What is the funniest thing you've ever seen dropped? Or the suicidal computer

In My Humble Opinion
1

Young Tiger and I were talking this evening, and he reminded me of one of the shining moments of my DC commuter career.

I used the Wheaton Metro station twice daily to get to work. The escalators at Wheaton are the longest in the western hemisphere. I don’t know the exact length but believe they’re over 800 feet long, and the ride, if you stand still the whole time, takes 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

Riding down one morning, I noticed a man 50 feet or so ahead of me with a computer CPU box on a luggage cart. Why he was taking this down the escalator instead of the elevator, I’ll never know. Most people don’t try to take things down these escalators, since they are, to put it mildly, disorienting to the uninitiated.

Anyway, about 2/3 of the way down, probably at least 250 feet from the bottom, somehow the computer decided it didn’t want to sit on his luggage cart. Suddenly the tile-lined tube we’re riding down is echoing with the CRASH!! BANG!! SMASH!! CRUNCH!! of a computer bouncing its way down 250 feet to the concrete floor awaiting it at the bottom of the escalator.

The noise was impressive. But when I got to the bottom, it was an even more impressive sight. The computer was in shards. I don’t think there was a chunk left over six inches long. The expression on the man’s face was, needless to say, indescribable. And as I boarded the train, the last thing I saw was him gathering up the chunks from far and wide.

I’m still trying to figure out (a) why he was using the escalator instead of the elevator, (b) if it was his computer, and if not © what he told the computer’s owner. “Well, you see, I was being a :wally and the computer decided to commit suicide…”

So, Dopers, what have you seen dropped that, however unkind it may have been on your part, left you laughing your behind off?

2

I worked in a government agency under the worst manager I have ever experienced. She was the manager for the IT division of this organization. Her primary concern was always for how she looked. If there was a problem that was her fault then she blamed an underling. If she looked silly then she found a way to make those around her look even worse. She always had to seem in control and above reproach.

Well while I was there management got their first ever laptops. She made sure everyone knew she had one, she fluanted it at every opportunity. She made jokes about how the other higher ups in the org. would be using thiers for door stops but as “IT MANAGER” she would know what to do with hers.

Two days after she got it she placed it in the carrying case on her desk and closed it up. then she opened the case again and put the cord in it and left the room. A few minutes later she came back in in her usual, “I have to rush around because I am just SO important” mode, grabbed the handle of the case and bolted for the door.

Well she had forgotten to zip up after putting the cord away so the laptop made a graceful cartwheel accross the room and landed on the floor with a sickening -crack-. These things were actually pretty sturdy so the case didn’t break but there was a crack in the display that ran about 8 inches.

She was there for another year at least after this. But that machine was never fixed or replaced for the sole reason that she refused to tell anyone what happened to it. She cost the place $5000 just to save face.

But we all laughed for months behind her back. That had to be worth at least $5000.

3

My first semester of college, I was attempting to print out my first ever collegiate paper when Satan got ahold of my computer and commanded it to print nothing but symbols. No matter what, it would only print symbols. In my frustration, I opened my dorm window, took off the screen and shoved the possessed printer out the window.

4

Clearly, computers are a prime source of funny things to drop (or throw – I understand your frustration, tramp)! But surely there are non-computer-related stories? Dropped food? Trays of dirty dishes? Paint? Water balloons? Anvils? (Sorry, too many Road Runner cartoons!)

Although I guess in this day and age, computers are probably the most valuable thing most of us can see someone dropping…

5

My roommate and I were giving a dinner party, and we managed to drop an entire watermelon on the kitchen floor. We had to admit it was a Very Impressive Drop.

6

Another metro tale: I was boarding the train in Glenmont, the northern terminus for the Red Line into Washington, and of course I was surrounded by Important People Who Must Go, Go, Go! at all times (despite the fact that the trains depart there every two minutes or so).

This one guy runs down the short escalator to try to catch the train, and he stumbles a little. The cell phone he had been talking on flew out of his hand, pirouetting, its buttons twinkling in the fluorescence, smacked into the side of the train, and fell beside the tracks.

The look of utter consternation was nifty.

