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

In My Humble Opinion
21

Much like Barrytown’s example:

One fine day in my high school years I was ditzing around in a friend’s apartment when the phone rang. It was his mother, and she told him that her friend was giving her some furniture after work tonight, and would he please get the old stuff out of the apartment? Nevermind the fact that they live on the second floor, and she expected him to do it by himself. Naturally I volunteered.

The old chairs were disposed of quickly, but the couch was a problem. We could barely lift it (discovering that it was a fold-a-bed) and we sure as hell would never fit it through the door, maneuver it through the landing, and down the stairs. We theorized that helicopters and forklifts had been involved in its placement in the apartment to begin with.

So we decide to take it apart. Available tools: a screwdriver, a hacksaw, a hammer, and a really sharp knife. We managed to seperate the arms from the couch, but when we applied the screwdriver the the staples holding the massive springs in they began to make dangerous groaning noises that scared us off.

Fortunately, once stripped of the arms, the back and bed section could fit through the door. We lugged it to the landing and stood the couch on end so we could turn it around to go down the stairs. Friend decides to go down the stairs to make sure nobody is coming, and as the shoved his way past he knocked the couch over, where it slid onto the handrail and almost started down.

With courage born of youthful stupidity I latched onto the sofa and barely held it from falling. Friend was already on his way down the stairs and was running like the devil himself was pursuing him. When he was clear he shouted to me to let it go, the place was safe.

The sofa then did a neat set of cartwheels down the stairs before collapsing at the bottom. It emerged almost unscathed, and the stucco along the wall had a really nice swathe of smoothness where the metal had scraped on the way down. We cleaned up the area, took the remains to the Dumpster, and grandly made exaggerations in each subsequent retelling.

22

One of the top bits of TV. Certainly not going to be in any Top Ten Most Important TV Moments, but it’s up there.

As for fridge-based droppings, many ears ago, I dropped a casserole dish full of pickled beets. The beets were simply between me and whatever tasty morsel further back on the shelf. In a flash, everything was bright magenta as beet juice splashed ten feet in all directions, including up.

A cartoon-worthy “things falling” episode I witnessed in college involved a student aide-type person pushing a cart with a film projector on the top shelf and another (backup?) projector and a stack of movies on the middle shelf. The top shelf had a rubber mat to cushion the snazzy newish sleek black “drop-in” slot-thread projecotr and the other shelves did not have any such niceness to cushion the old-style institutional green projector with 75 demonic rollers to painstakingly wind film around. The floor was some sort of large-scale tile pavers. Fine for walking, but lousy for rolling along.

Bet ya already know what happens, right? Not half of it.

Unbeknownst to the projector pusher, the stack of movies and the lower projector was bouncing around the bare metal shelf as it all clattered along the lumpy floor. They turn a corner, and the projector and some of the movies catch just the right bump, grab some air and keep going the the same direction, 90 degrees away from where the cart is moving.

Now it gets really interesting. The reason the cart turned was because if it kept going forward, it would be going down stairs. Remember how the projector decided to remain going forward when the cart turned? Yep. Projector goes down stairs, shedding parts with every step. And the moivies? Uh-huh. Most of them landed flat on the floor, slid a bit and stopped. One, desiring to be different, rolls along and unwinds itself. Down the stairs and continuing a few yards on the lower floor until it gets tired and falls over.

I’m assuming they were able to salvage the film, but that projector was missing too many parts.

23

In college we were in the second floor of the Ad building taking an upper level history course. The professor was a large man who walked around the room while talking. The students were all in a circle close to the walls of the room. At one point the prof stopped to make a point, then leaned against a cart that was in the room for another class.

This was one of the tall AV carts. On wheels. Did I mention the professor was a large man? The cart shot away from the prof and straight for one of the windows. Fortunately, this was an old building and the window sills were high, so the cart hit the sill and stopped. Unfortunately, the overhead projector sitting on top of it did not.
Fortunately, it was spring and the windows were open. The projector went in a beautiful arc out the window and down about 35 feet to the small parking lot in back of the building. It was not salvagable. But it made a very satisfying crash when it hit.

24

This is no way rivals the other stories in this thread, but I still laugh thinking about it, so here goes. The incident in question took place in my grade 11 physics class, where we were suffering through the world’s worst student teacher. He actually had a PhD in physics, so I’m not quite sure what he was doing learning to teach high school physics. At any rate, he could not teach and we spent most classes either a) trying (not) very hard to keep from falling asleep or b) making fun of him.

The day in question was definitely situation a, until he decided to demonstrate rapid deceleration (I believe, it’s been 8 years) by dropping an egg into a beaker. Seemed simple enough: all he was going to do was hold the egg between his thumb and forefinger and let it drop into a beaker he was holding at around waist height. He let go of the egg and I remember in seeming slow-motion as it just glanced off the rim of the beaker and landed directly between his feet.

