Stupid Things You Wouldn't Admit to in Public!

I was reading about shop vacs and someone mentioned about having a central vac in their house, and that reminded me of what happened to mine about 15 years ago!
Gulp! Well I was cleaning up around my woodstove my first winter in my new home and was using the central vac around the wood stove which was cooking away, and I had just tended. Well there were some old ashs on the catch plate just below the front door, along with one little 'hot' one. Not thinking here, I sucked up the dirt and ashes and the 'hot' one. Well you can guess what happened! Air, fuel and heat. Make that lots of air. The Central Vac started making a loud whinning sound and lots of smoke started coming out the other end! I did put out the fire quickly, but that was the last time that vac was used!
Now get up off the floor guys, and owe up here!

It was about 15 years ago. We were living in Reading, PA at the time. I was working 12-14 hrs a day. My wife was working part time and straddled with 3 young kids. Anybody that’s been through it knows the kind of stress that creates.

Anyway we had a wood burning fireplace insert in that home. My wife usually took care of it because I was either working or to tired to give a dam. One night that I was home the fire was out. I decided to get it started while the wife was getting the kids ready for bed. I tried a couple of times but the wood was wet and it wouldn’t start. My wife starts yakking about letting it alone and she’ll get it started when she was done. Well by now I’m pissed and my manhood is at stake. I’m not letting any silly little girl do something I can’t. So I stomp out to the garage looking for charcoal lighter fluid. The only thing I could find was auto starter fluid. I grab my trusty can of ether and head to the family room. I proceed to empty that full can of ether into the wood burner. I struck a match and proceeded to light the burner. I got about 2 feet from the door and boom, a blue fireball shot across the family room. The left side of my hair was smoldering, my mustache was on fire and my whole left side was HOT. My wife started screaming that the side of the couch was on fire along with an afghan that she was making. I started yelling that I was on fire. Her response was ‘good you dumb sumbitch I told you to wait for me to light it’. Ah, never ending love at its finest.

The next day I go to work and have to explain why my left side is bright red, I have a haircut, and my mustache is gone. I took trash for that for months from everyone concerned. A couple of weeks later we’re at a family gathering. My 12 year old son comes up to the table with a lighter that he’s bouncing up and down. He asks, Dad, what’s this? It’s you after trying to light the stove. My brother in law put him up to it, my boy wouldn’t do that to his father on his own, yeah right.

That was funny!

I have a coal story, although not mine.

A friend of mine has a stoker. He had been somewhere in Plymouth (I don't know where) robbing pillars. He had to pull the coal across on a cable to his truck. He was sick for a few days and when he went back the mine had collapsed. That ended the "pickin' days". So now he's got this huge pile of lump coal, to get into the house for the stoker. I don't know what method he came up with to crack it, so we'll move on. He was going to install an outside bin and have a worm going under his deck to the stoker. So, he drilled some holes in line, for the ditch, for the worm, under the deck. (I don't know if it was in rock or not, but I'd guess it was). He filled these with black powder, which he had, as he was an avid hunter. When he touched them off, it lifted the whole deck off it's moorings! He said, "he guessed, he put too much in".

Thanks for the laughs guys, I sure there's more good 'real' stories out there! Don't be shy all you manly men. My dad told me about what happened to him back in the fifties when he was building his house in the burbs. I believe they were done framing the house and was working on the fireplace chimney. He was up on the ceiling joices I guess with planks to stand on around the fireplace. After attaching the last stone, he decided to 'admire' his work and he stepped backwards! Well you can guess what happened as each leg straddle the celing joist. and as each foot punched a hole in the new ceiling and he was stuck and hurting!

One day I was extremly bored and decided to play in the attic. I was only 12 so the attic was the coolest place. I found a new red axe. I then rememberd that we had a dying tree near my swing set. A had a friend helping me the whole time. Anway, the first chop went as planned and took a big piece of bark out of the tree. Damn was I good or what. Feeling like I was an old lumber jack out for a Sunday tree chopping I decided to swing the axe a bit harder. We'll this time the axe deflected off the tree and landed in my foot. It was summer so I was bare footed. I don't think I've ever seen so much blood and gore. My foot was split wide open and I was looking at bone. I felt nauseaus as I ran to the front door of my house. I told me friend to go get my mom. He knocked on the door. After I screamed in his ear to get inside and get my mom (she trained me well not to get blood on the rug) she came out hysterical and was basically useless. Thanks goodness for my friend's dad who wrapped a towel and a bag over my foot and took me to the hospital. The foot healed like new but I couldn't walk for a few months.

I had to relocate to the Boeing Plant in Philly after this little misadventure to keep my co-workers from giving me a hard time.

I was working at Kennedy Space Center in Fla, coming in for third shift around 10:30 PM. It was dark and stormy with hard rain , the type where the lines on the road are not even visible. As I rounded the curve on an off ramp from one road on to another inside the confines of the center my phone rolled off the seat. I will preface what happened next with the statement "I had driven this road probably in excess of 5,000 times with no issues". As I reached down to retrieve the phone I kept one eye on where I was going... bad thing for me was there was no visibility to begin with!

As I looked up I was 20 feet from hitting a 12" diameter chain link gate post dead center at 45 mph! in that split second I thought... hmmmmmmmm guess the guard shack will follow this f#$*& gate post! This was a shack that was not manned at night (nor lit at all and was only 1' from the edge of the road). This occurred at a time when the outer security perimeter of the base was extended to include the visitors center which was closed at night. As I hit the post the concrete from deep inside the ground was relieved of it's position deep in the ground and smashed my windshield obscuring the view of the looming guard shack. As I hit the perimeter poles outside the shack my truck was launched up under the eves while what was left of the front of my truck moved the shack back 4 feet and shattered the front windows.............

As I sat there in the dark silence, I was thinking... hmmmmmmmmmmmmm this is not gonna look good on a resume! Then as I opened the door and exited stage left, insult was added to injury as I fell 5 feet into the mud, it seems the front of my truck was 3 feet off the ground up on the posts!

Mattuis, I loved the part where you fell into the mud, sounds like you didn't get hurt much, at least not physcially. I just got up off the floor after falling out of my chair at work. The clerks think I'm now on drugs or something like that!

Nah....... the only thing hurt was my pride... and I guess overall falling in the mud was not so bad considering the hell that was rained down with chunks of concrete hitting the windshield!

I used to work at a Firestone and while doing my first alignment, pretty much everything went wrong. I was a late 80's F250 4x4 with a "topper" on the bed. Due to the height of the truck, I could only put the rack up high enough for me to sit on the floor. I was doing the alignment when I hear popping noises and then glass crashing all around me.

Apparently, the valve for the lift was just barely open and the lift had been creeping up slowly. Slow enough for me NOT to notice. No damage to the truck but I ripped all the rollers out of the door, pushed it off the track and broke all the windows.

And to add insult to injury, when I got the alignment done, it was so bad he had to bring it back the next day and have someone else do it.

You'll all be happy to know that I don't work as a mechanic anymore. It's just better for everyone.