CONFESS!!!! Closest you came to winning the Darwin Award

[LynneSin]

The Darwin Award is to the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it.

Now, I fancy myself as a pretty bright gal but even I have come close to winning the award - back when I was first learning to drive I was coming home with my mother in the car as a passinger. Instead of hitting the brakes when I was parking I hit the gas. Now perhaps that doesn't seem too funny except our house was built on a very steep slope AND I came within millimeters of knocking down a massive oak tree in our front yard.

So what was the closest you came to winning the Darwin Award

[underpants]

1. One time I could not for the life of me figure out this stapler thingy

ONe of those big ones that came out in the mid 90's. I was trying to staple something and I kept squeezing it and then I grabbed it with my other hand and really leaned into the thing I was stapling and that is when I realized I had it upside down. I had been shooting staples across the room for 5 minutes.

Okay it may not have killed me but I could have hit a tendon or something and really screwed my hand up.

Other than that I would have to go with climbing 50 or so feet up trees while I was "partying".

[LynneSin]

10. I have swimming while totally bombed on beer, tequila and champagne

I was 22 and since I was at the beach I definately was NOT driving. I banged my head not from diving into the pull but while going underwater - I miss judged it a bit

[YankeyMCC]

38. Two Words: Urban Surfing

You know, standing on the hood or roof of a moving vehicle.

Adolescence is just another word for mentally defective

[Jimbo S]

2. At work, sticking a pliers in a fuse box

a shocking experience.

[NewWaveChick1981]

9. OMG, a girl I knew stuck a metal comb in an electrical outlet to see what would happen...

:rofl: She was about nine or ten. She lived on a military base at the time, and the force from doing that threw her across the room and knocked out power to the whole base. :rofl: I worked with her in the 80s, and we shared stories of stupid stuff we did when we were kids. That's how I found out. When she told me, I couldn't stop laughing.... :P

[Jimbo S]

44. I saw a co-worker do it once to reset a fuse.

I asked him how it worked for him but not me.

He had a screwdriver with a rubber handle. Rubber is not conductive.

[NewWaveChick1981]

3. Playing "Push Me Down the Stairs" with my siblings when I was a kid.

:rofl: We had a great set of stairs at the house I grew up in, and for some stupid reason we came up with this game. I would stand at the top of the stairs, either my sister or brother would be at the bottom of the stairs, and then the other sibling would be at the top to push. What fun! :P :rofl: We would take turns doing this. However, Mom discovered our game when the racket it created got annoying, and she put a stop to it. But we got away with it for a while afterward by doing it when she wasn't home. :rofl:

Damn, we were really stupid.... :crazy:

[JackBeck]

8. I am laughing so hard right now, tears are running down my face.

That sounds like something my sister and I would have done. I can't believe we never figured out that one.

[NewWaveChick1981]

11. ROFLMAO!

:rofl: :rofl: I'm so glad someone could appreciate that... :hug:

[seemunkee]

12. Caterpillar variant

Have the sibling roll up in a rug or blanket before pushing them down the stairs. They then have to crawl up the stairs like a caterpillar.

[NewWaveChick1981]

15. OMFG!!!!

:spray: :rofl: I'm surprised we never thought of that.... :rofl: Damn... that would have been fun!!!!

[justice1]

41. We used a thin mattress to tobaggon down the stairs.

[NewWaveChick1981]

46. That HAD to have been fun! And I'm sure it was safer than just intentionally

falling down a long flight of wooden stairs... :rofl: :hi:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

64. My sister and I used to do that, too!

It was so much fun.

[NewWaveChick1981]

66. GMTA...

:thumbsup: :hi:

[SPKrazy]

49. You Are A D...

nah, you aren't a dumbass, you are just NWC

and that's okay with me!

Series1111!!!!!


;) :loveya: :hug:

[NewWaveChick1981]

51. It's OK... you can say it... My siblings and I were total dumbasses...

:rofl: :hi: :loveya: But I did survive to laugh at myself. Fortunately, I didn't get hurt at all, but that's a miracle. :P

:loveya: Thanks!

