Confessions of My Stupidest Moments: A Humorous Tale of Taking Wrong Turns

[Ivan Seeking]

A member once posted a great story. He had been drinking heavily. Sometime during the night he got up to get a snack, but the light in the fridge didn't work. By groping around in the dark he managed to find some donuts, which he ate. The next morning he couldn't figure out why he had a strange blue powdery substance all around his mouth and on his hands.

 

[chemisttree]

Mine was a time long ago when I was working in the Organic Chemistry Lab in our Division. I was adding fresh sodium and benzophenone to the 10 liter ether still. You do this by removing a stopper and quickly adding a hunk of sodium with tweezers. Of course you have to cut the oxidation layer off from the large piece of sodium in the jar of oil before it is clean enough to add to the still. After that, you immerse the lump of shaved metal into a couple of small beakers of hexane to rinse the residual oil off and quickly immerse it in a small beaker of ether to rinse off the hexane. The process can leave a few small shavings on the cutting board which can stick to the oily lump of shaved metal, eventually to find their way to the rinse solutions. I had just finished adding everything and stoppered up the still. Time to get to work disposing of those rinse solutions and the several small shavings that found their way there.

What’s that? Is something floating on top of the ether solution? Is it a small insect? Just to be sure I’d better bring it closer to my face and get a good look.

Big Mistake #1. I was working alone since everyone had just left for lunch.
Big Mistake #2. I was breathing (you know, the MOIST gas that comes out of your mouth?)
Big Mistake #3. When something explodes into flame right in your face… DON’T THROW THE FLAMING BEAKER AT THE 10 LITER STILL OF REFLUXING ETHER….
Big Mistake #4. I ran down the halls screaming. “EVACUATE! FIRE!” before I stopped to examine my handiwork from the safety of the other side of the fire door exit. Everyone did. Most with very wide eyes…

The flames went out after about 30 seconds I was told (by someone who wanted to see the fire for himself).

It wasn’t all bad, though. The Division got a brand spanking new SOP that day for adding reactive metals to the solvent stills.

 

[jowjowman]

Picking one of many stupid decisions.

Years ago I was working as a volunteer in an Israel kibbutz near Haifa. This was really cool, the work was not hard, the hours
reasonable and you could hang out with people from all over the planet. I lived in a ramshackle hut housing 5 or 6 other
volunteers. One day David moved in and we became friends.
Months went by, I got drafted, told everyone goodbye. David said that when I was done doing army stuff I was welcome at his place.
Asked what his place was like, he told me that it was a rather large estate doing mainly horsebreeding, located in London.
I told him he was full of b**** of course. Who has ever heard of such a ridiculus thing? I made excuses for not going.
It was years later I got thinking. He had told me the truth.

 

[Danger]

Mine was a time long ago when I was working in the Organic Chemistry Lab in our Division.

Bloody hell, Chemisttree... I can't decide whether that's hilarious or tragic.
I can think of two other examples right off. A guy in my grade at school, who apparently didn't know much about guns, braced himself against the barn door and lit off both barrels of a 12 gauge simultaneously. Broke his shoulder, of course.
Another was based upon ignorance rather than stupidity. It was right after we went metric in Canada. A Yank was cruising along on the 401 highway, overshot a curve, and ended up in a tree. He survived in relatively good health, and his first words to the cops were "Man, you Canadians are crazy having a hundred mile an hour speed limit."

 

[logandiez]

The stupidest thing I have ever done ... a no brainer: I dropped out of High School & got a GED, but did NOT go immediately to college and get my Degree. I didn't get back to college until I was in my late 40's. Now I'm playing catch up.

 

[lisab]

Another was based upon ignorance rather than stupidity. It was right after we went metric in Canada. A Yank was cruising along on the 401 highway, overshot a curve, and ended up in a tree. He survived in relatively good health, and his first words to the cops were "Man, you Canadians are crazy having a hundred mile an hour speed limit."

 

[hypatia]

The stupidest thing I have ever done ... a no brainer: I dropped out of High School & got a GED, but did NOT go immediately to college and get my Degree. I didn't get back to college until I was in my late 40's. Now I'm playing catch up.

Bravo!

 

[Pythagorean]

Ok, stupidest thing I've ever done:

Enroll in science and engineering curriculum.

With everything I've learned comes a lot more responsibility. My ignorance doesn't keep me out of trouble anymore.

 

[logandiez]

Ok, stupidest thing I've ever done:

Enroll in science and engineering curriculum.

With everything I've learned comes a lot more responsibility. My ignorance doesn't keep me out of trouble anymore.

Ahh... Responsibility ... curious that the root words basically mean "ability to respond," huh? Look on the bright side, you not only now have the ability to do stupid things intelligently, but you also have the ability to do them with precision and understanding of their mechanics.

