5 Stupid Things I Did Throughout My Life

I am a pretty intelligent person. Or so I like to think. I have always prided myself on the fact that I was a nice, well-behaved, and normal guy. I never got in any big trouble in school, never got drunk or high, or killed anyone.

I started working at the age of 8 as a newspaper delivery boy and have never stopped working. I have never been fired and have always had steady employment. I never backpacked across Europe or did any hardcore partying.

Wow, my life has been pretty boring!

But, there have been times when I have sometimes fallen into a situation where I didn’t make the best of choices. Whether it be peer pressure, fear, absent-mindedness, or just dumb luck, these are five stupid things that happened to me in life so far. I am sure there are more to come.

5. Peeing in the Sauna

I am starting off with one of the earliest things I can remember. I was in elementary school. Maybe grade 5 or 6. My cousin was sleeping over at my place and we decided to go to the basement of my condo where they have a pool, gym, and lounge.

My condo is far from the city and not many people use the facilities so it was just the lifeguard, an old lady, and us in the pool area. Once out of the pool, my cousin and I decided to sit in the sauna. For some reason, I had to pee.

I should have just got out of the sauna and gone to the toilet which was right outside. But maybe it was out of curiosity or to make my cousin laugh, I decided to pull it out and pee on the hot stones in the sauna. The hissing sounds and the steam that rose from the stones were a hoot.

But then came the stink.

It not only spread throughout the sauna but spread somehow through the men’s locker area, all the way to the pool area where the Vanilla Ice-looking lifeguard started investigating.

Of course, within minutes, the lifeguard showed up in the changeroom, saw us, and asked, “Did you pee in the sauna?”

I could not lie. I confessed but told him I couldn’t hold it. He called the superintendent and my father. My father came down, apologized to the superintendent who was surprisingly cool about it and the lifeguard was disappointed I didn’t get evicted or banned from the pool.

That was stupid.

4. One millionth Customer

I think I was one of those kids who watch too much TV because every sitcom had an episode where someone is the 1,000,000th customer and gets a shopping spree or some kind of prize.

Well, I grew up in a household where we were not very rich. I would say we were lower middle class. My mother was a housewife and my father worked in the kitchen at a hospital so money was tight.

I got an allowance of 2 dollars a week, which was a can of coke and an ice cream bar. And I had a job delivering newspapers but it only made me about 50 dollars a month. So I wasn’t able to enjoy a lot of the pastimes my friends or classmates could. There were no quarters for video games, slushies at 7–11, or hanging out at the movie theater or mall.

I was used to not doing any of those things so it was fine but something that I really wanted was Kinder Surprise eggs.

I am from Canada and those things are now banned in America for some reason. Also, since society became safer and PC, the current kinder surprise eggs are chocolate hollow eggs with a toy inside that is just one piece. But when I was young, they were tiny plastic and metal pieces that were easy to swallow and were placed in an orange capsule covered with really good chocolate.

I would save up my allowance and buy two every week to see what was inside. I was fine until Kinder Surprise released The Smurf Set. It was 50 different characters of the smurfs and I had to have each one.

It was a limited edition and it would be impossible at my rate to collect all 50. So desperate times call for desperate measures. I went into my uncle’s room and stole 50 dollars from his tip jar. He was a waiter and had hundreds of dollars in coins so he wouldn’t miss it. Plus he was an asshole who treated me and my sister like shit so I was willing to steal from him.

I took the money, went to the 7–11 near my home, and bought an entire box of eggs. I opened them all in one day, hid the eggs under my bed and squished all the chocolate together into a giant ball, wrapped it in tin foil, and put it in the back of the fridge.

My mom found the bag of eggs when she was cleaning my room and my sister found the chocolate in the fridge. I didn’t plan that well at all.

My father interrogated me and I told him that I was the 1,000,000th customer at 7–11 so I got a free box of kinder surprise eggs. He of course didn’t believe me. The next day he went to the shop and asked the Korean owner of the 7–11 store. The guy had no idea what my father was talking about. I was busted.

That was stupid.

3. The Cologne Incident

As I grew older, so did my desires. From Kinder Surprise eggs, my new obsession was now girls.

I was in high school. I was also working part-time at the CN Tower in Toronto where I lived. I was an elevator boy taking tourists up and down the tower while giving them information on the city and tower.

