Dumb/Stupid Things You've Done...and Survived

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ocdart

Inland Mopars Car Club
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A thread like this was probably done before but I didn't find one doing a general search for both "dumb things" and "stupid things".
It doesn't have to be automotive or Mopar related.
Time to 'fess up and tell us all what you managed to survive.

Here's one of mine:
My junior year of HS was the year everyone took Chemistry. Of course no self-respecting teacher would issue chemicals for either a class assignment or experiment that would allow you hurt yourself.
But...my lab partner and I came up with the great idea of saving all of our experiments for the entire school year. So how did we do that? All lab teams had a locking drawer for their lab equipment. We put a large beaker in the back corner of our drawer and simply dumped all of our experiment chemicals in it after the completion of our experiments.
We could have either created life in that beaker or blown the 2nd floor off of the school science building along with us and the rest of the class!
Hindsight being 20/20, that was a really stupid thing to do...but we survived.
On a humorous side, it was hilarious to drop an Alka Seltzer into somebody else's experiment when they weren't paying attention. They'd turn around and their experiment would be wildly bubbling away when nobody else's was. The teacher couldn't figure out what they'd done to cause the bubbling reaction.

Now, what did y'all do that you shouldn't have done?
 
This has the promise of being a fun topic.
Sorry though, I have lots of stories, but I'm not about to incriminate myself.
Carry on.
 
This has the promise of being a fun topic.
Sorry though, I have lots of stories, but I'm not about to incriminate myself.
Carry on.

The Statute of Limitations has certainly expired for me. High School was a looooong time ago.
 
We used to go to the Chemistry room after school to get extra credit, this was back in the mid 60s when we used to have real acids placed on open shelves in front of the students. The teacher was very cool but had no idea how devious we were. Either way, every time he left the room we would pitch a beaker or a graduated cylinder into the bushes just below the open windows. By the end of the school year we had a good sized lab at the home. But that wasn't the dumb part. One of the projects after school was to make a carbon arc. The teacher set up an iron (for ironing clothes), the old iron would draw quite a few amps which made it perfect for the carbon arc and the iron switch worked as a rheostat. Anyway, we would set up two carbon rods so they would stay a 1/2 apart, plug the iron into the wall and connect the iron wires to each rod in series. As you cranked up the power on the iron the arc would fire up. We had to wear dark goggles because the arc was super bright like a welding arc. The teacher made the mistake of leaving the room, as soon as he did we grabbed this super large (2 ft diameter) concave mirror that he had in the back of the room. We knew that concave mirrors concentrate light beams. We got the carbon arc fired up then me and my buddy held up this giant concave mirror and directed the carbon arc light out into the street. It was bright sunny day but you could still see the beam of light projecting from the classroom window. Being stupid as we were, we did our best to blind passing car drivers and damn near caused an accident. This is one of the least dangerous things we did back in the day!!
 
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Married my first wife. Man was that stupid.
 
Scrubbed the garage floor with a mixture of bleach and ammonia with garage door shut.
applying paint and primer with the wood stove door open.
just a couple of examples from when I was a teenager.
 
When I was about 10 I threw 22 rim fire cartridges on the cement to make them go off.
 
pulled a ground chain (3/8" steel rope) over energized 34,500 volt line because i trusted the guy who told me we were in the right place, on the right circuit...we weren't :rolleyes:
 
I've always said if anything ever happens to what I have now, never again.

How are yall doin down there? I know you're gettin a lot of rain.
I always said I was going to keep doing it til I found a woman and a dog that will stay in the yard. But I gave up.
 
One stupid thing I did when I was 14 years old was a stunt with a farm tractor, a neighbor was cutting wood and had his 8N ford tractor and wagon over on a hillside, the gas ran to one side of the tank and instead of getting more gas he asked me to take our little tractor, which was a C Allis chalmers and pull him back up on level ground. The draw bar wasn't on our tractor so I tried the chain around the rear axle, when I started pulling it stood straight up in the air, by the time I got the clutch pushed in it was balanced and I was about to fall off, praise the lord it fell back down the right way!
 
Was driving in my dart sport 360. It was pouring rain. Came to a red light and here comes a proud ricer. Starts to rev his fart can as if to intimidate!! Ha! So light goes green and we start racing in this heavy rain!! Visibility is limited and boy was that scary and stupid!! Never again I beat that little bucket of bolts!!!
 
I almost ran over a cop when I was 19. Leaving a bar with a friend, as he was pulling out in front of me, I went around him as we raced up the street. Two cross blocks up the street we were on there was a guy in the street waving his arms in the intersection. Back then I wore glasses, but didn't have them on because of girls in the bar:). I thought the guy waving was some clown just ball busting as I came up on him at about 70 mph. As I got near I could see it was a cop but it was to late to stop, for sure. Turned off the lights and kept going, as they turned up the street behind me. Had a good lead and those 6 cyl. Plymouth's weren't about to catch me as I went up and down side streets. Made the mistake of not turning my lights back on as I rolled a stop sign and wouldn't you know another cop car was right there. Needless to say they had a radio and knew about the white Impala the other cops were looking for. The cop that jumped out of the way was PISSED when he saw me at their headquarters. Luckily my buddy I was racing came by and saw me getting put in the cop car going to headquarters and called my brother. My cousin was a Sgt. at the same precinct as the angry cop, and my brother got my cousin to come and get me. After a lot of talking the shook up cop relented, and I got out of it. If I hit that cop....damn.
 
