Your Bag-of-Hammers Moment

[Mazomaniac]

I'm not sure if Diamonds and Tuxedos is the right place for this, but there's been some rather introspective threads around recently so I thought I'd throw it out there for some therapeutic sharing . . . .

What the dumbest thing you've ever done?

I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill dumb. Things like "I married my ex-spouse" or "I could have fucked Susie Johnson on prom night but got too drunk and passed out" just don't cut it. Everybody's done dumb shit like that.

No.

I'm talkin' serious dumb. So-stupid-I-should-have-died dumb. I'm talking about the serious brain fart that comes along once every twenty years or so and leaves the spectators shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at you.

We've all had those moments. We all brood over them in our heads. What say we just get them off our chest, say what we learned, and put it all behind us, eh?

Besides, we can always use a good laugh at somebody else's expense.

Me first.

Where: Chicago

When: Mid '80s. I was in college.

What: It was a Friday night and we had nothing better to do so my roommate and I took a huge load of LSD. A few hours later we decided to go skinny dipping in Lake Michigan.

Why was it dumb: It was the middle of February.

Consequences: A group of other students found us and pulled us out the ice just in time. I did three days in the hospital for frostbite and hypothermia. My roomie did five days and lost the tip off of three toes.

Lesson Learned: Never drop acid without a designated lifeguard.

OK, who's next?

Cheers!
Mazo.

[Rudyard K]

When I think back over my years as a kid and young adult (and I consider that up through the upper 30s) there are so many things that could have ended badly. But they did not.

For whatever reason, there were little or no ramifications for my actions. No hospital time. No serious injuries. No one beat the sh*t out of me. No long term jail time. No friends got hurt or died because of my actions. Actually, very little that I would call really bad, has occured. But there were dozens of times that it could have gone badly...really badly.

Without the resulting ramifications for actions...the events don't really sound all that wild and crazy.

[pjorourke]

Well there was a sports car that went over a cliff. Fortunately, it was a small cliff and everyone walked away intact.

[oden]

Two hot cars, a curved ramp that narrowed to one lane; a clip, two spins and fortunately two cars drove slowly away.

[Laurentius]

I've had so many such moments or circumstances!

Here are a couple.

I was 10 and trying to make chlorinated hydrocarbons. I was only 10 and had not yet learned all I should have known, and decided to directly chlorinate gasoline by bubbling chlorine made by dumping saniflush into bleach through a container of gasoline. Two problems. First: boom. Second: cloud of chlorine gas. Amazingly, I escaped being burned but wound up in the emergency room with my eyes swollen shut.

I was 12 and trying to make a turbojet engine based on the description of its operation in an encyclopedia. So I had a tube, a shaft on bearings at both ends, fans in the appropriate locations and used a diesel atomizer from a house heater, a spark plug powered by a multivibrator and old car coil and a garden sprayer filled with diesel and pumped up. It wouldn't start, so I hooked up an electric motor to sort of pre-spin it and THEN touched it off. It ran for several seconds before all the parts that were severely out of balance came apart like shrapnel. 12 year olds and welding machines: its a beautiful thing.

Same year, I was working on the 400V power supply for an old-timey (even then!) church organ. I had unplugged it and used my VOM to test for presence of power on various wires and satisfied it had no juice, reached out and grabbed a wire while standing in bare feet on a concrete floor. I was flung clear through a wall but other than feeling really strange for several hours afterwards and a bit bruised, otherwise okay. Lesson learned: never underestimate a high voltage capacitor or play with electricity while well grounded.

Later on after a few rounds of college I had a serious bag of hammers couple of years after going to work with a private military company that had use for scientifically minded people who could shoot.

I don't really believe in guardian angels, but I had some serious luck protecting me from my lack of wisdom until I got old enough to understand the concept of caution. LOL

[charlestudor2005]

Dayum!!! All I can say is that your Mother must be a saint to have let you live this long. LOL

She must have hated it every time you started collecting stuff for an "experiment."

[charlestudor2005]

Like RK, I've done some things that should have gotten me hammered, but unlike L, I've mostly felt I've escaped because of guardian angels (whether they exist or not).

My biggest: In the late 60s, when racial strife was arguably at its highest, I went into NYC's Harlem at midnight. Here I was, a white guy, trying to call a friend, who lived in the neighborhood in order to get together. Needless to say, my friend freaked out for me (I was too stupid), yelled at me to get the fuck out as fast as possible. Which I did.

[b2flyer51]

Decided that sitting in Yakima, WA for one more day (enroute to the San Juan Islands in the Mooney) was going to make me crazy. Asked around the hangars for suggestions and ended up flying up and over Rainier (great views!) and straight west until the fog bank ended.

