There are moments in our lives where we think something is a REALLY good idea. In these moments, you feel like you have it all together, and that your plan is foolproof. Unfortunately, when reality hits, you quickly realize that your idea was actually really freaking stupid. Just listen to these Redditors, as they tell you the stories of how their genius plans went to sh*t.
u/Persondynamo2222 asked: What is your best "Well that backfired." story?
Ouch!
When I was a kid at summer camp, I once attached some skyrockets to one of those balsa wood gliders. I tossed it out toward the lake after lighting the rockets and it flew normally for a few seconds until the rockets kicked in. It shot straight up, looped over our heads, and landed right on one of the councilors.
No bug juice for me that night.
It literally backfired.
GiphyDecided to burn some newspaper outside in a toilet I had just replaced, because I didn't want risking the grass catching on fire.
Well, heat caused toilet to explode, sending burning newspaper everywhere.
Grass caught on fire.
So much for taking the high road.
Trying to shake hands with my bully, thinking this would diffuse the situation. Got punched in the throat.
And while I don't advocate it, this is why people assault their bullies in the middle of lunch by slamming a bunch bunch of books behind their head into the table.
Not such a smart idea.
In my first apartment I had a bag vacuum (as opposed to a canister vacuum), and the bag was full. I had no replacement bags, so I used painter's tape to attach a Walmart bag. I thought I was frugal genius, and patted myself on the back as I switched it on.
Didn't work at all. Almost immediately the bag blew right off, and a bunch of dirt blew all over the place... all the dirt that was stuck in the vacuum since the previous bag was full.
Ow, right in the feels.
GiphyHad friends at a lunch table who always made fun of this girl who sat by herself. I invited her to our table one day because I felt bad for her.
Yup, you can see where this is going.
She immediately and 100% replaced me, and they all realized it was even more awesome to make fun of me. Jokes on them, I got to eat lunch with my civics teacher after that.
So it goes.
Hired for a position I was overqualified for.
Over performed.
Asked for a promotion.
Fired.
Was probably the right decision.
A girl I knew dated a guy I was also friends with. Really sweet, doting guy, not the best looking, but a really lovely lad. I went on a night out with his girlfriend, my partner at the time and his friend Jay. We drank and danced etc and at the end of the night, my friend and Jay were kissing.
We spoke the next day and she swore it was a one-off but ended up meeting him twice after that so I told her if she didn't tell her partner, I would as he was my friend too and didn't deserve it. In the end I told him and he thanked me. Then she spoke to him, cried a river and managed to talk him round into forgiving her and falling out with me.
Been a few years since and neither one spoke to me since. They're still together but I don't know how he can trust her.
A bad flight.
GiphySitting on an airplane doing a crossword puzzle. My pen stopped writing, so I snapped it up and down a couple of times. Ahhhh, pen works again.
Guy beside me starts freaking out and yelling for the stewardess. I look over at him and see a thin line of black ink running from the left shoulder of his crisp, starched white shirt to the right hip of his pants.
I pretended like I had been asleep, and he blamed some random kid across the aisle.
The airline gave him a voucher or something to pay for the dry cleaning.
Poor dad.
I was skiing with my dad on high slope on a windy day. It was slippery and I fell. Unable to stop, I descended about 100 meters on my butt before stopping. I was still a little shocked trying to stand up when my dad stopped right before me to mock me.
But it's still slippy and he fell. And he descended 100 meters on his behind before stopping.
It was hilarious.
That's just an accident waiting to happen.
This actually happened to my teacher, she entered an axe throwing competition and while winding up before throwing, it was behind her head. When she threw it she hit the back of her head with the handle. She knocked herself out and the blade of the axe almost sliced her head.
They clearly weren't thinking.
GiphyWhen I was a kid, I wanted to use our little bush outside as a slingshot. I put a pretty big rock on the end of the tall shrub, pulled it back, and let go.
