Sometimes you just get lucky.
Thanks to Redditor Stenik0522, who asked the online community "What is the dumbest idea you have ever had that actually worked?" we get to revel in our cohort's good fortune. The thing is... sometimes an idea is so absurd it has to work.
Join us as we roll our eyes yet nod appreciatively at people who somehow made it through despite committing acts that would otherwise be seen as glitches in the matrix!
"But I got the discount."
Giphy
In my freshman year of college, my grades were really not great. And my parents were really strict about getting good grades. When my dad asked to see my grades, I panicked and did the inspect command on the computer where you can change type faces on the screen to read different words and letters. I changed all of my shitty grades to good grades. My dad was so happy that I did "good" my first year of school. He asked me to print my results. I did, and turns out he had to send them to our car insurance company for a "good student discount". Ultimately, I committed insurance fraud by accident. But I got the discount.
"So it was my mom's birthday..."
So it was my mom's birthday: we're barbecuing and we got her to stay inside and prep food so we can decorate the front with balloons and streamers and what have you. Well we got the whole thing done in secret as hoped, but then we realized there was no way we could get all the left over decoration material and balloon pump inside without her noticing.
Now there are two ways into our house: the back door that leads into the garage and then into the kitchen where mom was, and the front door which is visible from the kitchen sink. So, I told my brother I would go in from the back door and distract her while he brought the stuff in through the front, and down the hall past the kitchen
Once i got in the kitchen it had occurred to me that I had no plan of attack so i legit just said "hey mom look at this dance i made" and started like swaying and bopping up and down and doing jazz hands and going "lalalala". Mind you, im like 17 years old in this scenario.
So she's just watching me and when bro comes in and is sneaking through the hall behind her with all the stuff, i keep telling her "wait it's about to get good" and she kept watching in confusion. The second he was in the clear, i stopped and said "ok that's it" and that was that. We succeeded.
"One time..."
When I was like 7 years old I was playing in my back garden with those incredibly bouncy little balls you got, just bouncing them high off the house and letting them bounce randomly before trying to catch them, as you did.
One time I went for this huge throw off the wall and it bounced crazily off various surfaces so fast I completely lost track of it. So my 7 year old logic was to stand back in the same place and throw another ball the same way. I watched it bounce this way and that about 10 times before finally hitting a plant and coming to a rest in a flower bed. I went over to pull back the foliage and sure enough there were both balls literally lying touching each other in the mud.
At the time I was like "yep, makes sense..." but over the years since then I've often thought about it and how the hell it worked!
"I did it..."
Wearing a motorcycle helmet while snowblowing. I did it because i missed riding, it kept my face warm and when snow would fly back at me the visor would protect me.
"When I was younger..."
When I was younger I got called into HR because I drew a very detailed picture of a penis. It was really really good.
The HR meeting happened like a week after I drew it and my only defense was " I dont recall doing that, do you happen to have the picture? It might jog my memory." They didnt have it of course because I had it, and because I didnt confess they couldn't do sh!t.
Investigation results inconclusive, have a nice day
"Worked like a charm."
Our power was out due to a storm. I had a camp stove to use for boiling water to make a coffee pour-thru, but I couldn't use my electric grinder for the coffee beans. I tried fashioning a mortal and pestle but it was taking too long. So, I put the coffee beans in a couple of ziplock bags, placed the bag right behind a car tire, then ran over it back and forth a couple of times to crush the beans. Worked like a charm.
"I forgot to bring my resume..."
I forgot to bring a resume to a job interview, but I had an index card in my bag. I cut the index card in half and wrote my name, my contact info, and "creative problem solver" in my best handwriting, and gave a copy of my "business card" to both the interviewers.
I got the job.
"A friend and I..."
A friend and I once snuck 15 people into a Warped Tour by giving them some bracelets from a party supply store and clipboards full of paper. Walked up to the side gate and said we were with Rock The Vote. The security guard waved us right in.
