The Dumbest Thing You’ve Ever Done
Posted by Corey on October 25, 2009
Do you laugh often? Do you take yourself too seriously? I have found that the vast majority of people fall into one of these two categories. I’d bet that you can instantly create a list of your friends, family members, etc. and put each one of them into one category or the other. However, like all of my posts, this one is about YOU!!
Although we all sense that laughter has major psychological benefits, we don’t take advantage of them. We don’t laugh enough. We all take ourselves too seriously sometimes. There are many causes for this phenomenon - most commonly stress related. Another cause is that fact that life is tough - not every day is a laughing matter. However, let’s hope that your life isn’t super-stressful and super-tough every single day. If it is, you need to be looking elsewhere for help. For the rest of us, we need to work in more laughter into our average day.
I am interested in which category you fall into. I want to know if you laugh often - at least one heart-felt laugh every day. If you find that you take yourself too seriously then try this activity. Think back to the dumbest thing that you’ve ever done. Then, ask yourself how you can ever take yourself too seriously ever again.
I’ll start with my dumbest moment. Please read carefully so that this never happens to you.
About six years ago, I ironed my own neck! I was getting ready for an important job interview and was running late. Walking out the door, I noticed a small wrinkle on my collar. I sensed that trying to iron it ASAP was a bad idea but my shirt was already on and tucked in. Not wanting to be late, I turned the iron to high and went for it. It slipped a bit and it ran across 3/4 of my neck. The wound made it look like I tried to kill myself.
So, I walked into the job interview and the first thing that the senior partner said was, “What happened? Did you try to kill yourself this morning?” He was clearly kidding but I couldn’t respond, “No sir. I actually ironed my own neck this morning. I make really good decisions so please hire me for your Mergers and Acquisitions team.” So, I just looked away and whispered, “It’s just acne.” What a mess. Obviously, I did not get the job.
How can I ever take myself too seriously again after ironing my own neck! I can tell you that other people find this story hilarious. Although it was not very funny to me at the time, I have come to laugh at the situation every time it comes up. Every time I feel serious, I think back and at least giggle inside.
With my mistake in mind, it’s your turn. Please recount the dumbest thing(s) that you have ever done. Use the comment section below. We’ll let the world determine how your dumb move compares with mine.
I’d have to say the dumbest thing I ever did just happened a few weeks ago. I went on a tour at the Coors Brewing Factory with my boyfriend. I was exhausted from school and wanted to do something away from campus. We took the bus to the factory and when we first walked in there were display cases each with a setup of a chair and a booth. I looked at them and walked over to the display and not realizing that there was glass surrounding them, I waled straight into the glass and hit my head. Everyone around me starred at me as if I was some kind of crazy person. My boyfriend looked over at me and started cracking up. It was pretty embarrassing.
Here’s my stupid story – Without my parent’s knowledge, I conned my older brother, who just turned eighteen, into purchasing an air gun for me. After shooting off a couple hundred BB’s into telephone books positioned on the back wall of my bedroom’s closet, I was curious to find out how strong the gun’s air pressure was. So I placed the palm of my hand in front of the barrel and pulled the trigger. I didn’t realize that there was a BB left in the chamber. I shot myself in the hand at point blank range! Long story short – The metal pellet had to be surgically removed. Medical bill - $6000. Learning a lesson – priceless.
One of the dumbest things I have ever done was I was trying to make toast in my toaster oven and I put the toast on a paper plate in the oven and I walked away for a few minutes. I came back and my toaster was on fire! It had to be removed from the house and hosed down. Needless to say my parents banned me from the kitchen for a while after that.
