I forgot how to spell the word "here" once. I asked a friend. Big mistake.

I thought Wichita was pronounced "WuhCHEEtuh".

I once managed to dump an entire cappuccino on my own head. Seriously.

I had just gotten said cap and was going over to a friend's house. As I reached the top stair I reached for the door buzzer while simultaneously catching my lead foot on the top stair. Instinctively I held the drink up over my head as I fell down. In the process of falling, the simple act of balancing sent my cappuccino hand backwards as I was falling forwards. The whole damn thing landed upside down on my head.

If that wasn't enough I stood up and immediately started laughing, almost maniacally (I mean honestly, what is the likelihood of this happening?), forgetting that I had actually hit the buzzer. My girlfriend opened the door to my hair soaking wet with cappuccino (it was still dripping off my hair) and me laughing to myself like a crazy person.

She looked horrified when she saw me and exclaimed "What happened !?!?!?!".

Fin.

When I was 8, I stuck a bobby pin in a wall socket. I had blisters in between my fingers for a while. My dad still loves to share this story to this day at family gatherings, and that was 35 years ago.

I was moving out of an apartment and was throwing away a bunch of stuff in the dumpsters the complex used. After about an hour of cleaning things out I went to my car and I could not find my keys.

I had somehow thrown them into the dumpster while throwing everything else out. This lead to an hour+ long dumpster diving extravaganza/smorgasbord complete with dirty diapers, old Indian food, and other unspeakable things before I finally found them.

Also when I was younger I thought that "fringe benefits" was actually "French benefits."

I was in my mid 20's before I figured out what a Frontage Road was. I was convinced that every town just had a surplus of streets called Frontage Road and couldn't figure out how you could tell the difference between them.

@JonT Ha! One New Years Day (around 6am) I had to call a locksmith to let me into my apartment. I had been partying with some of my neighbors for New Years Eve. Once he let me in he presented me with his $240 bill, which was double for working on a holiday. When I opened my purse to grab my checkbook I found my fucking keys. In my purse. Again: I found my keys. In my purse.

I sat on the floor outside of my apartment for over an hour at 6 in the morning and paid $240 while my keys were in my purse the whole time.

Also, I thought it was French Benefits too.

up until about a month ago I thought the lyrics in ride with me were "hey, thrust me the money"

When I was a little kid I lived in Pennsylvania, and there's a little town near Lancaster called Lebanon, best known for its balogna. Anyway whenever the TV news would be on and they'd be talking about war and bombings and riots in Lebanon (the country) I always wondered why none of that stuff seemed to happen when I was there, like they were on their best behavior for visitors or something.

1. Ate jalapenos.
2. Did the ol' spit-n-stroke
3. Immediately regretted it for a whole new reason.

When I was 8, I was sitting alone in the back seat of the car and noticed that the middle seat belt latch hole was about the same size as my finger. So I tried it out.

Of course, it wouldn't come out. And the more I struggled, the less likely that became. It was quite some time before I was willing to tell my parents, and then some time after that before we decided we had to go to the hospital.

After trying various soaps and oils, they gave up and had to cut the seatbelt off. I remember riding up the elevator with this seatbelt in my hand. They used a ring cutter to saw through the thing.

(This is my favorite thread at meh to date. Thanks @carl669)

Also when i was a kid, I bet my Dad $50 that Hershey was the capital of Pennsylvania. He's still waiting for me to pay up.

Shit. I didn't want to have to do this, but: Wifey & I were given a CO detector for Xmas. A day after I put batteries in it the detector went off, reading "evacuate." We thought it was defective & shut it off.

I've spent forty-five dollars here in the last two days. I think we're even.

@starblind: In High School I was invited to go with some friends on a weekend trip to "Tiercee". New to the area, I spent some time looking for it on a map, watching for various spellings. Finally I asked for directions and it turned out they meant "T or C", as in Truth or Consequences, NM. Recently my best friend told me an old friend of his had moved to Palestine. He launches satellites and weather balloons for NASA and scientific agencies and has lived in exotic ice and sand deserts all over the world. Months later he said the friend was driving in for the weekend. From Palestine? Turns out it was Palestine, Texas.

Needed automatic transmission fluid for my truck. A bunch of us from work went to lunch. We are looking for an auto parts store while out. Don't see one. On the way back, we pass the huge Harley dealership just by our office and I say "Hey, let's stop there and grab some". Yes. At the motorcycle place. I suggest getting automatic transmission fluid.
I still haven't lived that down.