[SPKrazy]

52. Once I Told My Sister That I Could Hypnotize Her

so I had her hyperventilate standing on her bed, and then told her to hold her breath and she passed out and got a big gash in her head!

Now who's the dumbass? Me? or Her? Who got in trouble? It wasn't her!

So I'm the dumbass for getting caught!

:pals: :loveya:

[Crabby Appleton]

61. sounds like a great game!

[NewWaveChick1981]

63. Yes indeed...

:rofl: I haven't played it since then, though... :P

[InternalDialogue]

73. Gawd, that's funny.

Where did we come up with games like that? Dirtclod War, Swingset Catapult, Bareknuckle Trampoline Boxing -- it's a virtual Olympics of Idiocy.

[JackBeck]

4. One time, I wondered what would happen if I touched the spark plug on

the lawn mower while it was running. I got shocked so bad I literally thought I saw my own skeleton. Never touched that little fucker ever again.

[Lautremont]

5. I have a good one:

Years ago I had a job building pallets. This just involved using an air nailer to nail boards together, hour after hour. I worked alone in a big warehouse space.

After awhile, I was just holding the nailer with the trigger depressed all the time. (For those who've never used one, you pull the trigger and press the nose up against whatever you're nailing, and push it in - so you can't just fire nails around the room.) At one point, my temple began to itch. By now the nailer was just an extension of my hand, so I pressed the tip against my temple and scratched it...

Then I stopped, wide-eyed, and v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y pulled the nailer away from my head. Tragedy was averted. But I can't help but wonder what people would have thought, finding me in the middle of the room, dead with a nail in my head. They'd have had to conclude it was a suicide, because how else could it have happened? No one could possibly be that stupid. But someone was: me. It was a learning experience, believe me.

[cobalt1999]

33. of all the stories posted...

this is the one that makes me cringe. Probably because it that's a mistake I could see myself making. Luckily you didn't have to scratch your "lower regions".

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

69. Heh, the fact that I could see myself doing exactly that made it seem funny to me

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

68. I'm SO sorry, but I found that incredibly funny. That sounds exactly like something I would do

I've done that holding lit lighters. Lighting something, reach up, hand to temple, you hear sizzling, smell burnt air, and start wacking the side of your head trying to put out embers, heh.

[seemunkee]

6. Climbing

I would give more detail but don't want to be called a rich white leach on society for particpating in "thrill" sports.
I was young and stupid and thankfully did not need SAR to bail us out.

[LSK]

7. I posted in GD today

:scared:

[LynneSin]

13. I figured it would be losing to me this week in Fantasy football

:eyes:

[LSK]

16. well nothings on the line, so I will probably kick ass again

Not sure what our matchup means????

[LynneSin]

20. There is something always on the line

This is the championship of the first round losers!

[LSK]

21. yeah, but only one of us choked from the #2 seed

:rofl:

[LynneSin]

23. Yeah but the biggest chokers has got to be Vash and Finnfan

They were the #1 & #2 seeds now they are battling for 3rd & 4th place

[BarenakedLady]

14. Lighting my hair on fire

While stoned in the middle of a restaurant waiting to be seated. I was playing with my lighter. :eyes:

:smoke:

[SPKrazy]

48. Muahhhhhhh!

Oh BNL, I can picture that now!

:P :rofl:

:smoke:

[BarenakedLady]

54. Oh sure laugh at me

and I didn't even mention the fact that my boyfriend at the time had to smack the side of my head to put it out. :rofl:

Oh and the smell.....

[SPKrazy]

55. I Only Laugh Because I'm As Close To A Darwin Award As You

he slapped your head to put it out!


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[mainegreen]

17. I almost went under a lawnmower when I was a kid when running down hill.

I wont go within 20 feet of a lawnmower now. If I ever have a lawn I'm letting it go natural.

[some guy]

18. rolling down Ruby hill

some friends and I used to go to this park late at night, get high, and roll down the hill (a great hill for sledding in the winter...) it's fairly steep, fairly long, and when you get to the bottom you can lie on your back and watch the stars zoom left and right across the sky until your head stops spinning.