When I was a senior in high school, I studied abroad for ten months in Loja, Ecuador. Somewhere in the middle of my stay, I went to a dance/party with some of the friends I had made at school. When I heard one of them begin to ask around for a lighter so he could smoke a cigarette, I spotted the stove in the kitchen. I took the cigarette out of his hand, walked to the kitchen, and lit the stove. Here’s where the story really gets dumb… Instead of holding the end of the cigarette in the flame I put it in my mouth and lowered my head to the level of the stove, consequentially singeing my eyelashes, eyebrows and some of my hair. Thank God I couldn’t grow a beard!
Last year I invited a friend of mine to my now ex-boyfriend’s house. My ex was at work so the friend and I decided to watch a movie and smoke hookah until he got off work. At one point I threw something at my friend, hit the hookah and knocked hot coals onto my lap and the carpeted floor. I screamed when the coals fell, scared the dog and sent him running from under the table causing our drinks to spill everywhere. After cleaning up the spilled drinks and getting the coals off my lap we settled back down to the movie only to notice a funky smell coming from somewhere. It was then we noticed that the coals on the floor were burning holes in the carpet. At that point, my ex came home and I had to tell him all about the burn spots in the carpet and my pants, the puddle on the floor and why the dog was hiding in the closet.
This story is one of many clumsy episodes of mine. From spilling liquids on both computers I’ve owned since starting college to wiping out on my bike several times and knocking over displays in stores, I am constantly making a fool of myself. I used to be embarrassed by everything, but I have realized recently that I am a klutz and there is nothing to do but laugh at myself and move on. It is important not to take life and yourself too seriously.
When i was about 12 years old, my dad and i were skiing and riding the chairlift up the mountain. As we approached the summit, i asked my dad to lift the saftey bar. He replied by saying to wait a minute until we got a little closer. The impatient kid that i was, i decided to raise the bar myself. As i did, i slipped right off my seat and plummeted about 20 feet into the snow below.
When I was a sophomore in high school I was playing soccer for the my school. On a friday night we were playing our rivals. As I was standing on the field waiting for the game to start the referee pointed out that my shorts were on backwards. This is against the rules because they have my number on them. He made me drop them and turn them around right there on the field in front of all the fans. I was heckled pretty heavily after that.
When I was a Junior in high school, the Juniors and Seniors on the soccer team would scare the the under class-men when they were sleeping at night. We would contact the parents and let them know when we were going to come and scare the kid. Contacting the parents was the job that I was given. One of the players parents were going to be out of town that night but still gave us permission to go and scare him. When we arrived at his house we opened the back door triggering the alarm and within 10 minutes the police were there and had the huge group of us sitting a circle with our hands showing at all times while they contacted his parents. Each of our parents had to wake up and come get us…at 3 in the morning.
Back at home, in Moraga, I lived next to my best friend. We live on a hill right above a field; my friend’s backyard, bordering it. In her backyard she has a huge trampoline where on the weekends we would always bring blankets and comforters outside and sleep on it. One night we decided to have a little fun and got her sister to buy us a lot of root beer*. We had some friends over and drink the root beer with us on the trampoline. Every time we finished a can we would jump as high as we could on the trampoline and chuck it over the fence. After everyone left we were impressed at how clever we were. Through out the next day we thought we were home-free until my friend’s mom drove up the hill and into her driveway. Her mom commented about the maaaannnnny scattered root beer cans visible on the hill on the field driving up to the street…..
When I was five years old, my family took a trip to King’s Dominion. My mother was ordering food when I suddenly realized that she may forget to ask for ketchup to eat with the french fries. So I, being the intelligent individual that I am, ran full speed towards my mother. I did not see the very large brick wall directly in front of me. I proceeded to run into the wall, head first. Obviously, I fractured my skull and we spend the rest of the day in the E.R.
