Call *that* stupid?

[Theseus]

Have also through the lead on the garden strimmers. A wonder I didn't electrocute myself.

Thanks for the reminder. When I was putting the strimmer away last night after a bout of slash'n'burn gardening I noticed that the power cord was damaged. Fortunately the damaged bit is not too far from the plug, time to trim the cable.

 

[Melonfish]

Under no circumstances is it advisable to tell your father in laws m8 to test kick his 1960's BSA whilst you still have hold of the dynamo...
the wall behind me however cushioned my impact nicely as my FIL folded up into tears of laughter!

Hah, one when i was a kid and knew little better, i sat a candle in a bottle on the living room table you know to get that dribbling candle effect on the bottle.
well turns out the candle had that weird plastic coating on it stopping it from melting like that so my loss i guess. until i looked up at the ceiling and spotted the soot stain.
i freaked out and ran into the kitchen to get the bleach and cloths etc. after 10 minutes furious scrubbing this soot stain just isn't coming out (i'm like 15 here) so i resign myself to telling my parents i'd made a mess of the ceiling.
shortly after sundown my parents come in and proclaim loudly "What is that on the ceiling?"
pointing at the very very white patch of ceiling.

see it wasn't a soot stain at all, no it was actually a reflected shadow of the light fitting/shade on the ceiling, me being a total numpty had seen the darkness and assumed it was soot, both my parents being smokers meant i had made a lovely brilliant white patch in the middle of our ceiling.
i've never seen my parents laugh so much - that is until my dad had to re-paint it lol.

 

[thnurg]

At 9 years old I didn't know the difference between 3 volts DC and 240 volts AC. I stuck a couple of wires into an extension cord then tried to power my lego lights from the wires. *BANG*.

More recently I had the front of our oven off to try and work out why it was not working and got a shock from the thermostat. It turns out our 2-year-old had fiddled with the timer.

 

[tyred]

Aged about 5, my Dad told me I could rejuvenate my torch batteries for another while by warming them up slightly. Taking his advice ti heart, I set two R20 batteries on top of the hot plate on the kitchen range. 5 minutes later - BANG, and the kitchen was covered in black dust. Mum not very pleased.

 

[ceepeebee]

Have also through the lead on the garden strimmers. A wonder I didn't electrocute myself.

I watched a lady do this very thing on Saturday morning in Dulwich - she'd got the cable draped over the hedge straight in front of her too, one swipe and BANG.

 

[Pennine-Paul]

Many years ago I had a VW beetle with a dodgy starter battery,
couldn't be bothered removing the back seat to access the battery
( this is where they are to be found on old Beetles bizarrely)
So I disconnected the live battery terminal then connected the charger leads
to charge overnight,so far so good.....................................got up in the morning and
took off the charger leads then started to attach the live battery terminal,the spanner
then touched the seat rail and the live terminal...................................................the resultant bang
was like a bomb going off It blew the battery apart and showered my hand in battery acid

I went out and bought a new battery after that little incident

 

[2PedalsTez]

My old college tutor would tell us that it wasn't the electric shock that hurts. It's what you hit on the other side of the room that really hurts. Of course that didn't stop us discharging some big capacitors on each other.

I refer some of my tales as the 'Homer Simpson moment' - You know it's gonna hurt but you just can't help yourself!

One such example is somehow thinking I can time to perfection flicking my finger between the rotating blades on one of those food mixers (the hand held thing with two mixing blades that spin against each other). Turns out that *after* trying it is impossible. I'm not sure what was worse; the shame of seeing perfect lines of skin missing and not being able to bend my finger for several days or my wife asking what the muffled swearing was for as I hold back tears.

 

[MarkF]

I'd have been 16/17 and found a stinking plastic bag of rotting mushrooms under my bed, magic mushrooms (mostly, was never 100% at identification), I collected them often. I was mad at myself for forgetting about them, it seemed a such a waste, then I had the brilliant idea of making soup with them...........I was in hospital within hours..

 

[Archie_tect]

Should this thread be renamed "Darwin Contenders"?

 

[compo]

Talking about Darwin contenders....

I have to feed a brake cable through the frame of an MTB I am doing up. I haven't got round to doing it yet as other jobs came first. I have been trying to think the best way to do it. I looked back on CC and saw a method where you leave the outer in situ, slide through the inner, remove the old outer then slide a new outer over the cable. For a good half an hour I decided it wouldn't work for me because my new cable had nipples at both ends.

I really am getting old and maybe a bit senile!

 

[byegad]

I married my first wife. Big mistake!

 

[Hover Fly]

At the age of 18 I rejected an offer of courtship from a young lady in favor of her slightly prettier rival.
By the time she was 19 rejectee was a director of a (now) international company.
Slightly prettier rival was convicted of arson before her 22nd birthday. Luckily I had finished with her.

 

[Archie_tect]

[OK if rejectee was Rebekah Brookes?]

 

[threebikesmcginty]

...rival was convicted of arson before her 22nd birthday. Luckily I had finished with her.

That's some old flame!

 

[fatblokish]

Cycling home from swimming, with my wet trunks and towel in a plaggy bag hung from the handlebars. I enjoyed the noise they made tinkling against the spokes when I went around a corner, so repositioned the bag for a more impressive crescendo.

Woke up covered in blood.