Stupid Stuff I've done...

[Peace]

ok, I forgot this one..  and it is stupider than my other ones.

 

Back a few years ago we had a gathering of folks every week at our house.  All of them were young -single/married early to late 20s w/ a couple of us 30's folks.  Some of them were dog people, but none of them had ever hunted dogs.

 

One night as we were eating food and settling in, someone said something about our e-collar for Lucy (weim, great retriever when it is 60deg or cooler!).  A couple of the women shrunk back in horror at the thought.  "A shock collar!?"  oh the horrors.

 

Since Lucy.. and the collar were within reach, I was quick to reassure them that I had used it on myself (hands) ... and it was only for reinforecement of what she knew - not punishment.  To further make my point, I picked up the collar, put it on my neck (which I had actually never done before), turned it on and hit the button.

 

Now... in the seconds that followed (slo-mo, please), I never felt a thing - no pain, no sting, nothing, BUT  the electronic stimulus violently contracted all of the muscles on the back, left side of my neck, and as my head flung uncontrollably left over my shoulder, my lips and tongue flopped about... and the slobber that slung off my lips hit the ground at about the same time as some of my friends - who were literally dying from laughter.  yup.  didn't see that one coming.

 

If I had been watching, it would've been one of the funniest things I'd ever seen... only I wasn't watching. ... I was twitching, and slobbering.  

Edited October 6, 2013 by Peace

[vontar]

ok, I forgot this one..  and it is stupider than my other ones.

OK, we can put another one in the Electric wins column.

[Guest TankerHC]

ok, I forgot this one.. and it is stupider than my other ones.

Back a few years ago we had a gathering of folks every week at our house. All of them were young -single/married early to late 20s w/ a couple of us 30's folks. Some of them were dog people, but none of them had ever hunted dogs.

One night as we were eating food and settling in, someone said something about our e-collar for Lucy (weim, great retriever when it is 60deg or cooler!). A couple of the women shrunk back in horror at the thought. "A shock collar!?" oh the horrors.

Since Lucy.. and the collar were within reach, I was quick to reassure them that I had used it on myself (hands) ... and it was only for reinforecement of what she knew - not punishment. To further make my point, I picked up the collar, put it on my neck (which I had actually never done before), turned it on and hit the button.

Now... in the seconds that followed (slo-mo, please), I never felt a thing - no pain, no sting, nothing, BUT the electronic stimulus violently contracted all of the muscles on the back, left side of my neck, and as my head flung uncontrollably left over my shoulder, my lips and tongue flopped about... and the slobber that slung off my lips hit the ground at about the same time as some of my friends - who were literally dying from laughter. yup. didn't see that one coming.

If I had been watching, it would've been one of the funniest things I'd ever seen... only I wasn't watching. ... I was twitching, and slobbering.

Thanks. My wife and I both got a big laugh out of that description.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 2

[Cherokee Slim]

35 years ago I was teaching my young daughters how to swim and how to dive into a pool.  I carefully explained that it was dangerous to jump into the shallow end of the pool headfirst.  Then, for some reason I still can't explain I did it.  All the way to the hospital with the girls crying and me covered in blood I told my wife I didn't need to go to the hospital.  Ten stitches, concussion # (can't remember) and a life lesson for my kids they still laugh at.

Cherokee Slim

[vontar]

35 years ago I was teaching my young daughters how to swim and how to dive into a pool.  I carefully explained that it was dangerous to jump into the shallow end of the pool headfirst.  Then, for some reason I still can't explain I did it.  All the way to the hospital with the girls crying and me covered in blood I told my wife I didn't need to go to the hospital.  Ten stitches, concussion # (can't remember) and a life lesson for my kids they still laugh at.

Cherokee Slim

  Well you really made that lesson sink in.  That story will be passed down for a few generations.

[Tncobra]

Alcohol + large fire on concrete floor = explosion.

Don't ask.

[TNMTBik3r]

I just remembered one, the post about boats in the other stupid stuff thread reminded me...