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
My friend and I had gone camping on his ranch about an hour outside of Dallas back in high school. One day when riding his ATVs around it started to hail lightly. Being Texas and everything there were very few trees to hide under and we were about 5 miles away from our campsite so we started to rush back there. The hail started growing in size pretty quickly, soon getting up to golf ball size and finally winding up somewhere between baseball and softball size. Of course we weren’t wearing helmets or anything and just t-shirts and jeans considering it was about 95 degrees outside. We were cruising back to the campsite going about 35mph through a field when all of a sudden i saw my friend go limp and tumble off of his ATV. I stopped quickly and went back to find out what happened and to see if he was ok. He had the beginnings of what looked like the largest hickey ever considering a piece of hail hit him in the neck and knocked him out. After waking him up and getting back on our way I got hit in the face and got a black eye. Finally getting back to the campsite we realized how bad we actually looked. Not really wanting to camp anymore we went back home. I was hanging out with my ex-girlfriend (then girlfriend) the next day with a couple of friends. Needless to say they managed to point out the “hickey” on my friend’s neck and the black eye I had and called us Brokeback and Deliverance for the rest of the summer.
it was last year and we were travelling to i think Kentucky to play Belarmine, and we were in the airport and i had forgot i had scissors and a lighter in my backpack to string a lacrosse stick and when we went through security and they asked me to open my bag and i had the scissors and also i forgot i had had a pocket knife in there from when we went camping the weekend before, i was pulled to the side and was asked a bunch of questions and had to wait for other security to come and everyone on our team just thought it was an idiot and people in line were pissed because they had to wait and put up with all of the lacrosse team waiting for me. needless to say i was heckled pretty good for the rest of the trip for being such an idiot.
Sooo, when I was 16, about a month after I got my driver’s license, I was chatting it up in the parking lot after school. One of my friend’s little sisters, a freshman in high school at the time, came up to me and said that her brother had left without her (real nice guy). Since they lived just a few minutes away from me, I said I would take her home. Now, if you live in Colorado, you know there is a law that says for the first six months you have a license, you’re not allowed to drive with anyone in your car except family members. I just sort of overlooked this, if you will, and decided to give this poor girl a ride home…good karma right? I got to her house, and pulled up her excessively long driveway. As a stupid amateur driver, I decided that instead of making a few turns, it would just be easier to back out of said driveway. I took it nice and slow, and thought I was in the clear, until I realized that I was getting pretty close to their mailbox. I went to go slam on the brakes…except that the brake and gas pedal are right next to each other…and I mistakenly gunned it instead. Literally three seconds later, the entire passenger side of my car looked like it had gotten sideswiped, the side mirror hanging on by a thread, and my friend’s mailbox looked like the leaning tower of Piza. Assuring my friend’s sister that it was totally fine, no harm done, I drove - sorry, limped - home and immediately called my parents to tell them that I had a little, tiny, minor accident. Needless to say, they were not expecting the huge repair and insurance expense when they heard this… I humiliated myself, broke the law, cost my parents an obnoxious sum of money, and was not allowed to drive anyone in my family’s car for three months…as a junior in high school, this was an enormous hinderance to my lifestyle.
Trying to help someone wasn’t the problem in my situation, it was the way I went about it!
One summer night during high school my friends and i were bored and decided to take a golf cart out for a ride. I was in the passenger seat of the cart and we were going relatively fast. One of the guys we were with convinced me to get out of the cart while it was still moving. I did, but i did not account for the fact that i was going from a moving object to the still ground, didnt start running, and fell flat. The image of me slamming on the ground face first brings back funny but painful memories.
I remember in high school grade 9 or 10 I used to steal my brother’s car. One day my mother caught me and I was grounded. A week later I got pulled over for racing. The violation I received included a 4 day prison until the court date. My father had to use his connections to pull me out of this mess. A year later I rolled over with that same car, but thank God none of the passengers were injured. I had to cut the top of the car and make it convertible so that my father would not notice. Until now I have not told him about it (I hope he doesn’t read this). I don’t know when I am going to tell him but I think it will when I graduate because I’m in the US now and he’s in Kuwait. I thought about this a lot and discovered that I was very careless and I was endangering not only my life but the life of the ones around me as well.
