I’m starting this thread because of the Tell me your worst self inflicted wound
thread. I’ve had my share of self inflicted wounds, but in this case I was wondering who wants to share their “Damnit, I can’t believe I just did that” stories.
Here’s an example. Several years ago when my son was around ten years old, I wanted to show him how cool his dad was. We lived in Texas, and I have always been a big fan of Nolan Ryan. I had this baseball, and I was across my living room looking at my hundred year old recliner. I told my son, “Hey David, want to see a Nolan Ryan Fastball?” I’m thinking to myself, *“self, this will be pretty cool. You’ll wizz the baseball into the back of your old recliner and a poof of dust will come up because of the massive velocity”. *
I wind up and let it rip from about 15 - 20 feet away. Oh… did I mention that my trusty comfy recliner was in the corner of my living room, right next to a sliding glass door? Gee, I must have left that part out. Well, as you can imagine by now… I didn’t exactly hit the recliner. I launched a little league baseball into a huge sliding glass door and it exploded into a million pieces (safety glass). My son looks at me real calmly and says “Dad, now I know why we’re not supposed to throw balls in the house”.
Um… the time I was five or so, playing with a garden stake as a weapon of some kind. I needed a place to put it, of course, so I stuck it through the belt loops in the front of my jeans. Well, imagine if the vertical line is me and the horizontal line is the stake. You get something like this: -|- (I’m an artiste!:D). I then went and attempted to run out of the gate of our fenced-in section of yard. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, gasping for breath. Ouch.
My other stupid mistake? Allowing my relationship with a girl I care a lot about to be built on negative interaction. Imagine having a “friendship,” (and it was, in a bizarre sorta way) develop with someone out of teasing and going out of your way to annoy the other person. Imagine then realizing that, for the three years you have known this person, you were and still are attracted to them. And might even want to pursue a relationship with them.
Lost my temper with a shoplifter while armed. Allowed him to provoke me after he was strapped to a gurney and while a police officer was in my way. Dumb luck and a sympathetic officer prevented me from a felony charge.
Did you ever see " 10 things i hate about you"? remember the scene were the girl gets drunk and does a table dance? well I did that, fell off the table and ended up in the ER ,8 or 9 stitches…
I once demonstrated how high I could kick, forgetting that I was not barefoot in a dojo with reed mats, but standing on a waxed hardwood floor in socks. My support leg flew out from under me, I levitated horizontally for a fraction of a second like a character in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, then came crashing down on my back.
Fortunately, nothing was broken, and only my ego bruised.