Buddy and me went fishing one day (went almost every day during summer breaks), got bored so decided to go up on the bridge and see how far down river we could cast. First cast stripped my reel, so then we decided to drop some rocks over the side and try to splash water up to us. The bridge was about 60 feet above water. After a few small rocks, we left and drove around to find something bigger. We found a large rock that took both of us to lift and slide into the truck bed, then went back to the bridge. We backed the truck up to the edge, and started to slide the rock out without looking below. The rock started falling, and we leaned over to see it fall and hit, to see a boat appear from under the bridge....luckily the rock missed, but only by a few feet and soaked the occupants. They weren't too happy with us so we quickly jumped in the truck and left.
The splash didn't quite hit us but it came close :-)

[Timestepper]

I just remembered one, the post about boats in the other stupid stuff thread reminded me...

Buddy and me went fishing one day (went almost every day during summer breaks), got bored so decided to go up on the bridge and see how far down river we could cast. First cast stripped my reel, so then we decided to drop some rocks over the side and try to splash water up to us. The bridge was about 60 feet above water. After a few small rocks, we left and drove around to find something bigger. We found a large rock that took both of us to lift and slide into the truck bed, then went back to the bridge. We backed the truck up to the edge, and started to slide the rock out without looking below. The rock started falling, and we leaned over to see it fall and hit, to see a boat appear from under the bridge....luckily the rock missed, but only by a few feet and soaked the occupants. They weren't too happy with us so we quickly jumped in the truck and left.
The splash didn't quite hit us but it came close :-)

Reminds me of the guy who was fishing from a bridge while my wife and I were canoeing. He cast his line just as we floated by and his sinker bounced off the side of the canoe and his hook snagged my fish stringer. After many apologies on his part and some laughter and ribbing on the part of me and his buddies about cheating and trying to catch someone else's fish, I unhooked his line and we went on our way.

[bersaguy]

Ok , going back to my child hood. Lived up north were it gets really cold. One day before school in second grade. One of those dare double dare deals that kids play. I stuck my tongue to a cold aluminum flag pole. Required local fire department to get my tongue released from the pole unharmed.

  In my later years while Bass fishing a tournament and being focused on fishing I walked right off the deck of my Skeeter and into the lake, not once but 5 times over the years. Slow learner I guess.

[piercedan]

Good thing you weren't talking about mishandling a loaded weapon. ;0)

35 years ago I was teaching my young daughters how to swim and how to dive into a pool. I carefully explained that it was dangerous to jump into the shallow end of the pool headfirst. Then, for some reason I still can't explain I did it. All the way to the hospital with the girls crying and me covered in blood I told my wife I didn't need to go to the hospital. Ten stitches, concussion # (can't remember) and a life lesson for my kids they still laugh at.
Cherokee Slim

[10-Ring]

Looks like I have some stiff competition when it comes to stupid but I still think I'm a contender!  Like many here I've had issues with electricity, mostly as a young child.  At about the age of 3 or 4 I repeatedly played with electrical sockets and got shocked, slow learner on that one.  At 17 a buddy and I decided to pick up a roadkill skunk one night and place in under another friends porch.  We pull into a driveway and take a shovel out of the back of the truck, toss skunk in truck bed then proceed to back out onto the road which which was on the side of a hill.  Very drunk guy comes speeding over the hill and T-bones my truck, it was obvious that the state trooper knew him, ultimatley I totaled my truck because I decided to pick up a dead skunk, guy that hit me was charged with nothing and the trooper said in his opinion the guy was not drunk enough to warrant any tests.  At age 19 I had cleared some brush and poured about 5 gallons of gasoline on it.  I lit a leaf with a Bic and the next thing I knew I landed about 25 feet away, my grandmother was in the house about 100 feet away and said that she heard an explosion and that the house shook.  I suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns over much of my body and have not used gasoline to start a fire since.  There are other, better stories, but like many others here I have concerns about the statute of limitations.