Here’s a dumb one:
So for the last two summers I have worked for Vector Marketing selling Cutco knives to the wonderful housewives of Chicago, Illinois. I love my job and it has not only taught me much about the world of sales, but also has kept my wallet considerably full during my college years. Unfortunately however, even wonderful salesmen like myself can make mistakes (especially when handling incredibly sharp cutlery!)
So here’s the story: One beautiful Saturday this summer I was sitting out on my patio, enjoying the sunshine, when I suddenly remembered that I had a knife demonstration scheduled with my neighbor later that afternoon (aka a for sure sale). Not a big problem right? Wrong. I soon discovered that I had left my knife kit in my sisters car, and to make matters worse, she had just driven that car to her own job a couple miles down the road. So, not wanting to loose the sale, I ran to my car and prayed to Holy Mother of Avoiding the Police as I sped towards my sisters work. Upon reaching her work successfully (and without a ticket) I raced inside and demanded the keys to her car so I could retrieve my kit. She responded promptly by hurling the keys at my face, which of course I dropped, and then angrily told me where she had parked her car. I proceeded to sprint to the her car, reach in, and snatch my knife kit from its resting place on the passenger seat. Now, when I say knife kit I really mean a large, thin leather bag which holds within it over 15 incredibly sharp knives. Unsurpsingly, as I reached and and pulled it out at high speeds, one of the knife blades protruded from the bag wall and quickly made its way (nearly an inch) into my forearm. What could have been a very lucrative sale quickly turned into a long, bloody, and most embarrassing ride to the ER with my mom, concluding with three stitches. Moral of the story: don’t move fast around knives, they are made for one thing and one thing only and they WILL do it…even if you are a trained professional!
Dumb is not an accurate word to describe what I did. Stupid is probably more fitting. I got a job in Nantucket for the summer and was absolutely elated. I found out that my position did not come with company housing so I had to find my own place to live. 1,500 miles away in Colorado I didn’t know anyone on the island I didn’t know where to start looking for housing. I decided to look on the Nantucket Island website and found a classifieds page that contained a bunch of ads looking for tenants and roommates. After contacting several of them, one woman wrote me back saying that she had a place for me and that she would send me pictures. The pictures looked nice and I figured that I could tough it out for three months, after all I survived a year in the dorms. I was excited that my summer was finally coming together. My perfect fantasy summer on the beach that I had imagined quickly shattered the second I landed in ACK. I took a cab with my 2 suitcases, duffel bag and backpack to the house. Well house is an overstatement. It was more like a shack. Awesome! To top it all off when I went inside to meet my roommates, the woman who set this whole thing up didn’t live there. My roommates consisted of six divorced men all over the age of 40 and we were sharing 2 bathrooms. Perfect! I could not believe the situation I had gotten myself into. I was horrified to tell my mother for she would have got on the next flight out to island. Needless to say I spent three months hiding in my room, which turned out to be an attic that I couldn’t actually stand up in (I’m 5″1′) just imagine that. Instead of contacting my boss asking for housing references, I wanted to prove to my parents that I could take care of myself by finding my own place to live. Let me tell you the internet was not the best or safest way to go about it. I ended up saying in my lovely home on Essex Road for the entire summer but I would NEVER do it again or advise anyone to do it either. It was one hell of an experience if anything else. So while this isn’t a typical Kate is a dumb blonde story, it was definitely stupid and unsafe and I wouldn’t suggest anyone else do it unless you are looking for an good story to tell.
