–although I’m not certain I could have done that anyway. A few flailing elbows got me out of the way long enough to remove my shirt, which I stuffed over the flames, which in turn ignited on the manifold. I threw the flaming shirt onto the sidewalk, dumped in another quart, and we got the fuck out of there.
Miraculously, there was no damage, save to my eyebrows, my shirt, and the Chesapeake Bay.