Stoopid is as stoopid does........

[Matt Harper]

I was chatting on the phone to Dave H last night and he commented that I didn't sound too chipper. When I told him what ailed me, he totally pissed himself laughing.

I'll preface this with the following: Have you ever been about to start some task that involves an element of risk, added to a high level of inexperience/incompetence and at the critical moment, thought to yourself, "I shouldn't be doing this - all manner of horrible sh*t could befall me if this goes piss-shaped" - and then done it anyway?

So, I'm standing in my driveway, looking up at a 60 foot pine tree. One of the boughs overhangs my drive and the really nasty, sticky sap leaks out of it onto my car, where it promptly sets like Gorilla Glue and can only be removed with a razor blade.
I'm super-pissed off about how it's fugging-up my paintwork and decide that decisive action needs to be taken.
Out comes the aluminum ladder set and (living in the land of plenty) chainsaw - every good home should have one.
The "I shouldn't be doing this" epiphiny struck me as I was about to make the decisive cut....
In order to make a long and excrutiatingly painful story short, I hit the ground at about the same time the branch did. My triple backward somersault (with pike) culminated with me making contact with my lawn (thankfully) like a well packed bushel of sh*t. Rather clumsily, I managed to alight on mt still-running chainsaw. I suspect I owe my life to the person who invented the chain-brake for this device, because without it, I suspect my handy pruning device would have neatly disembowelled me. Just to put a truly Laurel & Hardyesque finish to the whole sorry scene, the ladder then came crashing down on my prostrate form.
A neighbor casually ambled over with a view to rendering first aid, but had a tough time contolling his laughter at the spectacle of me winded and covered in chain oil, with my swede poking through the rungs of my now Fyfes-shaped ladder.
Having fully recovered my dignity and kind of suggesting that I meant to do that, I hobbled back indoors, feeling a little queezy and sporting an impressivly varied array of contusions and lacerations.
Shortly after I took to my bed and when I awoke, felt like I'd done ten arduous rounds with 'Alfonse' (the boxer who used to take on all comers in the fairground at Le Mans in't early 80's).
I would be interested to here the outcome of other members "I shouldn't be doing this" moments.  

[Steve Pyro]

Top man Matt, I can picture it now.  Did you manage to complete your arboriculture.



My wife is 100% paranoid about me chopping my legs off when I'm doing a little light pruning with the chainsaw.  She insists on standing by me when I'm 'in action' and she went and bought me a pair of those kevlar chaps.
The trouble with the chaps is they're so thick and heavy I have to take my trousers off when I wear them.
Needless to say I look like a certain member of Village People.


However, to the matter in hand - stoopid things.
You may or may not recall that we keep chickens (bastard foxes!!!).

One weekend morning last year, I was woken from my slumber not by my darling wife with a cup of coffee, but by her shreiking that some of the chickens had "got out" and were roaming around the front garden near to the main road.
Well, to the rear of the house, the left side and across the road is open countryside, our garden being bordered at the side by thick hawthorn hedgerow.

I leapt out of bed (starkers) threw on the dressing gown (a la Noel Coward) and headed for the back door, pausing only to don some footwear - a pair of steel toe capped welly boots.
So out into the garden, in a rather fetching attire to round up the chickens, with almost complete success.

Except one of the bastards tried to force her way through the hedgerow.  My wife decided a pincer movement was in order and despatched me to the other (field) side of the hedgerow.  This necessitated walking out onto the main (A137) road, into the field and along the hedge.
So far, so good.  I'd managed to avoid being spotted by any passing cars.

I managed to bend down and grab hold of the chicken and execute the 'how to hold a chicken action'.  That is, position the chicken under your arm, holding the feet with the hens backside forward so that the little sod doesn't sh*t down your clothes - are you still with me?  

I managed to just about reach the main road as a car slowly passed (complete with elderly couple out for a Sunday drive).

Unfortunately, my poorly fastened dressing gown managed to snag on a piece of hawthorn, just as the car approached, and I executed a very stylish genital 'flash'.

I can only imagine Mrs Old Dears comments to her husband - "Did you see that dear?  That man with wellington boots on and a chicken under his arm has just flashed us".

[garystout]

Steve , if you were in France, he would have said that it just means theres police just around the corner!!!!!!