Hands down one of the stupidest things I have ever done was trying to prove to my mom that I could take care of myself, be independent and find my own summer share. I was headed out to Nantucket in one short month for the summer and was still looking for somewhere to live. Browsing the Nantucket Island website I ran across the classifieds page and found a room for rent. I contacted the person who put up the ad and said that I was interested. They sent me pictures of the room and I sent them a check. Everything seemed to be going well and my summer plans on Island were coming together… until I got to ACK. I arrived at my new home, or house or rather a shack to find my roommates hanging out inside. Six divorced men all over the age of 40 and two dogs. Perfect! Just the summer I had in mind. Not wanting to give my mom the satisfaction that she was right, I sucked it up and lived in an attic and shared a bathroom with three people for the entire summer. Not an ideal situation or one that I would ever recommend to someone else. SO while this was not of my typical Kate is a dumb blonde moments, it was not one of my brighter ideas.
The dumbest thing I’ve ever done was in my sophomore year of high school, my friends and I wanted to go see The Fray playing at UNC in Greeley. We went up to stay with my friend’s older sister in her sorority house. In an attempt to fit in with the older college girls, me and my 15 year old friends decided to drink some adult beverages before the show. Of course, overdoing it, we went to the show and never even made it past the opening band. From the bits I remember we talked to a very nice police officer who we kept calling “officer anthony”, his name was NOT anthony. After apparently being non compliant me and one of my friends were handcuffed and taken to the hospital in the back of a cop car. My mom had to drive 2 hours to come watch me puke all night in the hospital. Definitely not my brightest moment! to avoid situations like these see the “100 things to do without a fake id” post!!!
The dumbest thing I’ve ever done was in my sophomore year of high school when me and two friends decided to go see The Fray concert at UNC in Greeley. We stayed in her older sister’s sorority house; and trying to fit in with the older college girls, me and my fellow 15 year old friends drank some adult beverages before the show. We didn’t even make it past the opening band. From what I remember, I talked to a cop and kept telling him “Officer Anthony, Im FINE!”, i later found out his name was NOT Anthony. After being non-compliant me and one of my friends were handcuffed and escorted to the hospital in a cop car. My mom had to drive 2 hours to watch me puke in the hospital all night. Definitely not my brightest moment!! To avoid situations like these, see the “100 things to do without a fake id” post!!!!!!
So probably the dumbest/most embarrassing moment that’s happened to me was two summers ago when I was working. That day I had to go into town to pick up some stuff for work. When I got back to work (I work at a marina), I was walking along the dock kind of in my own world and staring at the hot guys that had just pulled in to get gas, so obviously not paying attention to where I was going. WELL I ended up stubbing my toe and did a roll/skid along the dock into the water. Pretty much everyone who was outside, including the guys getting gas saw my great fall. Everyone was dying laughing at my clumsiness and I had to go back into work all cut up and soaking wet. Definitely one of the most embarrassing days and even to this day the guys I work with don’t let me forget about it.
I’ve learned to laugh at my clumsiness because there have been many other times where it has caused some entertainment. Like moving over too far to catch the lacrosse ball that my friend threw from far away and instead of catching it in my stick, I ended up with a black eye. Or all the times that I’ve slipped down the stairs, tripped over something (again) or taken corners too quickly.
A few years ago somewhere between my sophmore and senior years of high school I woke up and was going through my normal morning routine. I was in the bathroom and was about to use the sink when I got that feeling that I was about to sneeze. So, I knew I didn’t have tissues around and I didn’t really want to sneeze into my hands, so I decided it would be an awesome and efficient idea to sneeze into the sink. It did not occur to me that in the process of sneezing I would smack my head into the metal faucet, giving myself a slight bump and a definite bruise. It was fun trying to explain that injury when I got to school. It was even better explaining it when I did the same exact thing a few weeks later.