"When I was young and broke..."
When I was young and broke I bought a sofa from a used furniture store. I had no way to take the sofa home. I went to a used car lot a couple of blocks away and took a truck for a test drive...
"Childhood really is..."
"I'm stuck on a cliff, but if I jump at a really sharp angle at that gravel field, I could just slide down there and be fine, just like in TV!"
Every time I think about this I am amazed I'm not either flattened by a rock, or impact against something.
Childhood really is just the tutorial level sometimes.
Ok, who is watching the clock? Those seconds aren't going to count themselves. The only way to understand time is to be its witness. Although that can get depressing. Let's focus on the light and cool.
History...
Calculate Figure It Out GIF by OriginalsGiphy"If you are an 80-year-old American, you have lived through approximately 1/3 of our nation's entire history."
Those Days...
"The 80s were 40 years ago."
"This is what messes me up because I was born in 82 and graduated high school in 2000 so for some reason my brain is stuck on the 80's being twenty years ago. The 70's thirty years ago etc etc. I have to stop and realize sometimes that my concept of how long ago things happened is way off."
Time goes by...
"We observe that light travels at 186,000 miles a second, but given the vast size of the observable universe, that's a snail's pace. But from the point of view of a particle of light, time doesn't even exist."
"Time slows down as you approach the speed of light, and theoretically stops completely when you reach the speed of light."
Years Gone By...
"MLK Jr. and Anne Frank were born in the same year."
"Betty White was born in 1922. Automatically pre-sliced packaged bread loaves became commercially available in 1928. Betty White is six years older than sliced bread."
Long Live the Queen!
queen elizabeth images GIFGiphy"The queen and Marilyn Monroe would've been the same age."
"And Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith were born on the same day!"
- osme1
I swear Liz is going to outlive dirt. Wait, I believe she already has. Well she won't be alone, she'll have Betty White. At least she better have Betty. Time is nothing without Queen Betty.
TV Time
Season 2 Omg GIF by Paramount+Giphy"Happy Days was a TV show made in the 1970s-80s about teenagers in the 1950s. Similarly, That 70s Show was made in the 90s-00s about teenagers in the 70s. If a similar show were to be made today, it would be about teenagers in the 2000s."
- VVillyD
A Croc
"If a T-Rex imagined a creature as ancient as the T-Rex is to us, it would be a Stegosaurus. If that Stegosaurus imagined a creature as ancient as the Stegosaurus is to us, it would be a Crocodile. If that Crocodile imagined a creature as ancient as that Crocodile is to us, it would be a Shark."
On the Clock
"On a twenty four hour clock the amount of time that humans have been on the earth would total around five seconds."
"How about this one: If Homo Habilus first appeared at midnight, 24 hours ago, that means the first Homo Sapiens appeared at 9:25 PM, or about 2 and a half hours ago. The first human civilization, in lower Mesopotamia, appeared at 11:57 PM, or about 3 minutes ago."
"The Western Roman Empire fell at 11:59 PM, or 1 minute ago. Everything that has happened since - the Crusades, the Plague, the discovery of the New World, the world wars, all of it - has happened in the last minute of human existence."
And that's just OUR Sun...
"The span of our lives are so insignificantly small that our Sun will last another 5 billion years. That's 9 zeros people. Our eldest live to around 100 in the best places. That's 50,000,000 (50 million) times longer than any person can reasonably expect to live. And that's just OUR Sun. The universe as a whole has probably existed for magnitudes longer than that already and will continue to exist until the end of time as we know it."
Tell Me a Story
william shakespeare GIF by will herringGiphy"We know what a good storyteller Shakespeare was but there were Greek playwrights who wrote shows nearly 2,000 years earlier that are pretty good, too."
I hate time. Only because I'm petty and irritated of the amount I squandered. That's neither here nor there though. Time marches on and continues to amaze. I'll keep watching.
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