There was a moment of perfect silence in the classroom before the entire class, except of course for the teacher, collapsed with laughter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a teacher look more relieved when the bell rang to end class.

25

OK I got a good one.

Was visiting my friend in Vegas. We went miniture golfing and were about to leave but decided to get large Slurpee’s. So he is driving and we are both sipping slurpee’s. I just have my attention directly ahead of me, not paying attention to him.

When out of no where I hear my friend let out a, “SHIT!” in a very prominent shriek of confusion.

I turn my head just as quick and see him just in time to lose control of his slurpee, watching it fall out of his hands into his double cupholders in between the seats. dumping the entire contents into the cupholders. There was about 100+ coins, his cellphone, and some other stuff. It filled the cupholder up to the brim with fresh, slushy, slurpee juice.

We had to pull the car over we were laughing so hard. He went to grab the antenna sticking out from the submerged celphone, and I burst out laughing even harder, my gut hurt that day.

Oh and then there was the time when me and my cousin were staying in our room in Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas. We were about 12-13 at the time. We threw every breakable object out the window onto the roof of the lower casino part. Broken glass,pillows, and everything you can imagine from a hotel room lay strewn across the gravel rooftop.

Just remembered another one with that same friend who spilled the Slurpee. We used to film little skits when we were kids, 10-12 or so. Well I did this one where I wore this full on storm trooper helmet, and I was supposed to be scared and gently fall down the stairs. Well I do it, and I was spinning in a circle and my foot slipped and I rolled very ungracfully down the stairs while my helmet flew off and slammed against the railing and came shooting out from the stairway slamming into the wall. Shortly after I came sliding down the last stair.

We got it all on tape too… Classic I tell ya

26

All right, I’ll bite.

So I was at the Lincoln Memorial and standing at the top, next to Lincoln, when this woman says something like, “Look at my two beautiful newborn twins!” Well, you know what happens next. She slips and launches her babies down the steps – a comic tumble of over-ripe tomatoes – which come to a final rest in the reflecting pool, now red and rippled.

I laughed my pants off!

27

Location - Semi residential. A few small businesses but mostly private homes.

Victim - Soon to be unemployed truck driver and a whole pallet of paint.

Brief description of incident - I was driving to work and had to wait for this truck driver, who was parked in the middle of the road, to unload a delivery. As the tail gate was lowering the forces of gravity retaliated and sent his load crashing to the ground. I would guess about 20 cans of white paint opened up and provided adequate coverage to the customers store front.

28

Envision a horrible late 60s or early 70s era small college lecture hall, complete with entirely outdated “No Smoking” signs. Rows of tables going up, and a very very small stage.

There’s about a hundred people or so in there, scattered around, students and faculty. The entire music department of this small local college. We are waiting for the weekly recital lab to start – for those who don’t know and can’t guess, every week people had to get up and play or sing or whatever they did for a few minutes. You HAD to do it at least once. It’s very nerve-wracking what with having to play or sing in front of people who know damn well if you screw up, even though they’re on your side.

Normally we used the theater, but as we were not profitable and the outside theatrical groups that brought in elementary school kids and the like WERE, we were often exiled to the horrible lecture hall, complete with horrible piano.

Somebody, and I simply don’t remember who, started to roll the piano out from the wings. Imagine everybody’s shock, especially his, when the piano FELL ONTO THE STAGE, making that horrible falling piano noise. Somehow the leg at the far end of the instrument had become unattached, so when it was rolled, it moved right off of the leg.

Everybody froze, then some nervous laughter started. After a minute or two several other students went up to pick up the piano and assess the damage. I for one figured that the piano would be a loss. It was an awful piano to begin with, and it had just been DROPPED! So the guys show off their muscles by getting it back up and rolled out to where it belonged on the stage.

A friend of mine, who has perfect pitch, ventured to test the piano. He played some chords and stuff, and reported to Dr. Jones, who was in charge of the lab (and had not arrived yet at the moment the piano fell!) that it sounded okay. Dr. Jones tries it out and agrees…it was as in tune as it ever was.

That must have been one sturdy piano.

29

Friend and I picked up some McDonalds one morning before work. It was raining pretty hard, so I was running back to my car. I told my friend to open my door for me because my hands were full. He opens door as I am running towards the car. I was carrying a bag containing our breakfast, and the drink-holder thingy.