Fantastic hunting story… I was around 10 years old the first time I had ever been to Southwest Texas. My Father took me to visit a few of his buddies on their gigantic ranch. This was also the first time I had ever seen an armadillo as well as the first time I had ever shot a 12-gauge shotgun. As a matter of fact, it was the first time I had ever attempted to shoot an armadillo with a shotgun. The ranch was infested with armadillos, rabbits and raccoons. Yet, hardly ever did the family living there ever shoot them. Mid-week into our stay, three of us including my Father loaded up a few shotguns and a few beers onto a big 6-wheeler and headed out to tour this huge ranch and shoot a few armadillos, rabbits and possibly some raccoons. So, the three of us eventually set out on foot, walking along the perimeter of his ranch around and through some brush spotting some shootable wildlife here and there. Around dusk we spotted a group of four or five raccoons moving along the fence line. Got one! But, the others scattered and one disappeared into some thick brush. My heart was racing, I hadn’t shot anything but a target all day! As I circled the brush, just as I was instructed to do, a raccoon ran out right in front of where I was moving. Startled, I quickly shot off two shots. Bam Bam! Damn, I missed… the raccoon. As I looked up I saw my Father drop to one knee while he leaned on his shotgun holding his chess. A small portion of each of the two buckshots had ricocheted off the hard dry dirt and hit my Father right in the chest. He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t bleeding too bad. Ironically, he had a few early that day, because he said he wasn’t in too much pain. But, man was he pissed. The glare I received as he had looked up and realized what had just happened scared me so much I instantly became catatonic as I envisioned trying to explain what just happened to my Mother. To add on to the humility, not more than 10 minutes later, a ranger approached us waiving his flashlight wondering why my Father’s chest was spotted with blood and his breath smelt like he’d been drinking. My Father told him he took a shot of whiskey after his 10 year old son shot him in the chest by accident. No fine and no hospital trip, but I was blamed for the entire thing for a day or so as he healed before we were able to laugh about it as more and more of his buddies heard the story. Unfortunately, having to explain to my Mother exactly what happened killed that laughter as well as my social life for a few weeks.
So I am a Barista at Starbucks. I love it because i get free coffee. But that is besides the point. Let me just start by saying that I will NEVER take myself seriously. No matter what happens. Because my entire life is a dumb moment. I say dumb things all the time. I am clumsy, I run into walls. I cannot even count the number of things that i have done in my life that would fall under the dumb category. Anyway, back to my story. I am a barista at Starbucks, and I work every morning before school. One morning, a customer comes through the drive through and orders a ham sandwich. I take his order and let him know I will have that for him at the window. When he gets to the window, i greet him with a barista smile and ask him how his morning is so far. When his order is ready, I grab his coffee, bang my forehead on the drive through window, and try to pretend like it didn’t hurt. He looks at me, noticing that I am in pain, and laughs. I smile, feeling so stupid, and stick my head back in, getting my hair stuck on the window handle in the process. (so now i feel REALLY dumb). THEN….as if i wasn’t embarrassed enough, I take his ham sandwich, and underestimate the proximity of his hand to the sandwich, therefore ramming the sandwich to his hand, full force. He gives me the look that i get when i do something foolish, then i end this horrible moment by saying…”i am sorry, I accidental rammed your ham into my sandwich.”
I didn’t know what else to do or say to redeem myself.
So I gave him a blank stare, turned around, and sat in the back room for a minute..while i laughed at myself. There is now a drawing of this conversation in the back room at work…and on my FB page.
Thank goodness I have the memory of a goldfish, so i do not remember what this man looks like. To me..it never happened.
I do a bunch of dumb things, so I’ll just pick one recent one. I’m very clumsy, and I don’t think things through. And when I’m upset or in a bad mood is when my clumsiness worsens.
Last quarter, my roommate and I got into a huge fight the night before my hardest midterm. She decided to keep me awake all night by talking to her boyfriend on Skype until 5AM. I woke up the next morning at 8AM, just three hours after finally getting to sleep, so I could eat and wake up before the midterm. However, I was super tired and in the worst mood.
After the midterm, I was walking home completely upset because I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped because I kept dozing off. However, because the midterm was over, I could relax and close my eyes for a while. Though I chose the wrong time to close my eyes. And this wrong time was during my walk back to my dorm. As my eyes were shut, I somehow found the only ditch around, and fell into it, hurting my already broken ankle. I just started bawling, because I was tired, upset, in pain, but mostly because I was embarrassed that the 20 some people saw me fall asleep and fall into a ditch.