Out over the edge and then back under at 150 AGL back into Friday Harbor Airport.

It worked, it was dumb, and was never repeated. 2 hours west of the San Juans (at 200 kts) isn't a friendly location for little fun airplanes . . .

Flyer

[atlcomedy]

For the most part I'm like many of the previous posters in that it seems like for all the dumb stuff I've done for the most part I've been okay like a guardian angel was looking out for me....

I will acknowledge alcohol and women play a large part in most of these occasions.

I've got some good ones but my privacy prevents me from being too detailed here.

In a lot of cases it involves me and friend(s) waking up across the country or at minimum hundreds of miles away after a long Friday or Saturday night (or both) with professional commitments Monday AM in the home base.

I also had a good stroll in college through D.C. "just a block or two away from the Capitol Building" --- it is true what they say about "one block in the wrong direction...."

[Guest083011]

I think you should have a disclaimer about sitting next to you AND anyone who does, have them sign a waiver.

Originally Posted by Laurentius

I've had so many such moments or circumstances!

Here are a couple.

I was only 10 and had not yet learned all I should have known, and decided to directly chlorinate gasoline by bubbling chlorine made by dumping saniflush into bleach through a container of gasoline.

I was 12 and trying to make a turbojet engine based on the description of its operation in an encyclopedia. ... It ran for several seconds before all the parts that were severely out of balance came apart like shrapnel. 12 year olds and welding machines: its a beautiful thing.

Same year, I was working on the 400V power supply for an old-timey (even then!) church organ. ... I was flung clear through a wall but other than feeling really strange for several hours afterwards and a bit bruised, otherwise okay. Lesson learned: never underestimate a high voltage capacitor or play with electricity while well grounded.

Originally Posted by Laurentius

until I got old enough to understand the concept of caution. LOL

Are you sure you're old enough?

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by b2flyer51

Decided that sitting in Yakima, WA for one more day (enroute to the San Juan Islands in the Mooney) was going to make me crazy. Asked around the hangars for suggestions and ended up flying up and over Rainier (great views!) and straight west until the fog bank ended.

Out over the edge and then back under at 150 AGL back into Friday Harbor Airport.

It worked, it was dumb, and was never repeated. 2 hours west of the San Juans (at 200 kts) isn't a friendly location for little fun airplanes . . .

Wow!

I can only imagine how you felt. Before I got my instrument ticket, I foolishly got caught under an unexpected layer on the way back to my home airport in a Bonanza and ended up scud-running at about 500' AGL for about 75-100 miles. It was a nerve-wracking experience and one of the longest half-hours of my life.

Perhaps the most embarrassing event of my life occurred while I was a 21-year-old college student. My girlfriend's parents were having a birthday party at their Houston home, and I was invited to visit for the weekend.

Naturally they had me stay in their guest bedroom. (Durn!) A railroad track ran through the area and I heard trains passing every couple of hours or so. At about 6 a.m., I had a dream that I fell onto a track and noticed a fast-moving train bearing down on me.

So I got up and ran like hell -- but not just in my dreams! I smashed into the sliding closet doors, knocking them off their tracks and into the wall at the rear of the closet, making a tremendous noise and waking up everybody in the house. My girlfriend's dad soon knocked on the door. "Son, are you OK in there?" I replied, "Yes, sir, you're not going to believe what happened." Then I tried to offer a feeble explanation. He seemed sympathetic.

Then a couple of hours later her mom cooked eggs and pancakes and the whole family (including her brother, about 17, and little sister, about 14) and I sat around the table. I remember feeling surprised that they were acting politely and in a perfectly normal manner, completely oblivious to the fact that their daughter/sister was dating a guy who was obviously a real nutcase!

[WTF]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

I remember feeling surprised that they were acting politely and in a perfectly normal manner, completely oblivious to the fact that their daughter/sister was dating a guy who was obviously a real nutcase!

Sounds like ain't much changed over the decades!

[Carrie Hillcrest]

Originally Posted by Laurentius

I was 10 and trying to make chlorinated hydrocarbons ...

I was 12 and trying to make a turbojet engine ...

My 10-to-12-year old self just got a huge crush on your 10-to-12-year old self.

[Sydneyb]

Originally Posted by Carrie Hillcrest

My 10-to-12-year old self just got a huge crush on your 10-to-12-year old self.

I had the exact same thought!

[Laurentius]

blushing!

When I was 10 to 12, I don't think any girls had a crush on me. I never kissed a girl at all ... by the time I got around to it, I was 19.