Suddenly I slip on a puddle, don’t fall, but kind of stumble forward. One of the cups of orange juice gets propelled upward, doing a bunch of neat flips in the air. I somehow manage to hold the food/other drink with one arm while I try to catch the orange juice. I start to grab it, but it slips out of my hand and leapes into the air again. Its about to fall on the seat of my car at this point as I’m bobbling it, and I grab it again as its falling down, but grab too hard, squeeze the cup so hard that the contents shoot out shotgun-style right onto the floor of my car :eek:

By the way, I was never able to get the stench of rancid orange juice out of that car after that, no matter how thouroughly I washed that spot.

30

Incubus, your post reminds me of an incident last year when I asked Young Tiger to bring down my half-empty but cold coffee mug from my upstairs office. The stairwell is open, with all the railing and trim on both sides painted white, and with pale blue carpet. I had JUST, I kid you not, JUST not 30 seconds before finished vacuuming all the dog hair off the steps, cleaning all the spots out of the carpet, and scrubbing all the woodwork to a pristine whiteness when Young Tiger decides to undo all my good work with one misstep.

He trips over his own feet, and my coffee mug, full of milky cold coffee remains, goes flying from his hands. I’m not sure how many times it flipped in the air on the way down, but there were coffee dregs EVERYWHERE. All over the formerly clean stairs. All over the formerly clean railings and moldings.

And then, amazingly enough, the mug hit the ceramic tile at the bottom of the stairs, bounced off it and up against the (white) front door, still scattering coffee dregs as it went – and came to rest on the hard tile, unbroken and unblemished.

Took another hour to clean up the stairs all over again, especially since I was laughing so hard the whole time. :smiley:

31

I did mine at the movie theater where I was projectionist several years ago.

These days, very few theaters use the old reel-to-reel style of projectors; those required constant reel changes as well as rewinding.
Your typical megaplex theater uses platter systems. As you can see in the image, the entire film, all six or seven reels, is spliced together in one big pancake laying horizontally on a platter.

From time to time we moved films around to other projectors. When you do this, you use a few of these aluminum clamps to hold the coils of the film together as you pick up the tightly-wrapped film.

When the film Backdraft came out, I decided to take my wife to a private showing one Sunday, before hours. The film was a few weeks old, so it was in one of our smaller theaters. I wanted to watch it in its full glory in our largest theater with the best sound system.

I walked over to the film and did what I had done hundreds of times before: I brazenly neglected to use film clamps and sort of slid the film off the edge of the platter while flipping it vertical in my hands. This works because the film is wrapped tightly around a metal ring (visible on the take-up platter of the image above); it stays together pretty well. It weighs about fifty pounds, you simply carry it in two hands, like a bicycle wheel, in front as you scurry over to the new platter.

When I got to the new platter, I started tipping the film onto the platter. Suddenly, I heard a strang zzzzzzzzziippp sound as the film in my hand became alarmingly lighter. The center coils of the film had somehow fallen out :eek:. I watched in horror as the metal ring in the center fell on the floor and the entire film in my hands collapsed in a heap on the carpet.

An average film is over two miles in length, and this one was a seven-reel monster. I had two and a half miles of 35mm film on the floor in tangles and three hours before the first showing of the day.

All I could do was to start pulling out as many intact coiled portions of the film as possible, cutting the film at both ends of the coils to free them. I then had to spread each intact portion of the film on the projection booth floor (about 150 feet long) as I used a rewind bench to load each portion of the film onto 60min reels. When I was done, there were probably fourteen new splices in the film and I had to run it a few times through a film cleaning gadget in hopes of getting the dirt and dust off.

Unbelievably, I was able to load the film back onto the platter from the 60min reels and start it up on time for the first showing.

We came back a week later for our private viewing, without moving the film!

32

In highschool in the 80’s I worked at McDonalds. I was enamored of a young female manager in training who worked the breakfast shift, so I selflessly volunteered to work the 5:00 am tuesday shift unloading the weekly supply truck. An 18 wheeler would pull up to the (single width) back door, which went straight down stairs to the basement. A ramp was run from the truck bed to the basement floor, and collapsible conveyor wheels were set up from the base of the stairs to the walk-in fridge or storage cages down the hall.

My job was to be The Brake. I stood at the bottom of the stair ramp and stopped the oncoming objets du Michel D., turning to push them down the rollers behind me. Another fellow would be waiting in the walk-in or cage to receive and stack. In theory, the truck driver would wait until I was ready before releasing the next box of lettuce or “beef” or whatever.

Three times in two years, he let go of something before I was ready. First time was a 5 gallon bucket of liquid soap. I heard the hsssss of the oncoming item on the ramp, and jumped out of the way in time to see it go shooting past me, under the roller wheels, and into the wall. Broken spigot, cracked lid. Lost about a gallon of soap.