One of the dumbest things I have ever done is fall asleep while walking. Sleep walking is one thing, but falling asleep WHILE walking is a completely ridiculous. At the time, it just wasn’t funny at all. But in retrospect, it’s just absolutely hilarious and keeps my friends laughing.
I went to Arizona a couple summers ago and I was playing volleyball with my nieces in their swimming pool. They hit the ball out of the pool and I got out to get it. Well being from Colorado, I was NOT thinking about the intense heat when I got out of the pool. The ground was so hot from the 100+ degree weather that I burned the bottom of my bare feet. What’s even more sad is that I never got the ball; the pain was so intense that I forgot all about it. Walking was very difficult after that.
This was my dumbest moment because it’s Arizona! Common sense alone should tell me not to step on the ground barefoot in the middle of a desert summer. But it is funny. My family and I joke about it every time we visit the Southwest
Everyone says that riding a bike is something natural that you never forget. When I think about it I don’t really recall the moments as a child when I rode bikes, even though I know they do exist. So keeping with my story, when I was living in France after high school, living downtown Caen, my boyfriend at the time decided that instead of walking to school every morning I should just ride a bike like he used to do, so we could meet up in the morning and go together to school. So he decided to buy me a bike and after 5 min of “practicing” decided that I could do it, but as I was feeling insecure about the whole thing, I asked him to be at my house at 7.30, even though it is a 5 min bike ride and I had to be in school by 8.15.
We leave my house and it is all going well until there is a mini hill that we have to go down; when I say mini hill, I mean a tiny hill that should not even be considered steep. However, I gained enough speed and freaked out enough to crash between a street sign post and a lamp post having my front tire stuck. When this happens I turn around and realize that there is a bus full of students that went to my school who had seen the whole incident; and this just happened in the street of another big school as it was rush time; just my luck.
But it got worst… we keep on going and the street is flat so my boyfriend decided that I could go on with no problems… He was so wrong. There was a bus stop coming ahead, one of those that is like a little construction with advertising slides on both sides, but the side walk was wide enough that two people riding a bike could go by with no problem and still not be affected by the bus stop. I told my boyfriend to keep on going, which he did, but all of the sudden he heard me yell as I turned straight into the bus stop, hitting a girl who was there talking on the phone, and crashing into one of the advertisements.
He was so embarrassed for me that he just kept on going, while I tried to keep up.
Needless to say, a 5 min bike ride, turned into a 45 min one… and I decided it’d be my last one, so when someone tells me before doing something that it is just like riding a bike, rest assured that I will not do it.
When I was a senior in High School I ran for Senior Class President. The candidates were required to get up in front of the senior class and give a speech. I was planning on saying something to the effect of, “Instead of acting blindly on what I believe is best for you, I will listen to what you believe is best.” Unfortunately, what came out was, “I’m not going to do what’s best for you.” Instead of acknowledging the fact that I had said something very stupid, I continued with my speech hoping that no one was paying attention….but they were.
I have done many dumb things, but when I think of the dumbest thing I have done, I would say it was my first shooting experience.