The tower had an exchange program with Europe and students from England, France, Germany, and Spain would come to work at the tower as well. That is how I met a girl named Bettina. She was from Germany and I had never met anyone German nor named Bettina.

She was also very pretty and nice. I was interested in her and wanted to date her. I have always been shy and truth be told I had never even talked to a girl until I got to high school.

But after working at the tower and having to talk to strangers all day, I started gaining more confidence and being able to be more social. So after talking to Bettina at work as well as going out with her with a group of friends, I got the nerve to ask her out on a date. Surprisingly she agreed.

We ended up at a seafood restaurant then got some dessert and sat by the water. It was nice. I should have gone for the kiss but I was still a bit shy.

The moment passed and she got a call from her friends asking her to meet up for coffee. Instead of parting ways, she invited me along which I took as a good sign.

One of the girls said she liked my cologne. I just happened to have the cologne in my bag so I pulled it out. I was going to pretend to spray it in my mouth as Jim Carrey did in Dumb and Dumber. When I pushed the nozzle, the spray went in the opposite direction and into Bettina’s mouth as she was standing next to me about to say something.

She started coughing and vomited on the street. Her friends took her into the bathroom to get her cleaned up but after that incident, we were never the same. I apologized and she said it’s okay but there was never a second date.

The irony was Betinna was from the city of Cologne in Germany.

That was stupid.

2. The Rock

This story is not about Dwayne Johnson. It’s a simple story about a stupid guy who does stupid things when he panics.

I was in university and finally had a girlfriend. Jessika lived on the other side of the city from me but it was my first relationship and I never thought anyone would want to date me again so I did everything to not let go. Including buying a car just so I could drive to her place every weekend to pick her up and take her on dates.

One night while dropping Jessika off at her home, I left the car running, the music blaring, and the keys in the ignition. I left the door unlocked and took Jessika to her door. I gave her a goodnight kiss and was about to go back into my car.

As I pulled on the door handle, fate gave me the finger.

As I pulled on the handle, the door lock went down and locked the door. Maybe because my car was old and didn’t have automatic locks or because there really is a God and he hates me, the lock moved down and I couldn’t open it.

The music was on, headlights were on, the engine running, and it was 2 am. I couldn’t call my parents and I didn’t know what to do. So panicking I found the biggest rock I could carry from the garden of someone’s front lawn. I tossed it at my window and it shattered.

Glass went flying inside the car, all over the seat and the rock ended up breaking my seatbelt buckle as well. I had to put a newspaper on the seat to drive home.

Once at home, I left the glass, put the rock back on my seat, and went inside my home, and went to sleep. The next day my father woke me up. He was angry.

I plead ignorance. I told him some gangs in the neighborhood must have tossed a giant rock in the car to try to steal something. I ended up having to pay to replace the window and fix the seatbelt. To this day, my father doesn’t know it was me who broke the window.

That was stupid.

1. The Hot Iron

Now that I am a grown-up I have to do grown-up things. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, and yes sometimes ironing my shirts. Luckily, I am an English teacher in Japan and am not required to wear suits every day. I get by with khaki pants and a polo shirt.

However, at the beginning of the year and end of the year, there is an entrance and graduation ceremony where all teachers are required to wear a suit. So I had to pull out the one suit that I used for these and other occasions like weddings and funerals.

My dress shirt was too wrinkled to just flatten with my hand and hope that no one would notice the creases. So I pulled out the trusty iron that I bought when I first moved to Japan. I plugged it in and waited for it to get hot.

I don’t have an ironing board so I decided that I would lay my shirt on my bed and iron my shirt there. Once the iron was hot, I sat on my bed and went about ironing. I realized despite not having ironed much in my life, I was a natural.

Then I went to stand up from my bed. As I moved off the bed, my weight caused the iron to tip over and land on my arm. It took me a few seconds to realize the iron was burning hot and was slowly searing away my arm skin.

Ouch.

That hurt like hell. It also left a permanent scar on my arm which luckily is not that visible because I have a lot of arm hair. But the burn was pretty bad, there was skin stuck to the iron, and I had to put on burn cream for a week.

That was stupid.

Anyway, those are five stupid things I have done. If you read this far, you are really nice or really stupid. Either way, thanks for taking the time to read this, and let me know the stupidest thing you have done in your life so far so I don’t feel so bad.