[jpchenet]

Bloody hell Matt!! Glad you're OK....'ish.

Reminds me of a guy who got pissed in a bar in Aldershot back in the mid 90's. He had a bit too much to drink and got thrown out by the landlord, and as he left was followed out by a few locals who'd taken a disliking to him and beat 10 colours of shite out of him for no apparent reason.

He returned half an hour later with a chainsaw and proceeded to cut the bar in half, as well as several tables and chairs.

One of the aforementioned locals tried to make his escape by jumping over the bar, but the chasing chainsaw caught him from behind as he leant over the bar and ripped a rather nasty slice in his behind.

[Andy Zarse]

Matt, you bilthering fool, what on earth were you playing at, a man of your physique?? I'm glad you're ok, even though a bit battered and bruised.

My own "I shouldn't be doing this" moment was more of a "This shouldn't be happening to me" moment. I was once a spotty faced engineering apprentice just after leaving school at 16 on account of being too thick for A levels. The cuff of my overalls  got caught in the power driven feed spindle of a ten foot high radial drilling machine. It proceeded to drag my hand into the works with hilarious consequences, though for some strange reason I failed to see the comedy value at the time it was occuring. Probably because I thought I was about to die. My thanks to a quick witted colleague who hit the safety shut-down button. I still have a two inch scar to prove it. It was about this time I reckonned the engineering life wasn't really for me, that and the crap wages.

If your incident was like mine, the peculiar thing was it all happened in slow motion. I wonder what it felt like to be the bloke who recently contrived to feed himself through an industrial wood chipper? It must have stung quite a bit. Apparently he made lovely compost.

Get well soon.

Andy Z

[Nordic]

That reminds me, this happened at my first place of work.

While working in a factory that produced the stuff white lines are made of, basically molten plastic with extra sand and glass beads thrown in. I was attempting to fill a tin with the molten mix when I caught the bucket with the heel of my work boots, this then caused the bucket to tip the molten plastic into my gauntlet.

I bravely tried to carry on as I was in no pain and thought I could pick it off at home later. This proved not to be possible as the more worldly wise workers suggested I went to the Qeen Vic Hospitial burns unit just down the road. Several hours later the plastic was off, togeather with a fair amout of skin. What remained look like a poached fish.

2 weeks later I was able to have a skin graft which has left a very manly scar on my lower arm.

[stuey]

How do you get rid of an ants nest under your patio.
Ant powder? No; I had a much better idea.

Burn the bastards. Easy, lift a slab, pour on a little unleaded, strike a match throw it on and listen to them sizzle. Then move to the next slab and repeat.
This was working a treat until I failed to notice that the petrol was still burning before pouring the next lot. The petrol I was pouring ignited, and in my panic I dropped the can spilling more petrol, most of it on me.

I'm now in the middle of the garden with my Tee shirt on fire and my incredulous wife watching me through the patio windows.

I managed to get the Tee shirt off and put out the flames on me, but the petrol can was still burning next to the house. My quickly devised plan, kick it away before the house goes up. This would have worked well had I not kicked it up against the wooden fence.

Finally got all the flames doused and went to hospital.

Two days later guess what, ants!!!

[Chris24]

My moment of stupidity was when I was younger and playing around with my dads air riffle. My granddads old caravanette was sat rusting away under our old barn so I decided it would be fun to shoot out the tyres. Have done the tyres on that, I decided to go one better and shoot an old tractor tyre that was also under the barn. Only problem is the rubber is alot thicker, and the air gun pellet bounced back off the tyre and i shot myself in the mouth / lip and burst my lip open.
Its strange but true, but yes the whole incident seemed to happen in slow motion. I could see the pellet coming straight back at me in slow motion but was unable to do anything about it.

[Matt Harper]

Matt, you bilthering fool,

Utterly FANTASTIC! What a beautiful word. My dad used to call me a blithering idiot when I was a youngster.
He calls me a f**k*ng spastic these days.

[Matt Harper]

Well done Stuey! I figured the gas can would go over at some point. Glad you didn't torch your home and wife. We are plagued by fire ants here in FL - and they live in significant numbers under my cracked driveway slab. They periodically emerge with a mini-volcano of earth and a lot of ant-like activity as they run around doing the things fire ants do. I decided to eliminate one Vesuvius-like ant hill, by parking the rear wheel of my pick-up truck on it and directing the horesepower from it's 5.9 litre Mopar V8 into ant-central. Needless to say, the ants got vapourised - and I nearly knocked my garage over.