[TMF]

  At age 19 I had cleared some brush and poured about 5 gallons of gasoline on it.  I lit a leaf with a Bic and the next thing I knew I landed about 25 feet away, my grandmother was in the house about 100 feet away and said that she heard an explosion and that the house shook.  I suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns over much of my body and have not used gasoline to start a fire since.  There are other, better stories, but like many others here I have concerns about the statute of limitations.

 

Next to electricity, gasoline has been the second most underestimated danger I've encountered.  I think because we are so used to handling it for various purposes, even getting a fire started.  I still use a gas/oil mixture when getting my brush pile started, but I respect the hell out of it.  It ain't so much the liquid gas that scares me, it's the fumes.  I damn near watched a buddy get killed doing exactly what you described.  Using a 5 gallon can to burn off a section of brush.  There was an open flame a good distance away; far enough that no one would ever think it a danger, until the area he was standing in exploded.  He got some pretty good burns, but thank God he wasn't holding the can when it all went up.  I learned to respect the fumes after that one.

[Timestepper]

Next to electricity, gasoline has been the second most underestimated danger I've encountered.  I think because we are so used to handling it for various purposes, even getting a fire started.  I still use a gas/oil mixture when getting my brush pile started, but I respect the hell out of it.  It ain't so much the liquid gas that scares me, it's the fumes.  I damn near watched a buddy get killed doing exactly what you described.  Using a 5 gallon can to burn off a section of brush.  There was an open flame a good distance away; far enough that no one would ever think it a danger, until the area he was standing in exploded.  He got some pretty good burns, but thank God he wasn't holding the can when it all went up.  I learned to respect the fumes after that one.

Watched a demonstration in high school (back when the earth was still cooling) in which an once of gasoline was placed in a tin tuna can at the top of an inclined plane and a lit candle was placed at the bottom of said plane. It only took about ten seconds for the gas fumes to gravitate down to the candle, then WHOOSH! KABOOM!    (TS been respectin' gas fumes ever since!)

 

This also counts though - I guess - in stupid stuff I've done:

 

Knowing that gasoline fumes are heavier than air, I thought it'd be funny to "booby trap" a buddy's campfire one night. He was camped at the base of a tall sand bank on a shelf along one of our favorite rivers and I decided to sneak out and mess with him a little.

 

I snuck up on his camp undetected and buried a baby food jar about half filled with gasoline at the top of the bank, then removed the lid and crept quietly to some bushes about forty feet away to "hide and watch."

 

Once I got good and and hid, I picked up a rock and tossed it out past his camp. Just as I expected, he called out "Who's out there?" and when no answer came he tossed some dry sticks on his fire to make it blaze up so he could see better.

 

He'd gotten no further than the edge of the firelight when the fumes drifted down and... well... did ya'll know that half a baby food jar of "regular" buried in the dirt is enough to cause a whole 15 foot sand bank to collapse and cover your buddy's tent? And I still ain't sure how he made it to the sandbar in the middle of the river without getting his feet wet, but I guess that just goes to show that truth really is stranger than fiction...

Edited October 15, 2013 by Timestepper

[hipower]

Back in my young whippersnapper days, my Dad allowed me to burn trash in an old 55 gal drum in the back yard. More of a chore actually, but I enjoyed the trust.

But being a young male...I was always looking for praise and decided to clean up the table in the garage where he did his reloading.

So I got a brush and swept up the floor around the table, then wiped all the residue off the top. Including all the little round thingies loose there.

Took them over to the can and threw them in on top of a bunch of paper.

Procceded to lite it off...there was a little sizzle, a whoosh, and then a big blam blam.

It seems that powder and primers are not a good thing to put in a trash fire.

Who knew.

[Timestepper]

Back in my young whippersnapper days, my Dad allowed me to burn trash in an old 55 gal drum in the back yard. More of a chore actually, but I enjoyed the trust.

But being a young male...I was always looking for praise and decided to clean up the table in the garage where he did his reloading.

So I got a brush and swept up the floor around the table, then wiped all the residue off the top. Including all the little round thingies loose there.