7

I once saw a 40 lb lead stage weight (also called a brick 'cause it’s, well, brick-shaped) fall from about 85 feet up. I just happened to be looking up when the guy dropped it. Luckily, there was no one nearby, so I just watched it fall. It seemed to be so light, almost floating, untill it crashed through the floor and into the basement. That was not only a neat fall, but a really satisfying crunch/bang noise when it hit. Yikes.

8

um, sorry, that should be 65 feet, not 85. Carry on…

9

I dropped a 2000 piece jigsaw alllll over the floor at the train station. ‘The Good and Bad of Middle Earth’ was scattered far and wide across the floor and there was me, in rush hour, in a skirt, scrambling around on the floor like some sort of deranged little mouse grabbing pieces of jigsaw and other people’s ankles.

It wasn’t my jigsaw. And Frodo’s eye is still missing.

10

probably my most spectacular “drop out” was in the parking lot at the grocery store.

<confession mode> i cut coupons. lots of coupons. all kinds of coupons. when i’m good, they are all neatly filed, in oldest-date-first order by category, in their coupon storage case.

now this is not your little wallet-envelope sized coupon holder. no sirree–hubby went and ordered this from somewhere or other. it’s easily the size of a very small briefcase. looks rather like something you could store cassette tapes in, shapewise.

a LOT of cassette tapes.
</confession mode>

so you know what happens next, of course. as i’m loading groceries into the car, somehow The Case Got Dropped. and the latch sprang open. and coupons burst forth upon the ether.

i’m still on my knees thanking Og that it wasn’t really a windy day when it happened.

and yes, i was a complete putz and went around gathering up every single coupon to be found. (of course, if i’d tried just walking away, i’d probably have been hit with a “dumping without a permit” ticket or something.)

and i did eventually get them all re-filed.

somehow, though, coupon collecting just hasn’t had quite the same… something … ever since.

11

I was in second grade and it was my day to get to play in The Learning Centre. There were play-doh cans to open, slide projectors to watch, and art projects to do . Also, there were round glass marbles in a red Hills Bros coffee can that was filled to the top. You were supposed to see how many marbles could fit in various empty containers. The teacher involved, who had to be Quite the anal-retentive, kept riding us to be careful with that can. (Think ‘Finster’ from ‘Recess’.)

Well, just so it would be out of the way, I put it up on a shelf. I played with the other thins and when my 90 minutes were up, I headed back to my class. I didn’t get half way there when I was yanked up from behind by the hood of my jacket and heard “OK, you little thief! Where are the marbles???”

I was half dragged back to the room by her and when we got there, I pointed to the shelf where the were. she said something like “well, don’t let it happen again.” as I rubbed the tears from my eyes…and then she reached up for the can. Well, at that moment, the bell rang. And the can slipped out of her fingers and, in slow motion, dropped to the floor.

What I saw next was the most perfectly fluid demonstration of wave theory and energy dispersal…one that I wouldn’t fully appreciate until Sophomore year in Physics class. To say they looked like rats’ scurrying for shelter just doesn’t do it justice. Ms. “Finster” was surrounded by very small marbles and, in high heels, quite unable to move about safely. I had been in the doorway, however, and the door was low enough to the floor to have kept the marbles away from my feet. I remember smiling and saying “Thanks, Miss [Finster?]…see you tomorrow” and pulling the door shut behind me.

The expression on her face was Priceless…

12

My younger sister was carrying a pizza from the take-out restaurant to the car when she slipped on some sand in the parking lot. She threw her arms up to try to get her balance, tossing the pizza box in the air. She came down hard on her ass with her legs sticking straight out in front of her. The pizza flew out of the box and splatted face-down on the ground beside her. Classic “slipped on a banana peel” type comedy. Sis was mortified, but my mother almost wet her pants laughing.

13

When I was younger, I tried to be a smoker. At the time, my means of transportation was an aged Ford with no air conditioning. So I’m driving down the interstate to work one day and try to casually, coolly flick my cigarette ashes out of the open window. The rushing air pulls the cigarette out of my fingers. Okay, minus five cool smoker points, but at least no one saw. A few minutes later, I smell smoke. I look around and see smoke tendrilling from the back seat. The cigarette had flown out the driver’s window and directly back in the rear window, landed on my canvas tote bag, and begun smouldering. While continuing to careen at 60+ mph down the highway (it was an elevated section with no shoulder), I reach to the back seat, pull the tote bag which is breaking into flame into the front seat, reach into it and retrieve my thawing Lean Cuisine, and beat the fire out. I am not making this up.