Just had a dumb moment today. Was in the bath and thought it would be a good idea to jump out, run and answer it. Made it almost to the bathroom door when I slipped and brutally landed on the cold hard tile. My hip and wrist hurt (along with my pride), but nothing broken. So dumb.

My husband and I were setting up our washer in a new apartment, and we were confused about an extra hole in the wall, so we just left it.

Later as the laundry was going and we were watching TV, there was a loud knock on the door. My husband went to answer it and I heard him say "What the...", then he opened the door and a deep burly voice said "It's comin' down."

It was our downstairs neighbor. The other hole was for the drain. We had about 2 inches of water in the kitchen and hall.

I had a 1980 mazda rx7 when I moved back to Dallas in 1990 at 19. I was proud to drive a rotary (Wankel) engine but they are known for the oil seals going out around 100k miles. So of course this bites me - I'm dirt broke and my engine started cutting out - I was at about 85k miles. Main problem was making it to work - gradually the frequency increased to every 2 miles. I worked 10 miles away. I'd drive the backroads in Dallas and pull into residential streets to let the engine rest before restarting. 5 times every morning. Did this for 6 months to save up $1500, enough money to get the engine seals redone (I hoped).

Brought it into the mazda dealership and told them I was ready for the engine to be rebuilt, I was aware of the seal issue and I'd proudly saved up enough to get the work done. They called me back the next morning and said it was ready. The charge was $45. My fuel filter was dirty.

Speaking of mazda rx's -- we had an rx8 (mostly my husband's car). It has a cryptic (to me) shifter, but I'd driven it many times, apparently just magically having gotten it into the drive position, because the last time I drove it (the last time anyone drove it), I couldn't figure out which position was drive.

I'm still not sure.

Ironically (right?), I was attempting to drive it home from the mechanic. Accelerated as I was about to get on the highway, then the car just crapped out and I coasted into a Denny's parking lot and shamefully called my husband.

My husband -- @jchancep -- says that's not why it broke, but I think he's just being nice.

One time, I was withdrawing money from an ATM and at the same time butt-dialed my brother. So when I heard his muffled voice saying "Hello?", I thought it was the ATM talking to me as if I activated some sort of help button. I kept yelling at the ATM saying "I DIDN'T CALL YOU" while waiting for my money. I didn't realize what had happened until I was back in the car and my brother called me back.

I'm sure I entertained the people waiting behind me.

When I met my wife she had two dogs. One hot summer day, dog 1 and dog 2 decided to use the living room for some lovin'. They were... back to back, and the smaller one (a female shiba inu) was howling like mad. The male (an inbred Keeshond) was looking at me like he knew he was going to be beaten. They were very clearly trying to separate, but something was holding them together. The noise was horrible. I did what any responsible pet owner would do. I inserted my finger and wiggled it around trying to figure out why they were stuck together. My wife walked in on this scene and commenced to freak the fuck out. Me, on my knees, fingering my dog who is stuck to my other dog.

No dice. They were stuck, and stuck good.

So, I called the vet and explained the situation. I told the lady that answered the phone what I walked in to, what I had tried so far, and the result (no change). The nice lady asked me to hold. She came back about a minute later on speakerphone and asked me to repeat the story. I did.

Apparently she had gathered her entire office to her this whole fiasco, because while I was telling my tale I could hear about a half dozen people laughing their asses off at my misfortune. Once I got through my tale, I asked for advice one more time. The response:

Let them go, I know it doesn't look like it but they're having fun. If it takes longer than twenty more minutes throw water on them. I washed my hands until they were raw and wasn't allowed to touch my wife for a considerable amount of time.

tl:dr, I fingered my dog.

@thumperchick What I left out is some back story on the dog. He was super nervous, all the time. If you glanced at him the wrong way, raise your voice, sneeze, he would pee. This is the type of dog who, when you came home from work, would roll over on to his back to be petted and pee all over himself. We developed a system where we would sneak to the front door, open it from the side and call the dog in a strange voice so he would run outside and THEN pee from excitement.

All this to say, he was plenty nervous when I was down there 'investigating'.

I think I "reported" a comment earlier when trying to reply, but that's just 'cause I'm ignorant.

Here's another story for the thread.
I was in college, in a classroom that had several rows of tables in a horseshoe shape. I was sitting at a lecture, a little bored, and for some reason, put my hand under the desk, and felt around. To my surprise, there was something there. I felt around it, and it was a hard object with edges. Naturally, my response was to pull at it until it came free. When it finally did come free, I grabbed it, and got quite a surprise- a funny tingling feeling until I let go of it. I had pulled a power cord out of the socket and grabbed the prongs of a live cord.

