Thursday, January 05, 2006

Reckless Youth

The other night, after writing my tome on being a reckless teenager, armed with small time explosives, I got to thinking about all the dumb stuff I’ve done both as a lad and as a not so young-ish man.

Herewith, I present my list of really dumb stuff that should have earned me a Darwin Award:

1) Used to regularly drive down dark and windy Mississippi roads in the dead of night with my headlights off. Sometimes there’d be a moon, but mostly not. Usually there a was a dare to see how long someone could drive without the ability to see much at all.

2) That time I blew a hole in the wall of my house with a shotgun when my parents were away. I was practicing to see how fast I could load and unload the pump shotgun. I got lucky and the birdshot didn’t put a hole in the roof, merely in the drywall.

3) Various jump creations with BMX bicycles. Usually with me trying to do a “tabletop” or something equally as unlikely. I’m pretty horrible at trick bike riding. Didn’t stop me from trying. Add to this one a couple of foolish skateboarding stunts that I really had no business attempting. Did we wear helmets in those days? Not so much, no.

4) Voted Republican once.

5) Walked around the worst part of Palermo, Italy and asked a guy who looked like a prototypical “Guido the Hit Man” about the Mafia.

Side note: The Mafia in in Sicily is like “Fight Club.” The first rule of mafiosi is that you don’t talk about Mafia. You don’t even say the WORD mafia, especially if you are a blond headed American who could easily be mistaken for a youngish American FBI agent. We just called it “The Big M.”

6) That time I flipped off a very drunk man (who was larger and meaner than me), thinking his back was turned, but at the last moment he turned around just in time to see me with an upturned finger. Had to talk and walk/run very fast to get out of a severe beating on that one.

7) Accidentally hit “send” on joke email to my boss detailing his myriad faults and describing in detail how his wife was cheating on him with me. (Luckily he was at lunch and I was the Mail Admin. Being “root” comes in handy in many, many ways.)

8) Various accidents involving power tools that could have easily been avoided by thinking for two seconds before turning the tool on (these are pretty recent, since I didn’t even have power tools in my life in a serious way until last year).

9) Slept outside in February in Provo, UT with the temperatures in the high teens, so I could experience what it might be like to be homeless. Never mind that I was bundled up far tighter in far warmer clothing than a real homeless person might have, and that I got to go home to my nice warm apartment and take a shower and a nap.

10) The incident with the gun powder, the lighter and the tennis ball container.

11) That time I hit “00” and “Return” and re-formated a file server’s main volume on a Friday night. Stupid AIX or stupid Jon? It’s a toss up.

12) Ate raw bacon. I used to do this a lot. Don’t ask.

13) Drove straight into a pickup truck while going 60-65 MPH without a seat belt on. (Though in my defense, the guy in the pick up was drunk as a lord and he pulled right out in front of me). Still should have had my seat belt on, though.

14) Drunk driving on a bicycle.

I do this search every now and then just to see how many more results there are. Last time I did it there were 33,900 or so. I think we are becoming a more destructive society.

What kind of dumb stuff that should have given you the long dirt nap have you done? Come on, I know you are itching to get it off your chest!

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/05/06 at 07:03 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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