Great fun!

Except the time I was rolling down the hill, and slammed my thigh into a tree. Hurt like hell; lucky it wsn't my head that hit the tree...

:smoke: :rofl:

[Porcupine]

57. But were you in a truck tire at the time? I was.

Ok maybe it wasn't Ruby hill but we hadn't scouted the hill we were on for rocks (which my friend found later on a bicycle but different story).

[some guy]

60. ooh

I've been a posting fool tonight, and this one got scrolled off "my DU" fornt page list of posts...

Anyway, no. Just sort of lie at the top of the hill, and start rolling side to side (because you get a higher RPM) and awaaayyyy we'd go...

:hi:

[naturalselection]

19. Fell off a step ladder

fixing a window and nearly impaled myself with a screwdriver.

At the last second I turned on my side and missed it.

[AllegroRondo]

22. Sledding when I was a kid

we found an awesome sledding hill, that ended going over low wall (about 2 feet), over a sidewalk, and into the street. we would station one kid at the bottom to look for traffic. when he signalled 'all clear', a half dozen kids would take off at once. if you got enough speed, you could make it all the way across the street. if not, you had to get up and run before cars came.

[eyesroll]

42. We did that on skateboards or scooters (lying face down, of course) on the bike path hill.

Two doors down from my parents' house -- it was a great, steep hill, and you could get a lot of speed. There really should have been a stop sign for cars (there was one for bikes, but you could get enough momentum that if you weren't familiar with the hill, stopping would be tough) -- I have no idea how there weren't more bike-car collisions.

I got in big trouble for that one, because I was about 12, and the owner of the scooters was about 7, and his parents (rightfully) thought I should "know better."

[momophile]

70. I have a friend who took out a kidney sledding

ran into a tree.

can be scary business.

[Patiod]

24. Skinny dipping in ocean before a hurricane, drunk

Waves running parallel to the beach.

I figured that since I was with a lifeguard, I was OK (and a cute Stone Harbor guard, at that).

Definite Darwin fodder.

[LynneSin]

27. If I had a nickel for every drunk & stupid thing I've done in Ocean City MD

I'd be a very rich person.

But it's very safe to say that the one thing we never did was drive. Once the cars got to the condo they were parked pretty much for the entire time. There were too many great bars within walking distance or you could get a daily pass for the bus for $1

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

25. Formula One cars. I was 19. I shit you not.

Got a nice spot for taking pics during a pre-season test session at the Jacarepaguá circuit:

I was at the exit of turn 5. After taking a satisfactory amount of pics, I started walking back to my grandstand, largely following the rightwards red arrow away from turn 5 in the link above. At some point, there was some hard-to-negotiate muddy terrain, so I just jumped over the 1-meter-high guard rail and kept walking in the same direction. Nothing between me and the likes of these whizzing by:



Eventually I got a stern warning by a track marshal. Yes, I could have ben ran over by Ayrton Senna!

[Little Wing]

26. Playing at a friend's house, we found a .45 and a bunch of bullets

Were cocking it, doing the slide thingy, pulling the trigger. Then someone loaded it. We practiced pulling the trigger while our thumbs over the hammer and lowering it back into position.

Held it against my head, cocked, loaded, and off safe without even realizing it.

[kath]

36. OMG! Sounds like you come the closest, so far.

How old were you?

[Little Wing]

39. 11, maybe 13

somewhere around there

[cobalt1999]

28. Too many to list them all, but a couple that stand out...

As a teenager, taking dad's boat out in the middle of the night with my girlfriend. Pitch black night, little to no shore lights, running about 40mph when something just didn't feel right. I turned off to port by instinct and saw an unlit dock whiz by on the starboard side. The height would have taken both our heads right off.

Another boating story from my college days, my good friend and I went out in a small runabout during a small craft advisory in January to "jump waves" and generally act like stupid males. My friend buried the bow in the base of a large wave that proceeded to roll over us filling the boat almost full. Shivering, no radio, no one knew where we were, still out in large waves, boat with about 6" of freeboard remaining, luckily the outboard was still running. We bailed like mad and a couple of hours later made it home with mild hypothermia. If the wave had filled us a little bit more or the outboard had quit or another wave hit us just wrong, that would have been it for us.