As a young self-declared intellectual, one of my favorite words was "pseudo intellectual" (always uttered with appropriate arrogance and contempt). I completely unwittingly pronounced it "p-suede-o" until I was at least 14. Of course I'm pretty sure that none of my peers knew I was saying it wrong. But maybe the smarter ones thought it was an intentional joke. Or maybe they just laughed behind my back.

I just ate three chili cheese dogs for lunch, accompanied by a Pepsi and a protein drink (apparently not enough protein in the chili dogs..). I'm mildly lactose intolerant, and I'm taking a yoga class in three hours.

I said to a friends parents "yeah i really fucking hate names spelled weird like Amy: A-Y-M-I-E. just spell it right you're not impressing anyone" Only to remember her daughter was named exactly that way... I still get douche chills to this day years later. oh god. so stupid.

I remember when I was a kid upon hearing the news on TV that a group of gorillas was attacking a village with machine guns. I was like Gorillas with guns?... where did they get the gun? And holy cow Gorillas really are smart. Glad we don’t have gorillas around here!!

When I was a kid, I thought the faces of the presidents on Mt. Rushmore had always been there, and that it was proof that God blessed America.

I thought the Kansas City Chiefs played in the state of Kansas until @barnabee corrected me.

I don't know... What's you sign..?

i love how this thread pops to the top every couple weeks. it's always fun to read a new story. except @unkabob. your story sucks. damn you @studerc!!

When I was a kid I asked my dad why the TV show he was watching was in black & white. He told me that they didn't have color back then. It wasn't until I was about 14 years old that I figured out that he meant they didn't have color TV when that show was made. I spent my entire childhood thinking that color didn't exist in the entire world until the 60's.

So.. I have several stories.
1.) I can never get my meh username. I always have to login with my email. I use a password storage program, and the username I put in it is obviously wrong.
EDIT: I added a 'd' to the end of the one I saved. Fixed now.
2.) One time I was eating at a restaurant with family. After dinner I ordered some dessert, and it came with two sauce rammikins (chocolate and caramel). I poured the chocolate sauce all over it and ate dessert. Then I started looking at the caramel rammikin. It had something written on the bottom of it that I couldn't quite see.. So I turned it upside down over my lap. Why is my lap warm? And sticky?
3.) I went outside into the yard to throw something away one time when I was much younger and living with my parents. I wasn't going far, so I didn't bother to put on shoes. I'm barefoot outside, no keys, and of coursenI locked the door behind myself. Dad's at work. Mom's gone shopping and won't be back for hours. I put on my dad's flip-flops (HUUUUUGE) and walked from my house for an hour throuh town to the grocery store. Walk down all the aisles. Have the store page my mom. No answer. Use their phone to call home (this was before cell phones). Mom answers. She's been home for most of an hour wondering where the hell I've gone. I always check for my keys before closing a door now.
4.) My parents owned some rural property with a little house on it. We'd visit sometimes in the Summer, but it was mostly vacant so we left the power and things turned off. My dad was in the process of re-wiring it one year, so the safety cover was off the breaker box. I'm flipping the breakers on after we arrive, and I find one that's stubborn. So I brace my fingers against the screw terminal holding the live wire... Zap.
5.) I was grounded one time. Bored in my room, nothing to do... I unbent a paperclip into a rough "U" shape. Held it with a foam can cozie and jammed it into the electrical socket. The heat melted the cozie and blew the paper clip to pieces. The outlet was scorched. I got the paddling of my life, and I wasn't allowed electricity in my room for 3 months.
6.) When I was about 13, we only had one family computer. I was messing with it one day, not doing anything in particular. My dad gets off the couch, walks over, and stands RIGHT BEHIND ME. He didn't say a word. Just stood there. I got nervous. Started opening files at random. Open a .zip file full of pictures I had saved off the Internet.. Video games, cars, watches, whatever.. Open a picture, look at it for a while, close it, open another one.. Why is he standing there? Open a picture of a naked woman. ... ... I wasn't allowed on the computer without supervision for a year, and he deleted all my files.

