These are great, I'll post this quick one and post a really bad/dumb one later.
When I was young camera's used to have these types of flash bulbs. I thought it would be wicked to see what would happen if I plugged it into the wall outlet. It was wicked all right, it caused all the flashes to go at once and scare the shit out of me. I didn't do that again!
--------------------------------------------- Give me liberty or, I dunno, something.
I probably have numerous alcohol-induced ones. Finding myself stranded on a sandbar, waded back ashore through waist-deep seawater, that probably didn't need much more time to get properly dangerous. Dunno if that was booze playing with time passage or just a very fast tide. In hindsight there are just so many dumbass drunken things I've done that could have ended badly, I hate to think of it.
Soberly, maybe strolling skipping and running atop Crib Goch, a narrow ridge running from the summit of Snowdon. We were wearing jeans and regular shoes. Every now and then we would pass some climbers clinging to the side in proper climber gear. At times it's like three feet wide with a drop to either side all the way down several hundred feet. At the end of the ridge it's a rocky scramble down the rest of the way. It went totally fine! Later I read a bit more about it, several people usually die falling off it every year. Stupid kid!
I've given myself electric shocks from the mains a few times, don't really count those as death-defying but they were all very foolish.
Patch should post that pic of his car after he disagreed with a deer about rights of way.
When I turned 16 and finally got my license, which I lost very quickly because I liked the drink, we invented a game that went like this: Go to the store and buy some frozen hotdogs. Have a friend and the frozen hotdogs hide in the trunk of your car, you call it the boot I think? You don't latch it, the person in the trunk holds it down and when you tell them, or when you stop at a light the person pops the trunk lid and throws frozen hotdogs at pedestrians or a car behind you. Can you imagine walking down the street and getting pelted with a frozen hotdog? WTF? No idea how we came up with that, but it was pretty dumb. I'm saving my stupidest for last. It's one I'm still worried about getting caught for, even though it happened 20 years ago.
--------------------------------------------- Give me liberty or, I dunno, something.
...Too many to recount. ;) <American> =:) I'll have to think on which is the best one.
They involve:
1) Maximized Inebriation
2) Extensive Vehicular Operation Fun
3) Locking Self Out
4) Lost or Stolen Purses/Money
...and mainly:
5) Trusting People Too Much
6) Thrill-Seeking Behaviors
The experiences come from:
a) Having driven approximately 900,000 miles in all types of cars, a motorcycle, a pickup truck and on a sailboat.
b) Living in 45 different apartments and homes, living with and around people from millionaires to those in ghettos.
c) Participating in all kinds of work and play.
d) Constant fascination and curiosity about new things-- even if they hurt-- so though I was smart enough /not/ to stab myself with a knife to see how it felt I /did/ cause my first paper-cut.
e) Curious about substance effects: I never tried the most addictive stuff, but tried everything else other than opium and mescaline (the only two I wish I had tried and did not-- never will as I'm well over that phase.)
and...
f) Traveling whenever possible by any means without much cash landed me in all kinds of interesting places with interesting people. I have lived mid-city and off the grid (no power lines) on a high mountain, climbed many such mountains and have been on so many adventures that it's just Murphy's Law that I'd get hurt or stupidly hurt myself once in a while.
A certain forumite, who I shall very carefully not identify here.... Did once suggest that a group of us friends back in good old Yorkshire should all get together at his house one night and Located a train tunnel nearby which he was certain was unused during the hours of night as he had studied the timetables and found no trains scheduled. He thought it would be cool if we all walked through it from one end to the other. The train tunnel is 3 MILES LONG!
He was right about some things: it was cool (turning torches off in the complete darkness was amazing, also the 1.5 second echo standing under the ventilation shafts). We didn't come across any trains, so he scores there.
It is however a freight line as well as a passenger line so he was NOT right that studying the timetables was enough to ensure our safety.
I get very scared when I think about my daughter ever making friends with someone as creatively minded.
A problem shared is a problem halved, but a worry shared is a worry doubled
Rest assured, he has almost certainly seen himself off by setting binbags of butane alight, wandering foreign port towns drunk in the middle of the night or something else equally stupid.
A problem shared is a problem halved, but a worry shared is a worry doubled
I did a similar thing with a small motor from something. I thought it might go quicker plugged into the mains but instead I think it blew up.
A few things with fireworks, using the ones that didn't go off the night before and almost exploding in my face.
And a rope slide my friend and I made between two trees. I went up, tied myself on and slid down only to get stuck half way with the rope tightening around my chest and couldn't breathe. He had to run back home and get scissors to cut me down.
Erm, nothing entertaining. Was in hospital every 4 years for the longest time. Watched every Olympics on a ward of some sort. & '82's seven week stay trying to follow John Lennon via 90 Panadol.
Rallying the Subaru family car at weekends at 7,000ft around San Bernardino in the mountains on my own, with no breakdown cover or mobile phone..(1989). The look of astonishment from Forestry Rangers as I came at their 4x4 sideways round a corner out of the blue.
Yes, I drank some beer once. I'd been playing a gig the night before, in Dumfries. Got home at 3am, left for the airport at 7am. No breakfast. Arrived in London, attempted to eata sandwich. Didn't really feel like it. Met the posse at the Founder's Arms. Spent a lovely afternoon drinking beer in the sunshine by the banks of the Thames. I remember the afternoon, but after that, all are flashes, and what I got told about later...
(More to follow once I'm off the train - everyone knows the story anyway)
I think these may be dumbass enough, I decided to start from the beginnings of my idiotic adventures.
STORY #1:
Age 8: I was stronger than anyone I'd ever arm wrestled, etc, at my school. I was so confident about my strength due to this fact that I went up to my father (a man who regularly lifted pianos as part of his work) and told him I could beat him at arm wrestling, and not to hold back like he always does but to really try to beat me. He said, "Okay" and proceeded to tear many of the muscles in my arm at the word "Go!" I was in pain for a week or so, but felt lucky the thing was still attached. :O
STORY #2:
Age 10: I was with 3 friends and I *bet them I could walk further out on the thin ice of a pond than any of them. Two made it about 3-4 feet, then my best friend Sandy and I walked further and further until she stopped. I continued and after a few more steps broke through the ice at which point Sandy became frightened and made for land where the three of them laughed their asses off as I grabbed for ice that kept breaking under my frantic arms. My legs were getting wound up in reeds. Finally I realized that the leverage I needed to get above the ice was just going to break it, and I began to give up and wondered what would happen to me; I could picture myself frozen to death in the middle of this pond. Luckily, through tears of laughter, Sandy came slowly out to a thick area of ice and somehow pulled me out without us both falling in.
*I should have bet money and not just the "I betcha I can just because" kind of bet!
A couple of years ago on this beach was my scariest definitely going to die now moment.
I was only a few metres from the beach, and we'd been having great fun being knocked over and flipped over by the big waves, then suddenly I was swimming as hard as I could at the beach and getting further away from it with each wave breaking over my head. Ruth was just coming in to the water and I was yelling at her to stay out because I didn't want her to drown too, but she couldn't hear me above the waves - the thing I was most scared of at that point was her coming in and getting washed out too, then suddenly somehow my feet were on a sandbank and I was able to push back towards the beach - I suppose the waves died down for a few seconds. I've never been so certain that I was going to die as at then.