[Shakespeare]

29. You know those inversion tables (you lie on and hang upside down for your back)?

Well, about 20 years ago, my mom had a super-heavy-duty one prescribed by her doctor. They decided to store it in my room when I went away to college, and put it in front of my bookcase. When I was home on a break that year, I needed a book and didn't feel like trying to remove the behomoth back swing thingie, so I stepped up on one foot run, and leaned over to reach the book. HUGH!!1! mistake. That fucker flipped me up and over and body-slammed me into the tiny space between the bookcase and the wall, and my GOD did it hurt. And I was way, way too embarrassed to tell anybody what happened. A few days later, my mom noticed some odd bruises on my arms and asked what on earth happened to me. I sheepishly told her about my encounter with the inversion table, and she--kind soul--nearly passed out laughing (and still does to this day).

[carly denise pt deux]

30. spraying aerosol carb cleaner into the air and lighting it with a lighter

I shudder thinking about it now.
then there was the time I opened a lighter and let the fumes go in my mouth, didn't breathe out forcefully, just slightly when I lit the air, the flame went straight up and burned my nose, eyebrows, and bangs.
Carly

[Schema Thing]

31. I was arc welding, and had basically built a steel frame around myself...

...in the middle section of a tall, steelframed, rolling materials cart. Working on the last corner, suddenly I wasn't arc welding any more. I lifted my mask, looked around, and see that I'm holding the handle of the electrode clamp, but no cable is attached. Sure enough, laying lazily over the frame I've built, is the cable with fat copper wire ends exposed.

I calmly lifted a leg over the frame, then the other leg, and walked over to the welding power supply unit and shut it off.

It was at that moment I realized how close to frying I had been a short few seconds earlier, and went a little weak in the knees.

[Initech]

32. I was on a flight to DFW during one of the biggest thunderstorms they've ever had.

Of course, if that had happened, the pilot probably would have been the one to win that one!

[Pacifist Patriot]

34. I still vividly recall the "MACK" logo on the front of the truck.

We were across the street stealing cherries from a local farmer. When we ran back on to the army base I got caught in the headlights of a huge truck. It honked, I froze but then managed to sprint. This was...31 years ago when I was 7...I still wake up on occasion with a beating heart. I was truly a heartbeat away from being road kill. Damn were we stupid.

[Redstone]

35. How about going into a combat zone on purpose, and as a CIVILIAN? I didn't have to obey

anyone's orders, even.

But hey, $1500 per month was a lot of money in 1972.

Redstone

[texas1928]

37. Too many things to mention...

I grew up in West Texas. In a small town, with lots of being bored. I am a redneck, so our famous last words are usually "HEY YA'LL WATCH THIS!!"

I have done more things on dares than I care to admit. I was one of those ones that would try stuff, just to do it.

[carly denise pt deux]

40. oh yeah, there was that one time we went cow tipping, only to find an awake bull in the pasture.....

I grew up in SE NM, it is the same atmosphere as west Texas.
Carly

[pink-o]

43. Some of the cars I've driven when I was younger

...that should never have left the junkyard--and I knew it. I owned a VW bus in the 80s that always leaked brake fluid, so I would careen down the hills using the stick shift and hand brake to slow it down.

But the best one was a Subaru that went thru 3 alternators in a year, and the whole wiring caught fire right under the dashboard. Instead of pulling over, I floored it and sped into the mechanic 1/2 mile away (he knew me and that car very well) where they took 5 extinguishers to it.

Honestly, no wonder our parents end up with grey hair, watching our antics when we're young!

[Ptah]

45. motorcycle & alcohol impairment & left turn into oncoming Ford LTD

:scared:

[SPKrazy]

47. Once When Drunk And High, Tried To Rescue A Canoe From A Strainer

which is a mess of trees and branches that are in fast moving water that is pulling things down. The canoe was fiberglass. We (my friend and I) were wasted and the canoe breaks in half and gets sucked down the strainer. We are trying to get it out and were really risking our lives there for a cheap assed canoe.