I didn't see it go forward, it went up instead. I decided to run a few feet backwards to get out of the way. It landed directly on top of my head.
Don't play with fire.
This is why kids shouldn't play with fire. I was 7ish, living in a duplex community at the end of a cul de sac. One side was empty lots that boarded a canyon there was a huge pepper tree all the neighbor kids liked to hang under. One day a couch appeared, the couch pretty quickly got silly and moldy even in the summer it was cooler and damp under the tree which is the main reason we liked it. I quickly got the idea to burn the couch. Little fire couch is gone shade spot is back to it's cool calm glory.
Now this was early 80's so that couch was from the 70's maybe the 60's. The cushion foam, actually solid state rocket fuel. The moment we set the corner of one cushion on fire it was out of control. Flipping it over to smoother it just gave it access to the cotton batting. That couch went up in seconds, and all the leaves and old dead pepper corns during and popping. The fire spread to the tree, the field it was in bone dry.
We barely got down into the canyon before getting engulfed. The fire spread to the entire empty lot, spread to almost cashing a house down the way on fire. They got the canyon out before it got too far, they had to stop the trolly for a few hours. No copters but it was close.
Uhhhh....
I almost forgot, when I was a freshman in college I had a hard time befriending other girls. I decided the best approach would be to find out who every girl on my hall was attracted to and get very close to them. I thought the girls in my hall would be impressed and ask me to show them how to do the same or ask me to become their mentor.
That's not what happened. They hated me and did everything they could to put me down and isolate me. It does make more sense to me now though.
Bad kitty!
GiphyOne of my cats is afraid of the other one. The other is a viper cat. They were between my room and the hallway, and I tried to close the door to try to separate them.
Both cats leaped at each other and I was caught in the middle. Got one leg stretched like crazy and some were kind of deep.
Don't bite off more than you can chew.
1 month into a new job I volunteered to do a special project to impress my new boss. It turned out to be way more complicated than I thought it would be. 2 months later I had made 0 progress and was fired for not doing enough.
That same week my roommate moved out and I had to start paying his portion of the rent.
"What's the most mysterious thing happened in your life that you can't find any explanation for?"
Mom Acting Weird
"My mum is a type 1 diabetic, has been since she was 11 years of age."
"When me and my little brother were very young, I was about 7 and he was 5 , I came into my mum's room to find she was acting extremely strange."
"She looked almost drunk, and wasn’t really responsive."
"I went to pick up her insulin needles to see if she would react to that and she didn’t."
"So I panicked and phoned my Nan who told me to put the phone down and dial 999."
"For some reason I was so frightened and confused I didn’t, and sent my little brother outside to get help while I tried to get my mum to respond to me."
"My brother came back in crying saying he couldn’t find anyone and then about five minuets later this woman just walked into my mum's bedroom, called me by my name, and my brothers, said she knew my mum and help is coming, she was calm, soft-spoken and had a warm feeling about her."
"I didn’t recognize this woman and neither did my brother."
"Shortly after the ambulance arrived and got my mum's sugar levels back up."
"And when I went to find the woman, she was gone."
"Like literally gone."
"When my mum came round I explained to her about this mysterious woman and what she looked like."
"And my mum had absolutely no idea who she was, and we never saw her again."
"If she didn’t help us my mum would have died eventually."
"Still gives me shivers now."- leeshouse90
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire Neon Rated GIF by NEONGiphyPsychic, or lucky?
"When I was around 18 a friend and I were traveling in Europe."
"We were walking along a pleasant, quiet street in Rome one day and saw an elderly homeless man sitting on the street."
"He said to us if he could guess our date of birth could we give him some money?"
"Of course we said ok."
"He did it! "
"He told us both our correct dates of birth!"
"Never met him before and never saw him again."- robertodurian
Some Unfinished Work, Maybe?
"I was at my mother in law's flat in Hungary."
"Fyi I don't speak Hungarian, so I couldn't be aware of any of this."