Took them over to the can and threw them in on top of a bunch of paper.

Procceded to lite it off...there was a little sizzle, a whoosh, and then a big blam blam.

It seems that powder and primers are not a good thing to put in a trash fire.

Who knew.

Reminds me of a practical joke I pulled several years ago at a mountain man rendezvous out West. Going through my shooting box one afternoon, I realized I had several empty No.10 percussion cap tins. Without really knowing what I was going to do with it, I stuffed one of them into my possibles pouch and forgot about it for the time being.

 

Later that evening I grabbed my "little brown jug" and went to off to visit various and sundry other camps for the purpose of passing the jug and swapping tales. At one point, while fumbling in my possibles for my pipe, I re-found the cap tin (my best friend says he immediately knew I was up to no good by the evil gleam in my eye) and in a moment of pure inspiration, I reached down and picked up half a handful of pea gravel, put it in the tin and put the lid back on.

 

At a particularly loud and boisterous camp where we stopped to "shoot some breezes" I rather absently pulled the cap tin out of my possibles and stood there just kinda' tossing it up and down while we visited and passed the jug. I guess we'd been there maybe 45 minutes, enjoying the tales and the other jugs that were so graciously passed around (with me just sorta' absentmindedly tossing the cap tin up & down the whole time, with every now and then a shake back and forth to make it rattle a little bit) when my buddy stood up and stretched his legs and said something about heading back to camp whilst we could still find it. I agreed and stood up and we said our so longs... As I turned to follow my buddy, I glanced down at the cap tin, as if really noticing it for the first time, shrugged my shoulders and just sorta' casually tossed it into the fire...

 

Never before or since have I seen that many bearded, intoxicated men hit dirt that fast or sober up that quickly!

 

After the dust had cleared and I'd been called everything unflattering they could think of (which was considerable given the average experience and nature of the group) I let them in on the joke. Unfortunately, my originality was highly lauded and the cause for much celebration, with the end result being that I became so polluted that I only made it about half-way back to my own camp before crawling off the trail and passing out under an aspen tree. Fortunately for me, one of the other celebrants, making his way back to his own camp sometime later, heard me snoring and, upon seeing me laying there passed out and shivering, graciously covered me with his buffalo skin coat. (About noon the next day, he showed up at our camp and offered to trade me some "hair of the dog and an empty cap tin for a buffler' skin coat." ...How could I could I turn him down?) :cheers:

[dlmeadows]

Each and every one of you are responsible for me not getting a damn thing done tonight at work lol. When I get too a computer later I'll share some of my ignorance. But seriously this has been the best hour and a half of reading i have done in a long long time.

[dlmeadows]

Ok, so one day I learned the hard way that heavy rain and cruise control doesnt mix. I was 19 years old and on my way too Nashville. I had a good job and figured I would buy a fun car. Car of choice was a 96 Trans Am LT1 6speed car. When I hit I40 in my home town it was a nice bright sunny day. So I set my cruise control at about 75 and never gave it a second thought. When I got to Lebanon it started raining all of a sudden and extremely hard. And of course I didnt even consider that my cruise control could cause problems until I changed lanes. I did 3 donuts on my side of the interstate, crossed the median facing west in the east bound lanes and hit a semi head on. Now for anyone that doesnt know airbags are far from soft fluffy pillows, THEY HURT!!!! Pretty much the front of my car was completely destroyed with the semi actually running over my hood but everything from the windshield back didnt have a scratch on it. No seat belt on and I opened the door and stepped out of what used too be my car. This was one day before my 20th birthday. Thats one I won't be forgetting.

 

 

 

I'm a machinist and clamped my trigger finger up in a lathe once. Not too big of a deal, shattered the joint into 8 pieces and lost 80% of my range of motion. At least its curved just right and has just enough movement too pull a trigger lol.