The worst part (for which I still feel guilty) is that we left the canoe, swam down to a place where we could get out. We found an aluminum canoe tied up. We took it and went down to the rental place it came from. We walked back to his vehicle and we went and got more wasted.

Insane.

Darwin award material for sure.

:blush:

[NNadir]

50. All of that information has to do with episodes in which I was high.

I don't remember all of it, but I stay sober now.

[SPKrazy]

53. Good For You!

Me Too!

Gawd only knows how many times I could have won a Darwin!

:pals:

[originalpckelly]

56. I touched a capacitor even after I was told repeatedly not to...

for someone reason I just didn't listen and touched anyway. I was shocked, for about 6 months I had this white spot on my finger.

Ouch!

[Kutjara]

58. Donkey-bothering.

No, not what you filthy minded swine are thinking.

When I was six and living on my aunt and uncle's farm, I used to chase their poor old donkey around the farmyard. The animal was remarkably even-tempered and tolerant, mostly just running out of my reach and trying to return to peaceful contemplation. One day, however, I must have really been tormenting the poor thing because it turned and kicked. With both legs. Each rear hoof whistled a hairsbreadth on either side of my head (one so close it left a streak of dirt on my cheek). The donkey had let me know in no uncertain terms that it could have taken my head clean off.

Even a moronic six-year-old got that message.

[Porcupine]

59. I wedged a Saab 99 between 2 trees above a flooded creek

If it wasn't for the trees I was definately going into the creek and that would not have been survivable. All four wheels of the Saab were off the ground. I had a buddy who was on the volunteer fire department that picked me up and he was duly impressed. I got the most car destroyed for least injuries award.

I haven't had a moving violation or an accident since then; 16 years now.

[Vidar]

62. Testing flashbulbs with 2 wires & an electical socket.

[RetroLounge]

65. We called it Skitching...

Grabbing car bumpers in the winter, leaning back on your boot heels, and sking on the back of the car.

This was back when cars actually had chrome metal bumpers. The cars could get good speed up, and on turns you could let go and get propelled into snowbanks.

Stupid...

RL

[Kutjara]

67. You reminded me of something that happened...

...during the World Rally Championship several years ago. Rallying is one of the last motorsports that allows spectators within touching distance of the competitors' cars. Crowds of people line tiny dirt roads, while 500 horsepower cars hurtle past at 120+ mph, a few feet away, on the ragged edge of control.

In Portugal, it has become something of a tradition for the more macho spectators to attempt to actually touch the cars as they tear past. When Tommy Makkinen, the world champion at the time, pulled into his pit area at the end of one stint, his crew found a thumb lodged in his rear bumper. This was disturbing enough, but what was even weirder was that nobody reported a thumb missing and nobody turned up at the medical aid station with such an injury.

So some guy must have got his thumb torn off by a car and then just continued watching the race. Now that's dedication.

[S n o w b a l l]

71. Drinking shots of Jagermeister....

...at a sales meeting with my coworkers. I went upstairs to my hotel room, turned on the bath water and laid down and passed out on the bed. Next thing I know, there were maintenance men in my room waking me up. My bathtub had overflown so bad the whole room was flooded and leaking down in the next floor's room. My co-workers nicknamed me Flipper.

[InternalDialogue]

72. Driving in a snowstorm, Nebraska I-80, 50-lb miter saw loose at my side.

Lost traction on an overpass around midnight, fishtailed a couple times before spinning backward and skidding off the highway. I dropped down the embankment and rolled about 150 feet down the hill. Came to rest nearly upside down, with the driver's side window pressed into the snow and the miter saw miraculously suspended directly above my head. When the rescuers arrived and climbed up on the passenger door, I was able to tell them to grab the saw first thing when they opened the door so it wouldn't fall and brain me. Lord, I wonder now why I hadn't strapped that thing in when I started driving...