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OMG....my post on that would resemble one of A/Js...lol
Yeah.....I wouldn't know where to start, nevermind how many pages it would fill, my buddy and I still talk about some of the stupid **** we did when we were young, and I swear his kids think half of it is B.S. because it should have killed us.
One that comes to mind was a time when he had a 77 or 78 Powerwagon with a 6" body lift and a 4" suspension lift, 400 BB auto trans. We were out in an off road area, on a frozen pond, him doing donuts on the ice (the thing did incredible donuts), while I stood with my feet in the dish of the 10" aluminum slot rim, holding on to the side of the box. We put that truck through a ton of crazy ****, he would slam on the E-brake and spin the truck around at 40 or 50 mph, drove it through rivers, fields you name it.
One night we were out on our motorcycles, late in the fall, it was a chilly night, and in those days we weren't required to wear helmets, so of course we didn't. We were wearing knit caps or toques, riding along a semi freeway at about 60 mph when my buddy's hat blew off. No problem, we just turned around and went back to get it, except we were going south in the northbound lane, and a cop happened to see us. Damn, he grabs his hat and we open the throttles, topping 125mph for a couple miles before we came to a major intersection and were forced to stop. Our light finally went green, no cop in sight, so we take off a bit slower, but not much. Now I have a flat rear tire, must have run over a nail when we went back for the toque, so I beeline it to a nearby loading dock I knew of that was well concealed while my friend hauled *** down the road. Now I'm trying to figure out how I can get my bike home, miles away, late at night when I hear a motorcycle horn "beep beep". I flip on the ignition on my bike, tap the horn a couple times, and my buddy rolls around the corner.
We decide to double on his bike back to my house and get my car and my brother's snowmobile trailer, and go back for the bike. Great plan so far, but every time we accelerate, he nails the throttle, and my feet go up as I am holding on to the small bar at the back of the seat, all goes ok until we go flying past the turn to my place. He slows the bike, flips a quick turn, and hammers the throttle again. This time the front wheel comes up and I go over the back, land on the road, and am being dragged along the pavement. He realizes that my feet didn't come back down, turns his head and sees me still hanging on to the bar, dragging on the pavement. He lets off the throttle, I let go of the bar and do a couple barrel rolls as the bike comes to a stop. He gets off his bike and comes back where I am asking if I'm ok. I was fine, other than a minor road rash, and we start laughing about it. Finally we make it to my house, hook up the trailer and we're gone. Get back to my bike, still where I left it, tilt the deck down, and roll it up. Now we're looking at each other like "how do we strap it down?". Neither one of us thought about that as we were leaving my place.
Well, he decides that it can't be that hard to hold on to the bike on the trailer while I drive the car. No problem, it's only a Yamaha XS1100, on a smooth plywood deck right? Plus I figured that some degree of payback was due for dumping me off the back of his bike, and I knew that he would do everything possible to prevent my bike from falling off. In the end we made it back to my house, he had to hide behind the bike once as we were passing a cop on the opposite side, and he told me there were several times when he almost lost it.
All for a damn toque!

That story ain't even the tip of the tip of the iceberg. We are still really good friends today, some 40 years later, but our stupid human tricks are a little less dangerous now. I'll relate some others in the future.
 
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Told my self, Car are safer and cheaper than drugs and women....

:steering:

Cars wont let you down and they cant hurt you.... wait... crap...
 
173mph on a Yamaha R1.
On the street.

Tried to pass a school bus on a foggy day on a highway in my '72 Dart. Oncoming driver in a silver car turned his headlights on as I got up beside the bus driver. I hit the brakes HARD and the rear wheels locked up, setting the Dart into a spin and next thing i know I'm sliding down the highway backwards, towards Oncoming traffic.

I bought some Kodak stock a few months ago.
 
When I was 10 my best friend and I found a couple of bullets and decided to put one in a vise in his fathers garage and hit it with a hammer, the bullet went off went thru the side of the garage and ended up in the neighbors car door.
 
cant decide....
maybe the time I fell down a frozen waterfall with a loaded stevens 58 on the way to some pre dawn deer stand
maybe the time I thought when NOAA said the dividing line for a small craft advisory is 5 miles away meant the wind recognizes that line.
the time I helped a guy pull his truck dangling off a coast range logging road with a 2x ford ranger.
Maybe when we rode out to snorkel with grey reef sharks in Stewarts Cove. The guides toss a milk crate with meat down to the bottom usually but when we got to the site some kids had been feeding them at the surface. After chasing the kids off the guide got right in and my wife to be was the second one in behind her. I kinda had to be 3rd. I poked several 9-12 footers with my fins!
maybe the time we went looking for megalodon teeth near the mouth of the St. Mary's where the visibility was to your elbow and we were sposed to dig around in the black muck until we found one. I pay whatever they ask for those now if I want one....


No I really think it was the 170,000 cigarettes'
 
Partying like Jim Morrison and then doing a little 'enduro' riding is just the tip of the iceberg. My god what my body would endure when I was young.
 
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