Stupid Guy Tricks

Rod - I've just somehow became aware of your post citing my discussion of the Little Green Footballs/Brussels Journal spat and my call for an anti-Islamist popular front. Thanks so much for the discussion and very glad to note that you agree, as I value your opinion a great deal.

Speaking of which, anyone have any suggestions for an Oregonian who wants to check out an Orthodox church? I know this was once Russian territory, but you wouldn't know it if you tried to find a church.

On the stupid guy trick, my former apartment roommates and I did something very similar with Robotussin cough syrup and 7-up. I swear I saw the walls breathing.....

Man I don't know where to start. I've been a nacho man long before it was cool to admit nachoism.

Thirty five years ago almost I misplaced a telco manhole lid on my left foot. A telco manhole lid weighs ten or so bunches if a bunch weighs between fifteen and twenty pounds. It, the manhole lid, broke my second toe of my left foot when it landed. But more interestingly was the compression of the impact blew, blew like in blow, blow like in explode, a six stitch hole between the second and big toes.

Two hours later I'm in an emergency room with the foot up and my head down. Tall thirty something doctor walks in and looks down on short twenty five year old patient. Testosterone rose like the proverbial creme can on whole milk. My whole body is throbbing by now and the doc explains that I've broken my toe and I need stitches where some stuff took the easy way out.

Doc says, "I'm going to sew this up, need anything?"

Nacho me says, "doc if it doesn't bother you then it shouldn't bother me."

He did those six stitches a little slower than I'd liked. I know it wasn't because he did it without deadening the area being sewn up.

Fifteen years ago I took the pad and part of the end off of my right thumb working in the garage at home. After I got the tools back in out of the driveway I drove myself into the emergency room and let them know that I thought I might have hurt myself.

The memorable thing about that event besides the look of horror on the admitting nurse's face was the doctor explaining that they could graft some skin off my backside to replace the pad now missing from my thumb. I almost went for that. Not because of the deformed thumb thing. But giving errant drivers the old thumbs up would take on a whole new meaning.

I'm sure it has something to do with testosterone. I do know that common sense isn't an antidote. Maturity isn't either even though it can weaken it if taken seriously.

One Fourth of July when I was 16 and could drive myself across the county line to buy fireworks, my cousin and I created a concoction that we affectionately referred to as "Bucket O' Death".

For future reference, fireworks mixed with lighter fluid in a plastic bucket exposed to one simple lighted match will create a large explosion, followed by a moderately large fire, followed by a big plastic mess that's hard to scrape off the concrete. We all felt much better having verified this for ourselves.

Most of mine involved alcohol, which I mercifully have not imbibed for 15-odd years.

This may be why most of my friends are women ;-P

Oh, I forgot: I stole a canister of pure elemental sodium from the high school chem lab, and was going to unseal it and throw it in the nearby lake to watch it go kablooey. But the school put out an APB for it, and a kid on my hall who drank so much coffee that he walked on his tiptoes came down and told me that that canister contained enough explosive power to equal a stick of dynamite, and that he didn't appreciate me having it on our wing. I sneaked it under a couch in the girl's dorm the next day, and Shelley Reynolds' dad found it.

One of my first jobs as a teen was stock boy at a store that sold a lot of health & beauty products. When we had too much time on our hands, we'd go down to the basement of the store and create "time bombs"- open up a bottle of Brioschi or Alka-Seltzers, dump the contents into a bottle of, say, Listerine, screw the cap back on, race to (what we hoped was) as safe distance, and wait for the inevitable explosion.

Perhaps the main reason I'm so paranoid and overprotective around my 4 year old son is that I remember all to well the kind of dangerous, stupid (but really COOL!) things I did myself... and because I'm frequently astonished that my friends and I made it to adulthood.

Before you think me a complete killjoy (granted, I'm mostly a killjoy) ... yes, I knew the kids who played baseball mailbox and toked up a storm (didn't do either myself), but my pranks were more tame/lame. I did commit just a few, though.

How tame/lame? Probably my worst one in high school was ... I knew a guy I hated had a huge book report due on Monday, and hadn't done it yet. So on Friday afternoon, when he left his bookbag unattended (and no one was around to see it), I swiped his bag and hid it in my locker.

Come Monday morning, I got to school early, coolly walked down to the main office and said, "Wow, someone lost their bookbag, I don't know who, so please put it in lost and found." Everyone -- the guy I despised, the teacher in the hapless guy's last class, even the principal -- knew I did it, but they couldn't lay a glove on me. And of course, he got an F on his book report.

Ironically, the guy and I became friends later on. Typical male bonding, I guess.

(Remember, folks, these were the "Hip to be Square" '80s. And I admit, I was about as square as it got.)

Most of the stupid guy tricks I can (sort of) remember go like this:

1. Drink too much.
2. See what happens.

I do have vague memories, though of peeing (or pretending to pee) in squirt guns or water balloons, and using them to terrorize cousins or passers-by at the shore. But my favorite story of this sort is an item of Notre Dame lore: a group of students hid a keg of beer under a vendor's table outside the stadium, hoisted it up with ropes once the game had started and the security guards headed inside (this is before the stadium was expanded, so the walls were much lower), then spent the game getting hammered and left the keg in the bleachers at the end of the day. Like I said, drink too much and see what happens.

As a ten year old I'd spray hairspray all over my pants, set them on fire and run around the yard, or spray a frisbee, light it and play catch in a dark room.

Also at ten, I wanted to see how long I could go without having a bowel movement and successfully held it a week.

In high school I once released several wild possums in the building during class. To get back at one guy who was bothering me I printed dozens of business card with his home phone number advertising "Dont Get Mad, Get Even, Let Us Do Your Dirty Work call ..... 24 hours." My bully got so many phone calls at odd hours his parents grounded him for months.

Over at a high school friends house, he dumped taxidermist powder on his kitchen table; another friend with us was so excited that it resembled coke he proceeded to start snorting it. Convinced he was high, he kept bugging us to kick him in the balls. Finally one of us did, where upon he wordlessly dropped into the fetal position on a couch. We left to go somewhere I don't now remember but coming back two hours later he was still there.

Another time in High School I wanted to see how long I could stay awake without sleeping. I made it five nights, but by my sixth day I was seeing luminous green and pink clouds and explosions everywhere. We were at a Baptist church retreat and it was during a looooong long altar call that I finally nodded off.

This is more of a stupid girl trick, but when my wife was in high school, one idiot kept repeatedly soliciting her for cocaine (she didn't sell drugs and he refused to believe her) so finally she ground up some Alka Seltzer and sold it to him. He ended up in the school nurses office with a foaming bloody nose, later suspended.

Had trouble getting a jar of salsa open, so used a hammer. It opened, and then I spent the next 10 minutes picking pieces of glass out of it before finally giving up.

Did mattress races down the stairs in college. Once mine came to an abrupt halt on one of the lower steps, with me continuing to shoot forward across the carpet. Had nuclear-red forearms for a week or two.

Threw a Samsonite-sized snowblock through my own car windshield, in order to stop my car from being playfully driven away by a friend.

Another friend liked to drive my car from the passenger seat when I stopped at an ATM. One time he whizzed backwards around the corner of the building, out of sight. Sound of crunch followed. Woman was waiting in line at the corner of the building. Me: "What was that?" Her: "Your friend."

Guy at school was famous for stuffing an entire raincoat in his mouth. I tried two Hostess cupcakes. Thought I was going to die like that. Glad I didn't have a head cold.