My cat's breath smells like cat food

I went all the way through my High School senior year thinking an "essay" was an "S.A." and I was too afraid to ask someone what the initials stood for . . . finally, my Civics teacher (Mr. Kearney, may he rest in peace, who always called all the girls in class "bad dogs" [and meant it]) wrote the word "essay" on an assignment sheet. He was about the coolest teacher I ever had - in like the history of, ever - so, after class, I went up to him and explained that I always thought it was "S.A." and I never knew what it meant but I always figured out what I had to do (how many pages, etc.) and I just let it go at that because I was too afraid to ask, but now I knew it was "essay" and I thanked him. Well, he laughed so damn hard he shit himself right there, on the spot. I had to go to his car for his duffle bag . . . which ended up having more paraphernalia in it than the local head shop and I still to this day have subsequent generations of the same plant growing from one of the seeds I swiped from the bottom of his bag.

In return for my not telling anyone he shit his drawers and not mentioning that he apparently liked to smoke as much as the crew on a Cheech and Chong movie, he handed me a dime bag the next day in the smoking lounge at lunch (yeah, we had a smoking lounge outside back in the day when men were men and schoolchildren were cancer experiments). So, the vice principal (who is like three degrees cooler than the surface of the sun on my teenage testosterone-laden hotness scale) sees this whole transaction go down because 1) she's just a fuckin' bitch that way and 2) Mr. K couldn't hand off secrets to a Russian spy covertly if he was getting paid a million dollars to do it. Next thing I know, I'm of course being hauled in to the office, bag and all - with Mr. K running behind trying to slow her down.

It was a pretty short and straight walk from the smoking lounge to the office, but it is a fairly big school and there were a couple of twists and turns on the way and we would pass two sets of bathrooms before we arrived. It seemed like time had slowed down all slo-mo like, and the night before I had just seen The Breakfast Club at the mall theater (giving away the year this all went down I guess) and every step we took seemed to take forever and Don't You (Forget About Me) starts playing in my head, but honestly, all I could think of was how this vice principal's boobs looked under her silk shirt when she hit the air conditioning inside and how she good she smelled. To hell with the weed (Mom would TOTALLY understand, I was sure - or at least that is what I told myself), and Mr. K's job (hey, it was his fucking idea), well, that was his problem - I was popping wood and figured out in short order it was because she was grabbing my collar and pulling me down the hall. And I liked it. And still, the whole way, Don't You (Forget About Me) is playing full blast in my head . . .

Suddenly, Mr. K yells from behind us right as we turn a corner by the last set of bathroom doors (loud enough it pretty much knocked the song right out of my head), "Tess, I swear to God if you take another step with that boy I will tell everyone you were the one who gave me the clap!".

Well, she stopped, dead in her tracks, right there. It is lunch time as I said and the hallway is pretty deserted and the classrooms that had other kids in them are long behind us, so she spins around (spinning me with her), and scans the hallway to see who might have heard him. It is deserted, other than Mr. K sweating behind us to catch up still waddling along, there's no one other than this one burner chick that was on the payphone, but she didn't hear anything.

She orders me into the boy's room we had just passed.

After about a minute, and a lot of muffled discussion, Mr. K. comes in the bathroom. He's got sweat pouring off of him like a racehorse and he's panting as hard as a dog in heat in summer. He doesn't say a word. He walks over to the sink, wets a paper towel, wipes his head off and looks at me and then his watch. He stands there in silence and lays a wet paper towel over his head and leans back against the wall . . . After a couple minutes pass, he says "Okay, we can go. Keep the fuckin' bag".

From that day on, I never once had that vice principal look me in the eye. Neither Mr. K or her ever said a word about it, and eventually, I figured that me getting over on her was a dick move, so I just let it go.

At my ten year reunion though, there she was. I was coming off a bad relationship after college and she was still as hot as hellfire - long story short, we ended up in the same bathroom she marched me into that Spring day years before. All I could say was, "pull my collar harder".

I got the clap.

Years pass. I settle down, I marry, we have a son. He goes off to school. First time he brings home a spelling list, I add a "bonus word".

E-S-S-A-Y. ESSAY. Along with the definition.

today, on testing documentation i turned in, i wrote "N/A for checklist". or at least, that's what i thought i wrote. in actuality, i wrote "N/A for chestlick".

This thread needs to make a comeback.

I once asked my ex how much he thought something would cost because there wasn't a price on it.

We were in the dollar store.

I wasn't the dumbest one in this story, but . . . A coworker set me up on a blind date. She told me the guy worked with computers. So, he came over and the conversation went something like this:
Me - Next week is my birthday, I'm going to be 39.
Him - Really? How old are you now?
Turned out he worked in a warehouse shipping computers.

boss gave me some things to test today. the data set i'm working with is called VMPDATA. i said "very mediocre person data"? she just furled her brow and looked at me funny.

In high school, a friend and I were following some other friends back from a band competition. We were on the tollway and my friend was driving.