Nice one Chris, shooting oneself is always hilarious.  

[Perdu]

Totally stupid moments? Hundreds of the buggers when I was in toolmaking.

Setting the cutter far too deep on a block of steel in the vise on my shaper (big noisy bugger that slices metal one strip at a time) the steel jammed the cutter which was too big anyway and forced the steel out of the vice into the swarf bin and down onto my foot  Trainers not totectors! Back in the early seventies, no H&S at Work act then and me stoopid! Badly damaged but unbroken toes, phew.

Airgun mayhem? Twice... Shot small Gat .177 pistol indoors and the pellet bounced off a distant wall and smacked my little son in the face. Fortunately no more damage than his confidence in "dad" lost forevermore, but a small red mark to show his mom!

And I had a Chris24 moment two years ago, I shot a piece of wood which the .22 pellet should have penetrated, but it bounced OFF and I watched it in horror as it flew straight back at my (open) eye. Unable to move at the speed it could, I could only blink in terror. The relief as it hit my eyelid and only cut it a fraction and didn't blind me still makes me shudder...

Time does telescope when this stuff happens. I watched that flying pellet for about a fortnight!

Bill (chastened after remembering this stuff)

 

[DavidsDad]

Reading the above stories about daft things we've done as apprentices, I recalled a time when I was a student apprentice at a nearby Power Station during the hot summer of 1968.  

My personal idiocy wasn't sudden, machine-related or at all scary at the time, but gives me the willies whenever I think of it.  One of the favourite places to sunbathe when it was quiet at weekends during the shut down was high up on the turbine house roof, with our overalls laid on swathes of the pipe-laggers asbestos as a matress.  

Hey ho.  So far so good.

[Chris24]

My best one as an apprentice machinist follows .

I was clocking up the vice with a Dial Test Indicator (DTI) and mag base, to make sure the vice was square to the machine bed. To do this you put the mag base and DTI onto the machine spindle and put the machine in neutral so you can turn the spindle by hand. Only this machine had no neutral, so I set it to the highest revs of 2800 rpm which is the next best thing to neutral for turning the spindle by hand.

Then I mistakenly pressed the spindle start button instead of the table fast traverse button that was next to it on the control panel.

Result, DTI and mag base parts flying in all directions across the machine shop at high speed. One part just missed the head of the guy working on the next machine by only millimetres !

[Stu]

And I had a Chris24 moment two years ago, I shot a piece of wood which the .22 pellet should have penetrated, but it bounced OFF and I watched it in horror as it flew straight back at my (open) eye. Unable to move at the speed it could, I could only blink in terror. The relief as it hit my eyelid and only cut it a fraction and didn't blind me still makes me shudder...

A similar thing happened to me when I was young and me and my mate used to hit Hilti Gun cartridges (which are like little bullets) with a hammer. Nearly sh*t myself when the blood was pouring from my eye. Fortunately it was just below my eyeball.

Another stupid thing happened at work once when we got called to a man threatening to blow himself up via the gas in his house. We turned up and I parked the appliance outside his house and just stood around passing the odd message back to our control. After about 1 Hour of fruitless negoiations from the police and while the bloke from the gas board was sawing throw his gas pipe outside, the front off the house blew out.
An 8 * 4 window frame missed me by about 2 inches (I kid you not) and a load of people got showered by bricks. The roof of the appliance was also on fire which resulted in my trying to put it out whilst the thought of reams of paperwork flashed before my eyes. Fortunately theree were only a few bruises here and there. Even the bloke survived and there was no damage to the machine. I always park well away from jobs like that now.

[Nordic]

Myself and a Friend found two unused shot gun cartridges in woodland behind his house, dropped by a gamekeeper or armed robber.

Owning a airgun we decided that we should part bury the cartridges in mole hill and try to shot the percussion cap from behind a small sapling. Dispite some near misses we never hit the right spot so gave up. Worried that our parents may discover what we had been up to we decided to burn them.

Instead of the explosion we hoped for it was more of a fizzle, but I am quite thankful that we where pretty poor shots.