When I was training to be in the military, I had to get qualified on an M-16 riffle gun. Guns were something I just never had to deal with. The military stressed about paying attention to detail and that each part is equally important. The fact that I could not disassemble and assemble the rifle without the gun jamming was probably a sign that I should not be doing this. However, I did not have a choice. The day came when I had to fire this thing. I watched as my entire class load, fired, and disarm the gun. I even watched my best friend get marksmanship (100% accuracy). I thought, “If she can do, I can do”, trying to talk myself up some courage. Finally, it was my turn, all eyes on me. I knew what I was supposed to do, I did it in my head over and over, but when it came to actually doing it, my body and brain were ignoring each other. I assembled my rifle, no problem, loaded my gun, it was stuck. I thought great, “I am going to fail before I even fire”. Then ejected it and tried it again, nothing, so I repeated it again trying not to get frustrated. I was really nervous and upset that everyone else was doing better than me. I remember thinking how everyone else was doing that I lost focus and messed up the rest of the way. When I finally got my magazine (clip) loaded, got the bullet in the chamber, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger. I was so frustrated at what happened earlier, I forgot the most important rule, positioning! My face was too close and when the gun recoiled, it shot back and pinched me right below my eye. It hurt so bad I did not secure my weapon. I was in so much trouble for that alone. My eye hurt, but I wanted to get through my rounds, 49 more shots. My eye hurt, was watery and was bleeding, but I had to finish my rounds. Half way through, I did it AGAIN and was getting so mad at myself. Anger took over and I forgot to breathe causing me to miss my target completely. I failed my test, had a black eye, and was known for the girl to keep all guns away from. It was embarrassing!
Since that experience, I learned not to compete with other people and if allow anger to take over, you will be your own worst enemy. So, gave up on the M-16 and now shoot a 9mm. Every time I pull the trigger, I laugh at how DUMB I was!
My day to day life consists of me doing some pretty silly things; I often catch myself saying something that makes no sense in the presence of many random people. A good example of this is when a clerk says something along the lines of “enjoy the movie” and I will typically respond, “thanks you too” to only realize that they are not going to see the movie. The stupidest thing that I have ever done though happened when I had just got my drivers licence. A group of my friends and I were meeting in Louisville to go to a Buffalo Wild Wings and I was still not comfortable with navigating directions and trying to focus on the road so I got off the highway in Superior and by accidental took a turn going the wrong way on a one way street. I did not realize this for about half a minute because I had not seen any cars but once I did see a couple come towards me I got so rattled that instead of pulling over my first instinct was to stop and start driving in reverse until i got back to the main intersection where I finally pulled over. The worst part of this was that the cars I saw coming toward me included some of my friends and I have never been able to live down the experience.
I think I did a lot of dume things in my life, sometimes I feel that I can’t even count them. One of the things I will never forget is when I was 15 years old, so one day when my father was sleeping I went Got his car key, at that time I thougt that know one will know that I did that. So I’m in the car driving and had some friends with me. So Im driving on a young age, and the i pass a red light when a police car was just behind me. So he stops me and asks for my lisenc when I didnt have even a photo ID. He we I really nice cop that all he did was take me back home and called Amy father, and what happened after my father came out I didn’t tell to any one yet.
I tend to do dumb things daily, and perhaps even hourly, but these tend to be minor things such as bad decisions, or saying something stupid without thinking. This dumb thing however wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, it actually lasted for about 15 minutes before I realized what I was doing, and started off as something as innocent as a nap. So for some strange reason I can’t take naps during the day, I’ve maybe had 5 in my whole life - and I’ve hated every single one! This is because as I am drifting off I seem to have some kind of panic attack, I usually jump up making some kind of noise which could maybe be described as English, and my heart is racing and I have no clue where I am or what is going on. So one Saturday afternoon I managed to slip into a unwelcome nap at around 6pm. I must have been out cold for about an hour because as I woke up in a true crazed fashion I glanced at the clock and saw that it read 7 o’clock. For some reason my immediate thought was that I was late for work, this is because my normal working week started at 7am, Monday - Friday. Thinking I was late for work I rushed to get changed and ran out the door; even making time to grab some water and food for lunch. I remember as I was driving to work that the roads seemed extremely busy for that time of the day, and it wasn’t until I saw some children lining up at an ice cream van that I realized it wasn’t 7am on a weekday morning, but it was 7pm on a Saturday night. The dumbest thing about this whole ordeal was that it lasted some time before I realized what I was actually doing.
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