Think about this for a minute. Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean up SOAP? We tried to “dry” most of it up with paper towels but eventually we had to bite the bullet and get the mop. Know what you get when you try to mop up soap? MORE SOAP. I think it took us at least two hours to clean up a 3’ by 3’ area of hallway, rinsing and rinsing and rinsing and rinsing…

The 2nd time it was a box of birthday cakes that went shooting past me. These somehow cleared the tops of the rollers, rolled all the way down the hallway, and rather than rounding the bend into the cage they kept going straight off the edge and smashed into the Fire Door. The impact triggered the slam-bar for the door and set off the fire alarm for the building. Oh, and there was cake and icing EVERYWHERE.

“IS THERE A FIRE DOWN THERE?”

“No, just cake…”

The third time, I took a box of orange drink concentrate to the head. Knocked me off my feet. No long term damage though except every now and again I forget to finish my

33

When I first read this sentence, I wondered why you were carrying a box of orange drink concentrate into the bathroom. I guess you can take the boy out of the Navy, but you can’t take the Navy out of the boy.

You stirred my memory of working at Hardee’s many moons ago. We stored lots of stuff up in the attic of the restaurant, up one of those pull-down staircase ladders. Whenever someone needed a box of shortening, we just went up there and threw the box down the ladder. One fellow accidentally tossed a 50lb box of strawberry shake stuff. It burst when it hit the floor. The place looked like an ax murderer had visited. Impressive.

34

I’m walking down the street and hear a very weird noise coming from the trees. I stop dead just as something falls from the tree and lands about 3 inches from my feet.

I look at it. A tail-less squirrel? A TAIL-LESS SQUIRREL? Said creature gets up and walks drunkenly off to wherever tail-less squirrels go to die.

I look up and see the case of this s(q)u(i)rre(a)l-real moment. At the top of the tree is a cat with the squirrel’s tail in its mouth. As I’m looking up, the cat drops the tail right onto my face.

Good thing the tail-less squirrel didn’t hit me. I would have rather died than had to go to the hospital emergency room and explain how I got injured.

35

I don’t know what your signature is, but this needs to become it. Pronto. It’s cracking me up.

Eating at a chi chi restaurant (not Chi-Chi’s), I observe a young busboy with a tray STACKED with glassware from a large party that just left their event room. This tray had not even a square inch of space left on it, and glasses and mugs were piled into each other 4 and 5 deep. The tray is sitting on one of those collapsable mounts servers use to set down their trays in order to pass out the food.

I see busboy bend to pick up the tray. I think, “Wow, that’s going to be heavy. How can he left it?” The answer turns out to be, he could lift it, but unevenly. The stacks of glassware tilt sloooooowly away from him and tip, ever so gently, over the edge of the tray and pirouette onto the tile floor. Every single one of them. It really was spectacular.
And this one isn’t funny so much for what got dropped, but for what happened next. I live in a hundred-year old house that has all hardwood floors. Due to settling, the floors are not even. One day, my niece and nephew were in a bedroom (with the door closed) and decided to open a tin of marbles. Apparently, the lid gave them some trouble, and when it finally came off, the tin flew out of my nephew’s hands. All the marbles splashed in every direction, and a large contingent of them rolled out from under the door. I was standing outside of the room and watched as hundreds of marbles rolled out from under the door, swirled around in the hallway, then collected back together and rolled, en masse, back under the door again.

Uneven floors have their advantages.

36

In highschool all our A/V equipment was mounted on those big A/V racks with wheels so they could be rolled from class to class. Actually, “mounted” isn’t the right word. More like TV-perched-atop-the-flimsy-metal-rack. They were very top-heavy and I just knew one day, the inevitable would happen. And one day it did. Right outside my french class. The rack itself didn’t fall over, but it tipped enough to let the TV slide off in a nice, graceful drop. What made it particularly amusing was that the rack itself was out of sight behind the door entrance, so all I see is a TV arcing downwards out of nowhere. It feel to the ground with a loud crash. But get this: it didn’t break!! Incredible. The screen wasn’t even cracked. How on earth this monsterously heavy appliance didn’t shatter to pieces I will never know.

37

The glass on the tube is insanely tough. The delicate part of it, is the part in the back, where the guns are.

38

You know, I didn’t intend on quoting that whole thing, just the last sentence… Could a moderator fix that?

39

When my father was in college, he dicided to throw his broken television out of the window.
When I was 13, we got rid of the old furniture from our living room. The couch was from the early 70’s and pale blue paisley silk and velvet. It was in awful condition, and the springs were broken. We threw it off of our deck, and lit it on fire. There was a huge pothole/char mark in our yard for a year or so.

40

A whole pallet of wine (56 cases, 672 bottles) sliding off the edge of a giant fork-lift…