Boneheaded Things You Have Done

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Wormius

I think a lot also involve situations arise when you believe, “I can do this all in one trip”.

Oh... yeah.

2 kids (shoulders and arm + a small bag of groceries) = strained my back. Luckily a chiro appointment a week later put me back to par.

[Ped]

In high school shop class, I was working on the table saw and a piece of wood got stuck at the blade. Well, obviously I wasn't going to put my hand anywhere near a rotating blade to get it out. Stopping the saw never occurred to me.

Instead, I used a second piece of wood to push the first piece away, and then it got caught by the saw and sent flying right into my groin.

[pylon]

Oh man, I just remembered this one.

I sport a pretty healthy beard, and it's starting to gray in a patchy way. When it's uniform, I'm just gonna rock the Santa beard, but in the mean time, I'm just trying to keep it as even as possible. You brush the stuff in, wash it out 5 minutes later. Voila, good for 3-4 weeks.

So anyway, it's my Monday off, but the nature of my business requires me to take a few calls throughout the day. So there I am brushing beard dye into my beard, and my phone rings. "There's like 12 cars running at the auction today we should buy, can you login from home and bid on them?" No worries, the auction isn't work to me, it's the funnest part of my job.

So I drop everything, spend 2 hours on the auction, then go cut the lawn, then take the dogs for a walk..... My wife gets home and looks at me and starts laughing hysterically. "What the hell happened to your face?!!"

I looked in the mirror, and it like someone Sharpied a beard on me. It was jet black, like blacker than a Model T. But anyone who had dyed their beard knows, it leaves color on the skin as well when it cures. It looks like someone took a paint roller to your face. It was 4 hours since I brushed it in, and somehow avoided walking past a mirror that whole time.

And no I didn't shave it off. I rocked the late 90's WCW Randy Savage look for a good 2 weeks before it started looking like human hair again. #noregrets

[Locke]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

Listening to my dad…?

I think I was 5 or 6. My dad found a bees nest on a crack on the side of the house. My dad inexplicably tells me to come spot him and stay back (vs going into the house like everyone else). I don’t get why I was needed outside because inside seemed safe, but I stand outside like 25-50 feet away spotting him for god knows what reason. Dude goes gangbusters on the next with those ####ing old school Electrolux canister vacuums. He’s unscathed, I get stung, twice. So I rush into the house. I’m sobbing inside the house from the pain and he walks in unscathed with a #### eating grin lol like, “Aww man, sorry son. Here, this will help.” And he rubs some of the honey onto the sting, which I dunno if it was the pressure or the honey, but it made it hurt worse.

Elementary school. Remember that science trick guys showed kids about inertia? You swing a bucket in a circle vertically and don’t spill water. I felt like I should stand parallel directly to his side or slightly back of his position. My dad told me where to stand parallel to him slightly forward that was safe. Except, the wire handle snapped on one side of the ice cream bucket he was using and he lost balance so it launched at the perfect angle into my shoulder and face. When the teacher asked what had happened, I sounded like Sylvester from looney Tunes or Mike Tyson with my reply of “science experiment”.

I was in Jr high or something. We had a relatively new BBQ and he was excited. The built in starter wasn’t working so he decided to light it manually and called me to help because he couldn’t see. I felt like fire and gas should be done by same person. He felt the match could go out before he could turn on the gas. This was before long lighters were a thing, so it was basically dropping matches from a match book into a bbq and controlling the gas to try and get it to light. Dad tells me to see if the match was still lit while he’s controlling the gas. I lean over into the edge of a propane fireball. It singed the top of every hair on my face. Not enough to look weird, but enough to smell like burnt hair for a week.

My dads given me a ton of great advice over my life. But he’s also given me some bad advice I felt I should have ignored before calamity hit.

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ man...how old are you??

Were you there when Christ learned how to Tapdance? Did you give him pointers?

Also...your dad sounds awesome.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Locke

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ man...how old are you??

Were you there when Christ learned how to Tapdance? Did you give him pointers?

Also...your dad sounds awesome.

Yeah, I liked him. Although at times I wondered why I seemed to know better than he at a significantly younger age.

And I'm not sure I'm the right age to give Jesus tap dancing lessons. The phrase I recall was Christ on stilts. I guess I should have been commenting about how he was a clown or something due to my age.

I'm mid 30s. Long lighters weren't a thing at that point in time IIRC. We had those foot long match sticks that snapped all the time. Except in my story situation, we ran out of those. Instead of lighting a twig on fire to poke in, I built character and learned a lesson. I think my parents bought one of those long lighters with a flashlight and bendy neck about 3-4 years later. The first time we used it, my mom literally said out of the blue something along the lines of how it would forever save my hair from being burnt.

I don't recall exactly what she said. The memory is corrupted. I do know that I was fuming after that comment.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

When I was 7 I thought a hockey team winning a random game meant they were better than the team that lost.

I was told that if I wanted to cheer for the team that won the night before, I'd have to be a hard-core fan.

