Saw horse(s) of course, although I did make a peg leg for him later that year.
Sorry, my cut-n-paste left me a little short.
always use a backer board when using your body as a portable workbench.
Great thread, but I’ve too many to really share all.
A few years back, I’m vacuuming my old, long, narrow apartment, and the stinking thing quits. I check for clogs, try the switch…twice…follow the cord backwards and yup, she’s unplugged. Yanked that thing hard enough to bend one of the tines, so the plug won’t fit in the wall socket. I squeeze the tines together and try to plug it back in with my fingers still applying pressure to the metal part of the plug Big owwie! Didn’t get the feeling back in my thumb and forefingertip for over a month.
More recently I was visiting a friend of mine in SoCal and his home is the only abode adjacent to an enormous avacado field. We were exploring the new GoogleEarth website when his wife called from Baltimore where she was just finishing her business meetings. After a few minutes she was on the website, too, looking at the sattelite image of their cool little domicile. He and I got all excited and while still talking to her went outside, looked up, and WAVED! I asked her if she could see us…
Actually, if it’s like my old Honda Prelude (1990), it might be possible to lock the doors with the door open - simply hold the door opener lever open (as if you were opening the car door), then press the lock jobbie on the door to lock it. I did this all the time in my Prelude - it didn’t yet have the key fobbie thingie, I don’t think, and it was way easy and faster than locking the car with the key. It was totally part of my routine…until I locked the keys in the car.
Chefguy said:
Emphasis added.
Harmonious Discord said:
Your fuck up was saving your manager’s life twice? 
InvisibleWombat said:
My front door only has a deadbolt, no lock on the handle. I have to use my key to lock the door, so I can’t lock myself out. (Similar situation in college and the apartment I lived in afterwards.) Also, I live alone, so I can’t have my roommate lock me out.
Anaamika said:
Until someone shows him/her this post. 
Quasimodem said:
Could you explain a little more thoroughly what that means?
My dumb move that comes to mind: I went to eat Mexican food, ordered the usual fajitas. They come on a sizzling hot cast iron skillet sitting on a wooden tray. I decide I need to shift the skillet over. This is when I “remembered” that (a) skillets are for sizzling meat, and (b) fingers are made of meat. :o Fortunately I didn’t do too much damage.
Having never driven a Honda before (this is Michigan and I am from an automotive family), I was once tasked to help pick up some friends from the airport in a Honda. I agreed, and parked the car in the lot. I proceeded to beat the ever loving SHIT out of the driver’s door lock trying to get it to go down. I mean I pounded on it with my fist until my fist hurt. Finally I tried closing and locking it from the outside, and only then did it dawn on me how handy that feature was.
On a business trip, I picked up the rental at the airport and drove to the hotel. I then spent ten minutes in the lot trying to figure out how to get the key out of the ignition. Apparently there’s a knowb/button/handle on the underside of the steering column that I had to push it to let me get the key out.
Okay, to be fair, nothing involving an unfamiliar rental car should count. And I don’t know that I would have found the knowb under the steering column, either.
Plus, you didn’t hurt yourself! We want stories of people hurting themselves! 20% funnier that way.
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Quasimodem said:
Could you explain a little more thoroughly what that means?
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I’m not Quasi, but I’ve had the motor running, still in gear, applied hand brakes, stepped off, turned, and saw my once flawless scooter go motoring sans me down the narrow boulevard and smack into a 2009 Pontiac roadster.
They sure don’t make GM grills like they used to, but my motorized bike escaped with just a few scrape marks.
I had that happen too. Later I was why didn’t you tell me there was a lever that had to be moved to remove the key. The response was doesn’t everybody know that.
That button/lever for key removal is just dumb. You’re not reminding me of anything. If I want the key out, I’ll take it, the button doesn’t remind me not to leave the keys in the car. If I’m used to the button, then it doesn’t even slow me down. Why oh why would the manufacturer want to make it hard for me to take the keys with me?
I once nearly had to leave the keys in a car because I’d never heard of the button idea, and once thought I must have broken a Toyota because it never occurred to me that I might need to depress the clutch to get it started. Hondas (at least then) didn’t.
More on topic, I once took a hot plate off the oven and had to quickly set it down. The sink seemed like a good place, and how convenient, there’s water available to cool it down. The plate broke.
Oh, Cardinal, you reminded me of another one of mine.
I like to make chicken stock sometimes in a big metal stock pot. Most of the time, once it’s done I let it sit off heat for a while, then fill the sink with ice water and set the metal pot into the ice water bath to quickly cool all the stock without warming up my entire fridge.
For some absolutely inexplicable reason, my brain utterly farted while I was filling the sink with ice water, and I set my biggest glass mixing bowl into the ice water, and poured the still-hot stock INTO THE GLASS BOWL. I have yet to figure out what exactly short-circuited in my brain to make me do that.
Of course, the bowl cracked, then broke entirely, sending an entire afternoon’s worth of work, a few gallons of really delicious stock, and a bunch of broken glass into the sink.
Words cannot describe the mixture of shame and confusion and sadness I felt.
It took my sweet Mr. Horseshoe buying me a new giant glass mixing bowl for me to finally stop kicking myself every time I so much as thought of making a batch of stock. I’m sure he was tired of me bitching (at myself) about it all the time.
I read online once that bleach + distilled vinegar is a really good cleaning agent. I just missed the part about needing to mix them in very precise quantities.
Like others have mentioned, that resulted in open windows and running fans for the better part of a chilly night as we tried to clear out the chlorine gas.
One day Jack, my boss, was under a pick-up truck that was on the lift. He told me to get in and turn it on. So I scampered up into the cab, turned the key and the truck lurched forward. The lurching elicited a kind of dull-smacky sound and paragraphs of profanity from Jack who emereged from underneath holding alternately rubbing his head and pointing at the soon to be knot rising from it.