"I tend to go to bed later that my wife, and for the first couple of nights, I had trouble falling asleep because around midnight I could hear the neighbor upstairs."
"It's an old block of flats made under the communist era, walls are incredibly thin."
"Walk in high heels, which was very annoying."
"I could also hear little objects fall on the floor, and I told my wife it sounded like the plastic buttons you have on some clothes."
"She looked at me funny and told me her niece hated to sleep in that room because she was scared by the noises coming from upstairs."
"I said that was a bit exaggerated, and I thought it was until my wife told me the flat upstairs had been empty for the past at least 4 years."
"Neighbor died years before that, and guess what?"
"She was a tailor, always nicely dressed and wearing high heels."- mimzou
High Heels Shoes GIF by Real Housewives Of CheshireGiphyGone Without A Trace
"When I was a kid, I participated in Big Brothers Big Sisters, which if you don't know what that is it's pretty much just a mentorship program in the US."
"I basically just hung out with this dude Chris for a couple hours a week."
"We'd go to the movies, out to eat, he'd help me with my homework, that kinda thing."
"One day, he tells me that he's going to Baltimore for a couple weeks and when I should expect him back."
"The day rolls around and I give him a call to see if he's back yet."
"A man whose voice I didn't recognize answered and I asked if Chris was there."
"He said no."
"I asked him when Chris would be back just kinda thinking it was someone staying at his house or watching his dogs or something."
"But he said that I had the wrong number, that he and his wife had lived there for years, and there was never a Chris there."
"I double checked in the phonebook to see if it was the right number which it was because I had it circled."
"I was confused so I just said sorry and hung up, and I never heard from Chris ever again."- theautomemoriesdoll
A Clever Distraction?
"When I was 10 or so I was staying at my grandma's over the summer break and we were having breakfast."
"We barely started eating when the phone rang."
"She left the dining room and I followed her thinking that maybe they were my parents calling."
"When we returned most of the food was gone."
"She asked me if I ate while she was on the phone and I said 'no'."
"There was no one else home and there were no pets."
"My grandma just shook it off saying we might have eaten more than she remembered but I am absolutely positive that I had at most two bites of my toast by the time the phone rang."- queenliz2fr
Hungry Good Morning GIF by HBO MaxGiphyMystery Benefactor
"Every month around the 5th I get a letter with exactly 23 dollars."
"No note, no return address."
"I’ve asked family, relatives, friends, the two past occupants of this apartment."
"Nobody knows anything about it."
"It is not addressed to me, but to my unique postal address."
"The total is now exactly 1886, I have just stashed it all in a box."
"I do not want to spend it in case it is cursed."- Puzzleheaded_Ad928
A Comforting Sign
"My grandmother always loved roses and had them growing in her back yard."
"She died in a December and when we were gathered at her house for the funeral my father happened to look out the back window and saw a bright red rose had blossomed."
"It stood out brightly against the snow."
"He brought it in and put it in a vase on the kitchen table."
"We all left for the funeral and when we came back the rose was on the living room floor."
"No one had been in the house while we were gone."
"My father is the most hard-headed person alive but he was convinced it was his mothers way of telling him she was all right."- regular6drunk7
Mystery Portal?
"We have a built in wardrobe in our bedroom."
"About a month ago our cat had managed to get herself inside and I must have closed the door."
"I heard her meowing and I opened the door and she jumped out and walked off."
"Silly cat."
"I closed the wardrobe door."
"Less than five minutes later I hear a meow in the wardrobe, I open the door and to my surprise, our cat jumps out again and walks off."
"My partner and I were both stunned as there is no way into the wardrobe with the doors closed."
"Neither of us have any idea how this happened."- TorthOrc
Cat Jumping GIFGiphyLost Time
"I had just picked up a coworker from her house heading to work.'
"We are just talking and chatting, "how'd your weekend go" type of stuff."
"We are maybe 5 miles away from her house, when all of a sudden, we realize we are in town pulling into works parking lot."