Being 7, not knowing any better I obliged as I really didn't understand sports, teams, nuisance of the games, or that the random game was actually the Stanley Cup clinching game.

Here I am 33 years later, still a die hard Calgary Flames Fan.

[Dion]

When I turned 18 some of my friends took to the bar. I had a bit too much to drink and said I need to find the washroom. I get to the back of the bar and ask these 2 guys who in turn pointed me to entrance of the women washroom. Of course i'm too drunk to know what's going on so I walk in and all of sudden there's screams coming from the ladies can. I walk out and the whole bar is in hoots of laughter. It seems those 2 guys set me up.

[Sr. Mints]

When we were kids, maybe 10-12, we would try and roll snowballs down the hill east of SAIT onto 10th Street. They'd usually break apart after 10 or 15 feet. One time a snowball made to the road, a car swerved honked, the guy got out of his car and started screaming at us.

I swear the city stopped mowing the grass on that hill after that.

[FurnaceFace]

Many years ago my bike commute to that office took me through Scarboro and then into the beltline. My route at the time was down 15th Ave past Scarboro United, the Tennis club, and then left onto 16th street. 15th Ave along there is all downhill and has a stop sign at 16th. In the morning I would coast down the hill, look left to see if there was a car coming down 16th (rarely) and then apex the corner turning north onto 16th. I’d easily be over 40kph. One week there is some sort of city 5th wheel looking trailer parked on 16th just north of the intersection. I did my usual look as I coast down, I seen other and hit the apex as usual…right when this VW Gulf appears going south on 16th. I give my bike a bit of a swerve to the left and somehow magically miss the VW, and miss hitting my head (or any part of me) on the part of the trailer that would be where the hitch goes. I’m in the middle of the block before the VW driver honks. I was probably dumping adrenaline until mid morning that day. I still shudder about it as that had many bad outcomes. If people are like cats, that was definitely one of my 9 lives gone.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Ped

In high school shop class, I was working on the table saw and a piece of wood got stuck at the blade. Well, obviously I wasn't going to put my hand anywhere near a rotating blade to get it out. Stopping the saw never occurred to me.

Instead, I used a second piece of wood to push the first piece away, and then it got caught by the saw and sent flying right into my groin.

My wood shop ####up was on one of those big stand-up belt sanders. Grade 10, I was sanding a small piece of wood and eventually it got thin enough to shoot between the gap of the table and the sanding belt, which meant my fingers hit the belt full speed. Ended up completely losing the nails on 2 fingers on each hand, and I can still tell which ones they are because the nail grows different than the rest. Never touched a belt sander since

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

When I was 7 I thought a hockey team winning a random game meant they were better than the team that lost.

I was told that if I wanted to cheer for the team that won the night before, I'd have to be a hard-core fan.

Being 7, not knowing any better I obliged as I really didn't understand sports, teams, nuisance of the games, or that the random game was actually the Stanley Cup clinching game.

Here I am 33 years later, still a die hard Calgary Flames Fan.

Rarely is a typo so on-point when it comes to the Flames.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by Locke

Rarely is a typo so on-point when it comes to the Flames.

[blender]

Some great stories in this thread.
I have so many of my own that it is hard to select just one, but at one point in our early twenties, my friends and I became infatuated with smashing beer bottles on our heads. It was a great party trick and pretty hard core, but we got to the point that we were doing it literally every night, constantly trying to up the ante and outdo each other with our badassery.

Some lowlights:
Drinking in a bar in Saskatoon and there is a crew of us and we are ordering bottles of Canadian on special for two bucks apiece, 24 at a time. We are drinking so fast that the bottles are piling up on the tables and we go crazy and start smashing them on our heads, our own heads, each other's, a total frenzy. We are tucked into a bit of an alcove by the pool tables so not totally visible to the rest of the bar. Waitress comes around the corner and nearly drops the tray of beers she's bringing. The whole floor, both pool tables, all the chairs, are covered in broken glass. Total mess. I remember leaving very shortly after.

Our house was a shoes-only zone due to broken glass hazard.

The end of it actually came when a friend actually slashed his ear almost off with a bottle at a house party. We tried to patch him up in the bathroom with toilet paper and electrical tape but it didn't take. I remember hanging out with him having a smoke and the blood-soaked bandage just slid off his tattered ear and was dangling from the wreckage. I looked like Reservoir Dogs. We got him to the hospital and several hours of emergency plastic surgery got his ear back to a pretty reasonable state. After that the fad just kind of died out.

[Ashartus]

Way back I had a station wagon for a while. One night I was parked in an unlit parking lot and wasn't paying enough attention as I backed out, and ran into a black SUV. I barely touched it but the corner caught my back door just enough to dent it, which caused my back windshield to explode. Barely a scratch on the SUV though. I left a note with my contact info on the SUV, but forgot to take down the license plate.