On the plus side I learned what a clutch was that day.
I was taking a too full pot of spaghetti off the stove to walk the two steps over to the sink to pour it in the colander when my toddler appeared out of nowhere just as I was turning, “over-reacting Mommy instinct” kicks in and I pull the pot quickly towards my own chest sending a big wave of recently boiling water onto my bosom. Horrible scar for about a year, not so noticeable anymore, but still feel pretty stupid. Better me than him, of course, but as I don’t think he was ever in danger…d’oh.
A favorite of mine (called favorite because I’ve done it at least twice) is to forget to put the filter in the electric coffee maker. Bad mistake. the result is not unfiltered coffee - instead the machine clogs up and a mixture of hor water and soggy coffee grounds goes ALL OVER EVERYWHERE. Real mess to clean up.
One that wasn’t really my fault, but was very exciting: I have a five cup glass vacuum coffee pot that makes really great coffee. If you aren’t familiar with that type of pot, the machine has two chambers, one on the bottom that the cold water goes into, and another globular one on top where you put the grounds (this one has a cloth filter in the bottom). The water down below gets hot (about 190°F, is pushed by steam pressure up into the top, where if steams away for several minutes. Then the pot is removed from the burner, where it cools, setting up a vacuum in the lower chamber that draws the coffee thru the filter back down into the bottom. What I didn’t realize was just how high this vacuum was.
Anyway, one day I was short of the coffee grounds, so I figured “hey, no problemo. I’ll just mix several spoons of my wife’s instant (UGH) coffee in with the grounds - the result won’t be quite as good as it usually is, but should be drinkable”.
Baad mistake. What happened was that when the vacuum started to pull the coffee back down into the bottom, the filter completely clogged. I was standing near the refrigerator, looking the other way, when a LOUD explosion literally shook the kitchen. The bottom of the pot had imploded under the outside pressure. Luckily, since the pressure was all inwards, the broken glass didn’t fly around. But the coffee and wet hot grounds certainly did - all over everywhere. Took a long time to clean up, and we were finding grounds in hidden locations for several days. Things like this will really make your wife look on you as something less than a genius.
Now a bit of advice for you folks that are always locking yourself out of car or house. For heaven’s sake, get an extra key and keep it in your wallet. Has saved my bacon more than once. Even if you have a car that won’t start without pressing on a remote, you can find out where the little switch is inside the car so after you’ve unlocked the door with that wonderful wallet key, the protection system can be disabled and the car WILL NOW START.
And, if you live in a regular house with a yard and everything, most locksmiths sell fake rocks that have a little hollowed out compartment for an extra key. These look so realistic that I defy any burglar to find it.
There! Free advice!
Just realized in reviewint the above that all my kitchen adventures involve coffee. Oh, well…
I used to have a cute little pink mp3 player, one of those sansa clips. Very small.
Normally, when I get home, I just plug the thing into the outlet to charge. Anyways, one night, one of my friends come over to hang out. I think he must have been drinking or something, the first thing he asks is if he could use the the restroom. Yeah, sure, right down the hall. 5 minutes go by, 10 minutes, finally about 20 minutes go by, I go check on him.
You alright in there?
yeah, be out in a sec
comes out about 3 minutes later, and says, you know that little mp3 player you have? well, it kinda got accidentally flushed down the toilet. I was messing around with it, and it fell in, and I there was crap in there, so I tried to flush it to maybe clear that out. Sorry.
I don’t often post as I’m normally too overawed by the knowledge, wisdom and all-round awesomeness of the Dopers… so it’s nice to feel more like a real doper sometimes!
My second most recent piece of stupidity was over several days, starting with trying to do the simple action of sitting in the car. Fairly simple you say? I would too…
1 - sit in seat
2 - put on seatbelt
3 - close door.
Do not try to do steps 2 & 3 together! I slammed the car door onto the tip of my little finger, which had soon swollen to the size of my big toe!
First trip to casualty, I get to see pretty x-ray of my fingertip with the bone in two pieces!
Two days later, getting ready for a visit from the new grand-daughter. Tidying the house and putting things in the loft for storage. A large cardboard tube of cinema posters is missing an end cap so I decide to tape a bag over the end to seal it. This turned out to be one of those tasks where I needed 3 hands… and I’m already down to 1.8. I ended up with one end of the tube between my feet holding it steady while I used my hands to try and tear the tape. In my fumbling I finally manage to rip the tape, and suddenly there is a large cardboard tube coming towards my face. I jerked my head backwards, straight into the door frame. Hitting it hard enough for my SO, who was downstairs, to hear the thud!
Now, my excuse for the next bit is that I was still groggy…
It was two days later and the new grand-daughter is into her state visit. SO is making breakfast so I’m giving grand-daughter her bottle while I’m sitting in bed waiting for MY feed.
She’s guzzling away merrily, making happy little noises while I concentrate on the smells coming from the kitchen. Next thing I know is blinding pain where 8 week old grand-daughter has taken hold of the tip of my broken finger, squeezed and twisted. Second time in two days my head travels backwards at high velocity, this time having it’s journey interrupted by the wall.
Off we go again to the hospital, having to explain an even more stupid injury. Luckily I only ended up with concussion, but the sheer embarrassment of having to explain it was caused by an eight week old girl was humiliating.
Any ideas how I can plot my revenge?
Oh, and my latest piece of stupidity?
Reading this post with all it’s tales of mishaps with keys and locked doors, then taking the dog for her walk and leaving my keys on the kitchen table!
Please tell me I’m not the only person who immediately started thinking, “What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs sitting under a car?”