I’m an Idiot.

Thread admitting idioacy. 

I’m 55 years old.  Do I need this?  My wife was at a ladies church retreat all weekend in Cedar Lake, Indiana.   On Saturday I’m cleaning her car and find my stash of bottle rockets from a few years ago.  

I decide to lay one down on the garage floor and shoot it across my driveway and street.  All goes to plan except it lifts off the ground headed towards my neighbors front windows.  I watch as nothing pops since it might be an old firework?   Total silence.  I’m off the hook.  

Then I admit I’m an idiot.  The sweet family across the street is from Palestine and has had a few issues in my redneck town and just put up a new security camera.  This could’ve ended badly   

You?

Did you apologize?

Firework faux pas, I suppose

I'm laughing really hard at this because it's totally something that would happen to me. Saturday night I had friends over for a bonfire. Went into the garage for a beer and remembered that I had a stash of firecrackers on top of the fridge, so I grabbed a handful before I walked out. Went back to the firepit and nonchalantly tossed them in as I yelled "Hit the deck everybody!" 

In reply to Ian F :

The rocket didn’t explode and got lost in their bushes.  Also they were not outside.  

I managed to fill the muffler of my 924 up with gas fumes while trying to get it started for the first time on MegaSquirt.

The car was pointed towards my neighbors front windows and the garage door was open.

When a spark finally landed?

It blew the muffler off the back of the car.

At 10pm at night.

Oh and my neighbors? 

They're all refugees from a little war we fought in a tiny Asian country after the French decided they didn't want to play anymore.

Sigh, that ended that garage work session....

I did talk with them in the morning after watching to see if they woke up or went outside that night, all is well.

Everytime I open a thread with "I am an idiot" in the title, I expect it to be about a Mitsubishi

In reply to Toebra :

Maybe a Mitsubishi automobile. Mitsubishi aircraft are among the best

Until you're lighting them off over the stove's burners in the kitchen, you're just screwing around.

In reply to Appleseed :

Dude, you kill me

This was my fireworks guy, from 17-21. Commercial grade fireworks and bored young adults, it's a wonder I still have all my limbs. 

My ex-wife's cousin was an idiot, in his teens.

He and his buddies were messing with fireworks, and he blew a chunk of his thumb off.

The injury needed a skin graft. In what seems like a joke, the doctor used part of his scrotum for the graft. 

On a sub tied up to another sub in Charleston, me and the other topside watch were bored so we shot bottle rockets at each other.  It was 3:00am.  His sliced hard left and went straight down the hatch, blew up in front of the Captain's quarters.

I'm an Idiot.

I spent a couple of years building fireworks from scratch. Making my own black powder and stars. If you build a 3" shell, stuff it in a mortar with most of a pound of black powder, it will explode on the ground in a spectacular way, destroying the mortar tube and the 1/2" plywood it was fastened to. 

It was spectacular and only set off 5-6 car alarms. The police couldn't prove that someone had fired a cannon. 

I'm not going to claim the idiot status though. I'd do it again in a skinny minute. 

In reply to Toyman01 :

Careful.  That sounds like a great way to end up on some secret list. 

Ah, bottle rockets... 4 18 year old guys, beer, 1980 Chevy Chevette 4speed, couple of gross of bottle rockets- Perfect ingredients. In the early '80s one night we were out riding around our small town and decided to have a bottle rocket war at the local golf course. In order to facilitate a more rapid rate of fire, I undid my whole gross and turned them face down in the brown paper bag they came in. After lighting and flinging a couple out of the window on the way in to the golf course a spark from a fuse drizzled into the bag between my legs. Orange fire ball between legs. I bailed out the window. My other 3 friends bailed out too. Why I wasn't driving my parents almost new Chevette, I don't remember. A most impressive sight, tons of smoke, a few flew out the windows. We were going slow enough that one of my buds was able to run and catch it before it ran through a fence and out in the fairway. The inside of that car, I shudder even now.