[Peace]

^^Holy mother of madness. Glad you made it. You qualify. Welcome to the club. :)

[Guest TankerHC]

Ok, so one day I learned the hard way that heavy rain and cruise control doesnt mix. I was 19 years old and on my way too Nashville. I had a good job and figured I would buy a fun car. Car of choice was a 96 Trans Am LT1 6speed car. When I hit I40 in my home town it was a nice bright sunny day. So I set my cruise control at about 75 and never gave it a second thought. When I got to Lebanon it started raining all of a sudden and extremely hard. And of course I didnt even consider that my cruise control could cause problems until I changed lanes. I did 3 donuts on my side of the interstate, crossed the median facing west in the east bound lanes and hit a semi head on. Now for anyone that doesnt know airbags are far from soft fluffy pillows, THEY HURT!!!! Pretty much the front of my car was completely destroyed with the semi actually running over my hood but everything from the windshield back didnt have a scratch on it. No seat belt on and I opened the door and stepped out of what used too be my car. This was one day before my 20th birthday. Thats one I won't be forgetting.

 

 

 

I'm a machinist and clamped my trigger finger up in a lathe once. Not too big of a deal, shattered the joint into 8 pieces and lost 80% of my range of motion. At least its curved just right and has just enough movement too pull a trigger lol.

 

 

Man my wife has been beeching at me for years about this very thing. I use cruise all the time. She keeps telling me its dangerous. I even use cruise on Snow when up North. I keep telling her "I have never heard of a single person lose control from using cruise on wet roads"

 

DAMMIT! Now I have, and Im not going to tell her. Cause Ill never hear the end of it since I plan on continuing to use cruise on wet roads.

[tnguy]

There's nothing special about cruise on wet roads. 

[Guest TankerHC]

There's nothing special about cruise on wet roads. 

 

I know. But there are people who believe that it is easier to lose control on wet roads with cruise on. Have even seen it mentioned on some news show.

[dlmeadows]

Also dont jump on the back of a wild boar and try to kill it with your pocket knife when you've had a few too many.

[tnguy]

I know. But there are people who believe that it is easier to lose control on wet roads with cruise on. Have even seen it mentioned on some news show.

 

I will give that it increases your reaction time.

[Guest TankerHC]

I will give that it increases your reaction time.

 

Actually just looked it up, the way computerized cruise control works, it actually reacts faster than if you had your foot on the brake.

 

Figures, just looked for this great article covering cruise control back to the pull out handle days to today and cant find it. So Ill try to repeat the Australian Engineers explanation that he took five paragraphs to explain in less than five lines.

 

The computers on cars today are not like the computers that first came out when cruise control went to servos and some other things I cant remember. They are more sensitive, and the sensors are more sensitive and send the information to the computer faster. CARS are not on cruise control. The part that is on cruise control is the tires making contact with the road. Spin is sensed and instantly sent to the computer making instantaneous but slow adjustments, rather than slowing the car all at once. The sensors and computers react before a driver even knows the tires are beginning to spin. The moment the tires begin to spins, you get slow, correct adjustments to bring the tires, back to normal speed.

 

You wont skid. The reaction of the sensors and computer is faster than a human. So it sounds even safer to be on cruise to me. (Now I have a counter argument next time the wife starts telling me how unsafe it is)

 

But then, the National Safety Commission says this, in direct contradiction to the Austrailian Engineer.

 

"This is where cruise control presents a problem. Cruise control will want to keep your vehicle going at a constant speed and speed only adds to the problem. Cruise control is disabled when you step on the brakes but that is exactly what you don’t want to do in a skidding situation unless your car is equipped with anti-lock brakes. The safest thing to do when it starts to rain is to disengage the cruise control and lower your speed. Driving in the rain really requires heightened awareness and that seat-of-the-pants feel for the car. Save your cruise control for fair weather."

[dlmeadows]

You guys are welcome to do what you want, I'm just saying from my first hand experience the car wiggled then the rpms soared and i was along for the ride at that point. All the corrective steering and gentle use of the brakes resulted in nothing at all. It could have actually been a fun ride if there wasnt traffic and a semi on the other side. I will NEVER use cruise in a heavy rain like that again.