I quit smoking that day.

14

I saw this in Wichita Kansas about ten years ago. Brainiac & his sidekick were moving an upright piano in the bed of a pickup truck. They were, apparently, depending on friction to hold it in the truck.

The truck made a left turn, the piano slid across the bed and lept theatrically from the bed to smash into the pavement.

A dropped piano goes, “BBBBBooooonnnnngggggg”.

15

When I was younger, my mom took my sister and I camping, along with one friend each. One day while we were there, my friend and I ran into my sister and her friend, who had just gotten ice-cream cones. My sister’s friend starts rubbing in the fact they had ice-cream and we didn’t. She goes to take a lick off of her cone, and ends up pushing the ice-cream off the cone with her tounge and onto the ground. The look on her face was priceless :smiley:

16

Several years ago we were re-arranging our offices and had to move several computer systems from the 5th floor to the 4th floor in our building.

One of our staff was moving the 9-track tape drive for an old DEC VAX computer (about the size of a 2-drawer file cabinet on wheels). When he loaded it into the elevator, the power cord was trailing out the door. The doors closed, and the elevator started down. Suddenly the tape drive, acting possessed, rose up to the cieling of the elevator. Then the cord came unplugged and the tape drive crashed to the floor.

Amazingly, it still worked, although there were some telltale dents and bruises.

17

This is a deliberate one.

When I was at MIT, in 1972, the piano of one of the guys on our floor died. So, somehow, it was decided to take it up to the roof and drop it off. There was a well organized team, and crowd control. The Campus Police were not thrilled, and arrived on the roof to consider the situation. However, since it was becoming increasingly difficult to control the crowds in they alley below, when the campus policeman’s back was turned the piano slipped. There is a lovely picture of the impact in the 1973 MIT Yearbook.

It made a lovely pothole in the alley, which was measured, and the volume assigned as a standard unit (the Bruno). There was an unexpected benefit - we always complained about the poor state of the alley, but right after the piano drop maintenance came and filled in all the potholes. (Our dorm, Baker House, is six stories tall.)

This started a piano drop tradition, which was covered in the first of the books on MIT hacks available from the MIT Museum.

Oh - the lid survived, and we made it into a large cribbage board.

18

Things that have fallen out of my refrigerator and broken on the kitchen floor: Maple syrup and blue cheese dressing. Ugh.

The most traumatic thing that I ever “dropped” was the appendices to my master’s thesis. This was on the way to copy them. They blew out of my hand on a very windy day, and I chased them all over the parking lot like a mad woman. Luckily I got them all and they weren’t too damaged.

19

When I was a junior in college, I lived with a good friend who had come into possession of this HUGE couch. It was from the 60s or 70s, upholstered in nasty goldenrod-colored courderoy, and had a fold-out bed.

We lived on the third floor, and I wasn’t present for the move-in of this couch, but I heard it took 5 swarthy men to do it. The metal frames on those fold-out beds are HEAVY.

When it came time to move out, we were both, naturally, in a hurry. It was only me and my roomie, and we knew it was impossible for just the two of us to get the thing downstairs. So we attempted to disassemble it. It was actually impossible to do so. In a classic moment, my roommate looked at me, and I looked slowly out to the balcony.

So we heaved the thing wordlessly to the balcony and managed to balance it on the railing. I went downstairs and made sure there were no people or animals or breakables down below. I signaled and the roommate gave it the final push.

It was beautiful.

This massive goldenrod-courderoy-upholstered behemoth seemed to take FOREVER to fall, and did a lazy somersault as it did so. The crash was jangly and satisfying, and we took pictures.

20

Ooh, Lily, you reminded me of after the Northridge earthquake, when my fridge fell open, as did a number of my cupboards, and my kitchen floor was covered with a mixture of maple syrup/ranch dressing/red wine vinegar/broken glass, etc. But that wasn’t funny. :frowning:

No Thanksgiving turkey stories? I thought of that a few minutes ago and was trying to explain to daughter whiterabbit about the classic WKRP in Cincinnati episode with Les Nessman, the turkey, and the helicopter. Ah, the classic television moments from my misspent youth!