In reply to spitfirebill :

I'm already on that list. You have to register with BATF to buy the chemicals to make fireworks.

These people will hook you up with everything you need as long as you are on that list. 

http://www.skylighter.com/

I have learned that I can build a hydrogen generator out of stuff sitting around the garage, which made me feel pretty smart. Then it was necessary to play with lighters around the setup, which blew up hard enough to knock me, and chair I was sitting over backwards. That pretty much negated the whole smart thing. 

I guess looking back at it I don't know if it was the force of the kablosion, or my own reaction that put me on my back looking skyward, but either way the hydrogen generator got dismantled while I waited for my hearing to return, and it' not something I play around with anymore. 

Lighting farts at a wedding reception is awesome...till you have to assault your own genitals to put out the fire.

One of many high school age combustible "I'm an idiot" events--

We'd made flash powder the hard way before by filing down ounce rolls of magnesium ribbon liberated from the hgh school chem lab (already an idiot).  This was a lot of work.  There had to be an easier way.

So, how about just snipping the ribbon up in to smaller bits, putting it in a bottle with a little gasoline and lighting it?

Results were disappointing.  Gasoline just burned, bottle broke, the pile just sat there smoldering.

Because my disappointment was so deep, and because I was such an idiot, I bent down over the smoldering pile to blow on it a bit.

I never saw the flash-- everything just went straight to red and green after images.

My friends (because high school idiots seldom work alone) said I appeared to be smoking a bit as I stood up.  And they laughed and laughed and laughed.

This was part of a series of events that led my parents to tell me that while they'd answer the phone if the police called about me some night, they wouldn't leave the house to get me out of jail until at least the next morning.

RealMiniParker said:

My ex-wife's cousin was an idiot, in his teens. (Isn't every one an idiot in their teens?)

He and his buddies were messing with fireworks, and he blew a chunk of his thumb off.

The injury needed a skin graft. In what seems like a joke, the doctor used part of his scrotum for the graft. 

 

So, on the upside the cousin can now lick his own....

I like where this thread is going . . . . . .

Mine is pretty minor. I was about 10 years old at the time.

Playing around making "torches". Sticks, rags and a beer bottle full of gasoline. I was disappointed with my torch and tried to add gas while it was burning.

Did you know flames will follow a stream of gasoline right into a bottle . . . . . . . . . . . .

If we are stepping back in time... 

There was a pine tree in the yard when I was a kid. 

It was entirely covered in English ivy. 

Kind of like this. 

It was probably 70-80' tall. 

I was playing with a torch one afternoon, doing boy things like burning pennies, aluminum cans and the passing ant. After running out of things to burn, I just barely passed it across the fuzz that ivy stems put out. Much to my surprise, that fuzz is apparently extremely flammable. The resulting 70' tall colum of fire is even more impressive than a largish explosion. It took the flame less than 5 seconds to travel to the very top of that tree. 

My mother was less than impressed at the time. For some reason, the fire department wasn't very impressed either. 

That tree shed ivy for the next two years until it was all gone. After the last of it hit the ground and was cleaned up by me, my parents were actually happy about how things turned out.

I must admit, I still enjoy using a torch. 

T.J. said:

RealMiniParker said:

My ex-wife's cousin was an idiot, in his teens. (Isn't every one an idiot in their teens?)

He and his buddies were messing with fireworks, and he blew a chunk of his thumb off.

The injury needed a skin graft. In what seems like a joke, the doctor used part of his scrotum for the graft. 

 

So, on the upside the cousin can now lick his own....

Whenever he rubs his hands together, those who know tell him to stop playing with himself. 

You're not a true idiot or you would have spelled it "Idjit"  

T.J. said:

RealMiniParker said:

My ex-wife's cousin was an idiot, in his teens. (Isn't every one an idiot in their teens?)

He and his buddies were messing with fireworks, and he blew a chunk of his thumb off.

The injury needed a skin graft. In what seems like a joke, the doctor used part of his scrotum for the graft. 

 

So, on the upside the cousin can now lick his own....

...Cousin?