"We both kinda look at each other not sure what happened."
"We had gone near 20 miles in a blink of an eye."
"And what cemented this experience as something that I actually happened, and not just simply losing track of time, IS THE TIME!"
"It should have taken us almost half an hour to get to work."
"Instead the time from when I picked her up was 2:30."
"And the time when we got to the building was 2:40."
"There is no way in HELL!"
"We couldn't have gotten there that fast."
"From that point on we both called that experience the time when we Jumped, like from the movie Jumper."
"I have no explanation why."
"I'll also state, I don't believe in the paranormal or supernatural."
"So this experience is one of those things that makes me question my own sanity."- belac4862
car dark GIFGiphyThere must be an explanation for these circumstances...
Even if it's not an explanation that will make any sense, otherworldly or not.
What is a great example of 'f*ck around and find out'"?
Never Be Afraid To Seek Help
"Hey remember how they said drugs can ruin your f*cking life?"
"Turns out that was true."- WowAPenguin
They Put Up Those Walls For A Reason
"People who die after going over the safety fence at zoo, or basically any safety fence."- Solid_Refrigerator16
They Can't Say They Weren't Warned...
"Those who go deep cave diving and ignore the warning signs."- somekindofmiracle
cave GIFGiphyNever Stand Behind Them...
"Jacka**es who come to the stables I ride at and act weird around horses."
"Those animals play no games."- clem82
Is It Really Worth It?
"Running of the Bulls in Spain."
"The videos each year of the people getting completely annihilated by the bulls is a great example."- getagrooving
Never Get Too Big For Your Britches...
"When I was young I boxed and eventually got into golden gloves."
"I got a few wins under my belt and said I wanted to fight someone legit, someone who would be a real challenge."
"An opportunity came up to fight someone very good, a guy who'd eventually win regional and state and later go pro."
"At this point I'd not lost or even been knocked down, so my confidence was high, that is until he knocked me the hell out very early in the fight and taught me that there are BIG differences in the different talent levels of fighting."-Reddit
episode 2 boxing GIF by Archie ComicsGiphySharks might be the least of your problems...
"Go swimming outside the flags in Australia."- d*ckflip1980
Clown Behavior
"When people were dressing up like clowns to scare people."
"It kinda stopped after one got shot."- BigMaraJeff2
Or With Anything Dangerous...
"Playing with electricity."- tlmega124
Jack Nicholson Hair GIF by MOODMANGiphyThey Won't Harm You If You Won't Harm Them...
"People that approach wildlife in state parks."- Rider-of-Rohaan42
Best To Keep Hands And Feet Out Of Moving Vehicles...
"Your boss at the warehouse is constantly telling you to keep your feet within the confines of your vehicle, and not to hang them, and to stay clear when walking, because if you don't, a 6,000 pound+ vehicle impacting a fixed surface will turn your foot into spaghetti sauce."
"Do not f*ck around, ever, with industrial vehicles."
"Follow all guidelines, always."
"A powered ride-on pallet jack weighs as much as 2-3 small cars, when fully loaded."
"It will absolutely ruin you if you don't operate safely."- SpaceCorpse
Still Probably Best Not To Do It At All!
"My uncle was a high-profile defense attorney specializing in folks who were arrested for drug trafficking."
"The greatest advice he ever gave to me was, if you want to smuggle ANYTHING, you can do it one time."
"Just once."
"After that, you will be caught and you will be f*cked."- redoctober2021
Confusing On So Many Levels...
"Trying to armed rob a gun store."- VagabondTexan
You'd Think People Would Have Learned By Now...
"Taking Julius Caesar hostage."- EgoSenatus
caesar GIFGiphyNo One Is Invincible...
"Ye saying he can’t be dropped by Adidas, then immediately getting dropped by Adidas."- Admin_Untold
It's one thing to make a mistake after being a bit too hasty, and not giving something enough thought.