Having stopped at Sonic, I was entertaining myself by poking holes in the side of my half-empty cup. (No, I really couldn't tell you why.) When my friend followed the other car into a coin-only toll booth, we suddenly found ourselves in a crisis situation.

From the corner of my eye, I watched my friend frantically waving a dollar bill and shouting, "What do I do? What do I do?" Receiving no help from me, she ultimately threw her dollar into the coin basket and took off. (Thankfully, the dollar blew out instead of getting stuck.)

Why did I refuse to help my frantic friend? Well... I was a little busy managing a crisis of my own.

Contorting myself to get my head under my hole-riddled cup, I was using my mouth in a desperate attemp to contain the lemon-berry slush that was flowing from a hole I had just poked in the bottom of the cup.

As you imagine this seen, also try to wrap your mind around the fact that we graduated second and third in our class. Yeah... the salutatorian (commonly pronounced "salad-victorian" by people who don't know words) was the genius who poked a hole in the bottom of a half-full cup.

Put regular dish soap in dishwasher in apt in college

Simply send an email to SPAMMER@RICKASTLEY.NEVERGONNAGIVEYOUUP. My 3 cars has been resourceful earning MADE UP AMOUNT weekly for the 3 cars, in my fifth week now. Share with others too. Tackling unemployment, I'm more responsible to my family. #Bless #SPAM #STAHPIT

(THIS EDIT BROUGHT TO YOU BY MOD.)

I'm so glad @carl669 dug this thread up again. My husband and I were reminded yesterday of what he calls my most adorably dumb moment ever.

Last year we were walking the trails in the park next to our house. It's a 400 acre park, with a decent hill and steep, barely there trail descents that most people forego in favor of the gradual regular trails. We took the rough trail down, and once we got to the bottom and started walking across the field, I realized my phone was gone. I'd had it at the top so we knew I had lost it on the way down. We went back and started looking for it, focusing on some fallen trees we had to crawl over and under. I had my husband start calling my phone in hopes the ringer was on.

All of a sudden, I heard a kitten crying. It was the most pathetic sound and I immediately began searching for the kitten instead of my phone. I called it over and over and looked everywhere while my husband continued calling my phone trying to find it.

You get where this is going, don't you? I'd changed my ringer to a kitten mewling a few days earlier.

"dumber than I"

@carl669 if I just say yes will you be happy?

I put one of those glass screen protectors on my phone when I got it, and eventually of course I dropped my phone and the protector cracked. I started to peel it off gently but saw that the screen itself was cracked as well, so I left the protector on to keep it together. That was over six months ago.
Last weekend, I was looking at it more closely and realized that the screen wasn’t cracked, it was just the reflection from the broken screen protector. I peeled it off and sure enough, the screen had been perfectly fine the whole time.

I blew up my toaster oven. I was a teenager at the time. I wanted to reheat my kfc, but I didn’t want soggy chicken, so I didn’t use the microwave. Throw the chicken in. A little bit later I go to check on it, because there is some peculiar smell. As I go to walk through the doorway that leads into the kitchen, the door explodes outward and showers the entire kitchen in glass. I tentatively walk forward and my chicken is on fire inside the remains of the toaster oven.

I put the entire paper carton inside with the chicken. It worked with the microwave, why not the oven, is what I had thought.

i turned on my cell phone and then held it up to my ear to check for a dial tone.

I bought new windshield wiper blades. I looked at them quickly in the store because they said they were hybrid blades. They looked like a clear blade, so I figured maybe they wouldn’t cook like the black rubber blades do here in the Florida sun. I also bought a new version of rain repellant washer fluid.
I installed them and put the fluid in. Took a quick drive to the store and tried to wash the dust off my windshield. It was streaky as hell. I figured that maybe the new fluid was a problem, or maybe the blades weren’t that great. The next day I was driving to work in the morning, and I turned on the wiper blades to clear the condensation off the windshield. I couldn’t see anything, so I kept the wipers running, trying to sort of see. In my head I’m thinking about how I’m going to return the blades and write a review about how dangerous they are because they are so terrible. I decide to pull over to make sure that nothing was trapped under the blades and that’s why they were streaking so terribly. I notice that the blades had actually shifted, and I’m like, Wtf is that all about.

I get back in the car, and as I’m driving, it dawned on me what the problem was…

When I get to work, I get out and pull off the clear plastic covers that protected the black rubber blades.

highly doubtful.

ah, memories. I can’t think you folks enough for tagging me every time this gets brought up…