 

[Danger]

A member once posted a great story. He had been drinking heavily. Sometime during the night he got up to get a snack, but the light in the fridge didn't work. By groping around in the dark he managed to find some donuts, which he ate. The next morning he couldn't figure out why he had a strange blue powdery substance all around his mouth and on his hands.

I have to admit defeat on this one, Ivan. Perhaps it's a Yank/Canuck cultural gap, or just a lack of experience on my part, but I have absolutely no idea what your post indicates. I'm assuming that the powder represents something inedible, but I can't figure it out. Sorry.

 

[Leah]

Well the stupidist thing I did was do cocaine..but to tell you the truth I loved it! Besides that one night I drove from Atlanta to Panama City, FL coked out and wanted to get into a bar there. I got there and realized I had no money to get in. I asked a couple of strangers for some money and that did not work so I drove the 5 hours home still coked out. I think I called into work the next day and said I was sick!

 

[Danger]

4) Burnt my hair while leaning over an oven to light a smoke. This was back when I had long hair...

Been there, except it was using a stick from my burn-barrel in the back yard.

 

[Oscar Wilde]

This was fairly recent. I was hungry, looking for something to put a pizza on so I could cook one up in the oven. I saw my mother's cutting board, and immediately thoughts of amazing wood-fired pizza filled my head. I put the pizza in on the cuttingboard...and twenty minutes later the smoke alarms began to go off. The cutting board was scorched, nearly on fire. My pizza was ruined. I should've just used the pan. Not the dumbest thing I've ever done but I can't think right now.

 

[Loren Booda]

Ivan,

The blue donut - was it a ring of soap for the dishwasher?

 

[Redbelly98]

Well, I've electrocuted myself perhaps 4 times in my life. Last time was about 15 years ago, so it looks like I finally learned to be careful.

Then there were all the years that I did not put money into an IRA.

 

[fileen]

My friend and I decided to see if we could ride her bull... Together. We are very lucky to be alive. Dont do drugs.

 

[turbo]

I waited until I was middle-aged before deciding that I should learn how to navigate kayaks through heavy white-water. Luckily, I had a very talented 14-year-old instructor (a daughter of long-time friends who was shooting for the Olympics, though the sport wasn't approved for that cycle) and I learned very quickly how to eskimo-roll upstream and downstream, even in foamy rapids. This is a very good thing to know when you dump in class 4-5 white-water and rocks are flying by your head at a good clip. Shelby injured her shoulder, and ended up weight-training for rehabilitation, and became the junior and senior women's world power-lifting champion in a span of a couple of years, setting record lifts in the process. She's a short little thing, but when I run into her, I get bear-hugs that make me check for cracked ribs.

Funny, when my knees got bad enough to wean me off from black-diamond skiing, I had to turn to white-water kayaking for thrills. After I got too comfortable with my Taurus kayak, I went to a low-volume Sabre to make it even edgier and tougher. In heavy foamy white-water, the boat would be entirely submerged, and only my torso, arms, etc would be visible.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I have to admit defeat on this one, Ivan. Perhaps it's a Yank/Canuck cultural gap, or just a lack of experience on my part, but I have absolutely no idea what your post indicates. I'm assuming that the powder represents something inedible, but I can't figure it out. Sorry.

The donuts were moldy.

 

[franznietzsche]

The donuts were moldy.

 

[lisab]

The donuts were moldy.

Who keeps donuts in the fridge?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

IIRC, Chronos does.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Here we go.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=504498#post504498

 

[Ghost803]

When I was 8, I was ironing my shirt for the first time. And my mom told me to check to see if the thing was hot enough. So I put my whole palm against it.


All the skin on my right palm, peeled off like two days later.

 

[Huckleberry]

Ouch!

I am told that I grabbed the muffler of my father's motorcycle once. I was young enough that I have no memory of it, so that was probably last week.

 

[fluidistic]

When I was 5 years old my little brother melt bleach (according to my father. According to my memory it was a window cleaner : http://www.docteurdiscount.com/productimages/16100256637.jpg . Almost the same thing.) into a bottle of coca cola. He told me to come and see his melt. I didn't trust him and drunk a lot of the mixture. I ended up at the hospital, I remember when I entered the ambulance and the neighbors asking what happened. It seems I got lucky and don't have any affect-effect.

When I was young I was always "in the Moon" as we say in French. I mean that when I was in school I never listened to the teacher, I was so bored I wasn't aware there were grades and that I was the worst student (really. I was about 9 years old.). Once we had to see a theater piece done by older students of my school. I was in the public as the older students, but at very different places. (the older were in front of us). I wasn't listening at anything, as usual. When suddenly I saw the older students going on stage, I thought I had to do also. They were all dancing in couples and of course I was alone. I then realized ... have I made a mistake?! A teacher called a girl from the public to dance with me. I didn't know how to dance, it was so shameful...

 

[Grey9988]

I nearly set myself on fire in chemistry lab my freshman year. It was embarrassing and my lab partner had to stomp out the fire.