Dumbest thing you've ever done? (Page 3)

jmcelroy... I am impressed. And you made the right decision to drop. A broken leg would have been much easier to deal with.

Comet- what were you thinking girl?

Hmmm. The dumbest thing I ever did?

Probably this year, after Super Bowl Sunday. It was Monday morning and I woke up not feeling so bad, after all. It was because I was still drunk. Even so, I thought I was ok. We had to go to our social worker's office to sign our adoption homestudy paperwork and then I came to work and proceeded to start having the hangover at about lunch time.

Not so smart.

Unfortunately your story brought back a bad memory for me.  One Friday afternoon I stayed late to help a classmate finish up his project in Graphics class.  The next morning I found out that he had been fooling around with some friends - climbing up on a Train Bridge.  He lost his balance and grabbed the high tension wire.  Didn't survive.

Crap, I can't even begin to try to sort out the dumbest thing I've ever done.  The possibilities are virtually endless.  Its a wonder I've broken only one bone and have never badly burned myself.  Here's a good one.  Round about age 10, a couple of my neighborhood friends and I were screwing around with various aerosol canned substances (spraypaint, WD40, Gumout) and figured out that Gumout Carb Cleaner puts out a wicked huge flame.  Well, with Gumout and matches in hand we head up to the local park to find stuff to burn.  We're in the corner of the park pavilion and are set up to torch some random crap.  We spark up the Gumout and its so powerful that the flame bounces off the wall a couple feet away and comes right back into our faces.  I had no eyelashes or eyebrows for a couple of weeks.  My parents knew there was trouble when I came home at 5 PM on a perfect summer evening and wanted to get into the bathtub.  Well, that and the smell of singed hair.  I'll never figure out why my dad didn't belive the "spontaneous combustion" defense.  Musta been the can of Gumout, matches, and burned objects we left in the park.  So much for destroying the evidence.

As for the teenage schtoopin?  I can't count the number of times I was caught or nearly caught foolin' around.  God, we were dumb... 

Ooooo try this one for fun.  Camp stores used to sell 2lb magnesium bricks with a file and a flint.  The idea was you shave off some magnesium onto wet wood, spark it , and presto you have a fire.

Well, some friends and I had some time on our hands.  We had two of said magesium bricks.  Turns out you can't get them to burn very easily unless they are shavings.  So I got the bright idea to shave down one of the bricks, yep the whole thing.

Places a large pile of magnesium shavings in the street and then place a magnesium block in said pile of shavings.  The one saving grace is I was smart enough to use a model rocket fuse that was all of 2 feet long.  Which was better then lighting it by hand, looking back I'm pretty sure I would have died doing that.

So I lit the fuse and we backed off a little bit having absolutely no clue what would happen, well the fuse went quick and what I can only describe as the SUN dropped into the street.

Standing a good ways back I had 1st and second degree burns on exposed flesh (arms, face, hands).  The magnesium had dug a very large hole in the middle of the street that went down quite a long ways.  Yea, right in front of my house...wonder who they thought did that one...

*chuckle*

NCTriNewbie - 2006-09-14 5:15 PM Pick just one! Geez...there are so many...but a memory this thread jogged involved Goldschlager shots in hi-ball glasses on New Years Eve...followed by waking up next to someone who's name I couldn't remember New Years Day....oh the memories you'd like to forget

Or, apparently, the memories you can't seem to remember

jmcleroy...bravo! Another classic.

Does it make me dumb to want to try that? But without the second block in the shavings?

*chuckle*  One of the things I will probably teach my daughter 8)

IF I were to do so, I would just use an ounce or two and a three foot fuse, make sure your at least 30ft back and don't look directly at it, you'll have a spot burned into your field of vision for at least a month...not that I'm saying...just saying...

8)

I did that one, too. 

Thankfully, you're right, and I escaped. 

Seems fire is a common theme....

When the BBQ is sitting behind the 70 year old wood cottage under the wooden roof overhang.  And there is a good breeze going.  And your buddy decides to POUR some gas from a can onto the brickets to get them going.  The flame is very likely to go from the BBQ - up the stream, and back into the can.  Putting the can down on the cement floor was good.  We almost had the Demon like tower of flame extinguished when a toss of too much dirt knocked the can over.  Thankfully for us we got the fire put out without any noticeable damage.

This one time.... in band camp....

When I was younger, I was sitting in the back seat of my grandparents' Lincoln.  I was playing with the cigarette lighter back there.  I pushed it in, and popped it out real quick.  Then, here's the dumb part..... I touched it to see if it was hot.  My finger turned greenish with circular stripes on it and the smell of burning flesh permeated the car instantly.  Weird that it didn't hurt right away, but man oh man, was that the dumbest thing I ever did.  Still gives me heebie jeebies to think about it. 

OK, so that thing with the egg wasn't actually the dumbest thing I've ever done. I'm going to tell you, but I can almost guarntee you won't believe me. For it is a story so far beyond plausibilty that you'll say I must be full of shite. But I swear it's true. I've always lived by the axiom of learning from one's mistakes, and I tell you, have I ever learned from this one.

I voted for Newt Gingrich.

<shudder> 

I like the one where you and 7 or so friends piled into the Beetle with the christmas tree.

At least that one was funny. Voting for Newt was just stoopid. 

I knew it!!!