Shame Week Bonus :: What’s the Stupidest Thing You’ve Ever Done?

A few years ago, I had a television in my sleeping quarters. I don't recommend it. I watched a lot of films at night. And missed a lot of days. Anyhow, one day, prompted by the sudden smell of burning tuna omelette coming from the kitchen, I bolted from my bedroom in a blind and stupid panic, and in my careless passage from one room to the other, my foot got entangled in the cable. Rather than bring the TV crashing down from the bedside table on which it sat however, the cable merely snapped where it met the plug – a clean break, leaving the naked plug sitting in the socket, a tiny stump of broken wire and plastic jutting from its anus.

Returning from my culinary disaster with screwdriver in hand, I set about reconnecting the plug to the cable. Generally, when it comes to wiring plugs, I’m a bit of a klutz and I invariably make some kind of elementary mistake, connecting the earth to the neutral or the neutral to the live, or not quite managing to make everything connect, and generally I have to rewire it. Especially when there are three wires as opposed to just two. Three, frankly, is two too many. So this time I thought I’d check I’d done it right before screwing the whole thing back together again.

So, without reattaching the plastic cover, I pushed the plug into the wall with the palm of my left hand.

What a strange, surprising sensation!

I wasn’t exactly thrown across the room, but the instinctive recoil when the electricity zunked into my hand was considerable enough for me to move a couple of feet.

I tingled.

I guess I could have died.

But I didn’t. And shall I tell you why?

Quite simply, because God hasn’t finished with me yet.

Nah, just kidding. It’s dumb luck. I could easily have died. People have died for a lot less.

I am an idiot.

...

So. What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? Leave your most moronic moments in the comments and sit back in shame as the internet shakes its head and despairs.

Thanks.