Then when I go to get it fixed they need a police report. But the police won't release a report without contacting the owner of the other vehicle, and they haven't heard anything from them. It started to look like I was going to be up the creek. Finally about a week later I was saved when the owner of the SUV called me, the damage on his vehicle amounted to about $20 so he wasn't worried, but he contacted the police and got everything straightened out.


Minor one and kind of dates me but when I started driving the first time I tried to fill up my car with gas I couldn't get the pump nozzle to go into my gas receptacle. I tried and tried and just couldn't figure it out. Finally I went into the gas station and asked for help, turned out I was trying to use the leaded gas pump for a car that took unleaded, luckily they were sized that way so I didn't end up using the wrong gas.

[photon]

Probably the dumbest thing was investing $80,000 of retirement money in a marina development in BC that turned out to be pretty much nonsense. I was still pretty young and ignorant so it was an expensive lesson especially at that time.

Also regret selling some crypto I'd mined too early, not as bad as the story on the first page but I could have had hundreds of thousands worth.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by photon

Probably the dumbest thing was investing $80,000 of retirement money in a marina development in BC that turned out to be pretty much nonsense. I was still pretty young and ignorant so it was an expensive lesson especially at that time.

Also regret selling some crypto I'd mined too early, not as bad as the story on the first page but I could have had hundreds of thousands worth.

Was there at least water there?

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Ashartus

Way back I had a station wagon for a while. One night I was parked in an unlit parking lot and wasn't paying enough attention as I backed out, and ran into a black SUV. I barely touched it but the corner caught my back door just enough to dent it, which caused my back windshield to explode. Barely a scratch on the SUV though. I left a note with my contact info on the SUV, but forgot to take down the license plate.


Then when I go to get it fixed they need a police report. But the police won't release a report without contacting the owner of the other vehicle, and they haven't heard anything from them. It started to look like I was going to be up the creek. Finally about a week later I was saved when the owner of the SUV called me, the damage on his vehicle amounted to about $20 so he wasn't worried, but he contacted the police and got everything straightened out.


Minor one and kind of dates me but when I started driving the first time I tried to fill up my car with gas I couldn't get the pump nozzle to go into my gas receptacle. I tried and tried and just couldn't figure it out. Finally I went into the gas station and asked for help, turned out I was trying to use the leaded gas pump for a car that took unleaded, luckily they were sized that way so I didn't end up using the wrong gas.

I remember leaded fuel. It actually reminds me of some of the weird antiquated language and messaging that still exists. Like “unleaded” still being used to describe fuel type, or the “no smoking” light on airplanes. Has anybody been inclined to light anything other than a shoe on an airplane in the last 20 years? Maybe it should be changed to an “airplane mode” light to keep with the times.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Wormius

I remember leaded fuel. It actually reminds me of some of the weird antiquated language and messaging that still exists. Like “unleaded” still being used to describe fuel type, or the “no smoking” light on airplanes. Has anybody been inclined to light anything other than a shoe on an airplane in the last 20 years? Maybe it should be changed to an “airplane mode” light to keep with the times.

You want them to replace how many lights and signs just for aesthetics?

Air travel is expensive enough and already sucks plenty, we dont need to enable those clowns.

[topfiverecords]

No vaping would be more current.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by blender

Some great stories in this thread.
I have so many of my own that it is hard to select just one, but at one point in our early twenties, my friends and I became infatuated with smashing beer bottles on our heads. It was a great party trick and pretty hard core, but we got to the point that we were doing it literally every night, constantly trying to up the ante and outdo each other with our badassery.

Some lowlights:
Drinking in a bar in Saskatoon and there is a crew of us and we are ordering bottles of Canadian on special for two bucks apiece, 24 at a time. We are drinking so fast that the bottles are piling up on the tables and we go crazy and start smashing them on our heads, our own heads, each other's, a total frenzy. We are tucked into a bit of an alcove by the pool tables so not totally visible to the rest of the bar. Waitress comes around the corner and nearly drops the tray of beers she's bringing. The whole floor, both pool tables, all the chairs, are covered in broken glass. Total mess. I remember leaving very shortly after.

Our house was a shoes-only zone due to broken glass hazard.

The end of it actually came when a friend actually slashed his ear almost off with a bottle at a house party. We tried to patch him up in the bathroom with toilet paper and electrical tape but it didn't take. I remember hanging out with him having a smoke and the blood-soaked bandage just slid off his tattered ear and was dangling from the wreckage. I looked like Reservoir Dogs. We got him to the hospital and several hours of emergency plastic surgery got his ear back to a pretty reasonable state. After that the fad just kind of died out.

When we were 17, we thought it'd be awesome to do the same thing.

That is until a friend sliced through the nerves in his hand with a broken bottle. He had to have crazy reconstructive surgery on his hand.

Yeah not such a smart pastime.

My big party trick was biting through empty beer cans. I stopped that after a pretty close call involving some cut inner lips.

The destructive and senseless force of the teenage mind is really something.