Darwin Award close calls

The worst roommate thread got me reminiscing back to college and beyond, and how many stupid things I’ve done in life and how that idiocy could have caused me serious injury or worse.

A friend bet me once I couldn’t jump up, grab a tree branch and hang there from the back of his moving convertible. He was correct. That’s just one example.

So, what stupid life-threatening stuff has everyone here done?

 

How fast was it moving?

 

My sister's boyfriend was selling a Renault, an older-model 1970s-type, to a guy across town. It had a history of stalling. And it did. On the freeway onramp.
So he had the bright idea to push me down the freeway, since we had about a six-mile drive. Then the red and blue lights.
Did I mention I didn't have a driver's license?
Loud voice booms, "Please take the next exit." I'm shitting bricks, waiting for my turn with the officer, as my sister in the seat next to me doesn't know what to think.
To my amazement, the officer talked with her boyfriend for a bit, then got in his cruiser and left.
The boytoy said someone called and reported us drag racing. The officer said we just need to chain the cars together. So we did. With about a 20-foot gap.
Every time boytoy turned a corner, I flew out into oncoming traffic.
So he took the slack out of the chain. ALL of it.
He turned left, *crunch* went the left headlight. He turned right, *crunch* went the right headlight. Meanwhile, I was on the brake the whole way.
If the smell of burning brakes wasn't evidence, the yelow- and orange-hot metal gave it away.
He ended up giving the car to the guy by the time we mercifully got to his house.

 

20ish.

 

Tied a rope to the back of my car, towed my friends around a parking lot on a longboard, but not too fast, and nobody got hurt. Guys jumped off, but nobody fell.

When it was my turn on the board, and my jackass friend was driving, I was good enough that I didn’t fall off.

That was until my friend sped up and turned the car. I got through it OK at first, then the speed wobble came.

The fall fucked me up bad. Road rash all over the right side of my body. It hurt, but the worst was that sick feeling in my stomach you get when you are in a ton of pain.

 

This guy.

 

Junior year of college. We needed a couch for our apartment; a buddy has a couch at this place downtown.

First catch: He was on the second floor. Second catch: We found when we got there that we couldn't get it out the front door.

Two of us tied up the couch with clothesline and lowered it from the second-floor balcony. Two of us stood on the ground with our hands extended, obviously ready to catch a 200-pound couch falling from two stories up.

You can guess which pair I was in.

 

Third catch: they didn’t build that sofa in your friend’s apartment. It sure as hell came through that door somehow. You might have to take a door off it’s hinge, or remove the sofa legs, or rotate the couch at some strange angle, but I can assure you it would have gone through that door because it had before.

Glad you didn’t become as flat as a Waffle House waitress pancake.

 

Going down a steep icy hill Indian-style on lunch trays with concrete pillars stationed at the bottom.

 

C'mon man. "Indian style?" This is 2018.

Criss-cross-applesauce, please.

 

My bad. You’re right. Old habits and all...