But if you end up in the ER after being urged not to do something, and well aware of what might happen, don't expect too many flowers...
Redditor Sir_Baconstrips wanted to see who was willing to discuss actions made while randy, so they asked:
"What's the biggest mistake you've made because you were horny?"
I can't tell you mine, because my mom might read this. But Reddit was more than happy to share.
History Help
Hide Reaction GIF by florGiphy"I browsed porn and then I asked my mom how to delete the history."
Ramon80589
What was that?
"Probably my most embarrassing moment. Was on my work computer (family business so nothing locked) and it was a super slow day and I was alone. Anyways was doing a classic 3 min facebook check and scrolled down for a second and saw the news post about Adriana Chechik injuring her back in a foam pool. Figured top comments on that would be golden. Read one funny one that said 'her and her scene with [performer I can’t remember] is still goat.'"
"Never heard of said performer so I got curious and google her. Of course photos never do justice, had to see the performance ya know? So I clicked a random video, quick glance and thought 'meh' and was about to close the tab before I noticed my mouse twitch on the screen… What was that? No.. that wasn’t mouse error, that was someone… then within seconds I realized the accountant who taps in remotely to finish work came in at that exact moment that I had a browser open for less than 60 sec."
"The worst wart was I could have sworn I had all those remote services off, but she tried to tap in for over an hour and must of did something to wake splashtop (probably had it on some type of standby mode). She even called earlier but I saw a random number and was speaking with a client and ignored it."
"Anyways, decision time, do I call her and play it off as nothing or apologize? Naturally as a fearful 28 year old I play off as nothing. I call, no answer… then a few minutes later i get the call back and her words after exchanging 'hellos … are you finished with whatever you were doing…' still burns me."
Satmatzi
Years Later
"Let my (ex) boyfriend dry-hump me for an hour on a bench outside after summer school."
"The bad news: this bench behind our school was also beside a swimming pool. Where parents were taking their children for swim lessons. Eventually a staff member came out and yelled at us for being inappropriate."
"I still have shame flashbacks today, over 10 years later."
hannlouiseols
Size Issues
"I had a one night stand with a guy who was, in retrospect, seriously self-conscious about his penis size and kept going on about how if it was on the small size it was just because he has to have sex with it a few times and it would gradually get bigger until it was it’s 'true' size. I really didn’t care."
"But then to make himself feel better he turned it around and started talking about how big and wide my vagina was but kept reassuring me that it was ok because he liked the challenge. I wish I had snapped my legs shut and given him the boot right then and there."
bewarethes0ckm0nster
In San Diego
No Money Bangladeshi GIF by GifGariGiphy"Lost my entire tax refund and got my phone stolen at a strip club in San Diego."
BigFatPapaBear
Always check your pockets on the way out.
The Reward
Happy We Did It GIF by StoryfulGiphy"Hooked up with a girl at a party. Just kind of bored, drunk, and horny. Having to go to the doctor for a case of pubic lice was my reward for poor self-control."
No_External7289
Dedicated...
"I got my first serious gf in high school. She was two grades below me. So when I finished third year and moved 500 km south we was still a couple. I was so in love (and most of all horny) I commuted every. Single. Weekend. And I was poor. So I took the bus to the nearest station after school. Waited for the long distance bus for 4-5 hours."
"Went to a larger city to hitchhike my way there. I was there Friday night or Saturday morning. Locked ourselves in her bedroom and went at it until Sunday morning. I made my way down to school again and went to class straight from the bus Monday morning. This went on for almost a year…"
pelo_ensortijado
I'm Out
Chris Pratt Running GIF by Parks and RecreationGiphy"Was trying to get with a girl in college. We were texting and I asked her what she was up to, she said she was training for a marathon and going to the gym and asked if I wanted to come."
"I ended up running 9 miles before I tagged out. So now I know how far I'd go to have sex it's up to 9 miles."
euesquecimeunome
Lord the things people will do when slightly turned on.