Ever had one those moments in life when you know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, you are making a very, very bad decision, with a great chance for instant regret and a miserable, probably long lasting, outcome and notheless followed that path?
Yeah, that one. Care to share with us?
I’ll start. I dated a person, after we had already dated for a very short time, during which I was cheated on and eventually was left for a fourth person.
Yeah, not my brightest moment. And yes, I was cheated on again and again was left for another person.
Having kids. I love my kids, but if I could go back and not have them I absolutely would. Never have kids until you’re financially comfortable. Fuck, the struggle is fucking real.
I really admire the honesty and bravery it took to write this comment. Thank you for sharing.
It is a sad reality that I hate even thinking about. I love these little bastards to pieces, but the money thing is killing me. I’m in a spot where I’m “too rich” to qualify for any government help and too poor to be able to afford it on my own.
My wife and I had a similar conversation the other day. The kids were being a handful, and she said, “Why do people even have kids?”
And I said it’s because society lies to you. “You’ll never feel emotionally/mentally/financially ready for kids. Just do it!”
I always tell people that you need to be 110% sure. I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything, but I sure do miss the quiet, free time, and extra money.
And for most people that day never comes and THAT’S PERFECTLY FINE. It is horrifying that something as extreme as creating a human from nothing is seen as something that people should just do. Baffling.
“You’ll never feel emotionally/mentally/financially ready for kids. Just do it!”
That’s basically the biggest lie/bullshit you can ever hear. You can always be ready for kids. I just need $75+k a year and I’ll be more than happy.
I feel this. I still don’t have kids of my own, but my parents had some rough patches which I hope I learn from and don’t repeat; thankfully I only realised most of that when I grew up.
Much respect to your parents and you. Raising kids has been the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life, and I’ve been deployed into war zones twice.
That time I came inside her while drunk. 19 years later, I don’t regret the daughter I have, but the child support payments haven’t exactly been easy…
A lot of these are kinda on the negative side (no judgement!), so I’ll add a positive one. I met this girl, we started dating and we had been in that weird phase where like it wasn’t exclusive but it felt like it was but it wasn’t explicitly said you know? Anyways, I had these plans to go on a trip with a couple friends and some friends of friends and that same week me and the girl talked and decided it was official, nobody is dating anyone else, we’re together/a thing/official.
Fast forward to that trip, and I meet this girl, I know nothing about her but she’s cute and she’s into me. We all get drunk around a camp fire, me and this girl go for a walk, and it’s about as obvious as it’s ever going to be this girl wants to hook up and I have the green light and I’m about to go for it. So I’m about to and then I remember…I shouldn’t. I’m not single anymore. It doesn’t matter if it’s new it matters to me, I really like the girl I’m dating, we have a good thing going and it’s dumb to risk fucking that up for some girl I just met. So I don’t. I say I’m sorry I’m drunk and should go to bed and that’s the end of that. We were cordial the rest of the weekend and I’ve never talked to or seen her again.
It’s eight years later and that girl i liked is my wife of close to four years and we’re just hanging out being boring together and I’ve never been happier.
Now that is wholesome.
I hope y’all many happy future lemon parties to come!
Thanks! Our registry is still up on lemonparty.org if you want to leave some good will!
Dammit!
Got em’ 😎
We were driving my friends hoopty Saturn back from Vegas to LA on hwy 15, we had just turned 21, and a flash flood was tearing through the desert. I’ve been in hurricanes and tornadoes but I’ve never seen rain this heavy to this day. So when the brake lights in front of us reached from the top to the bottom of the windshield after a semi truck poured a waterfall onto us I suggested we pull over.
Once we reached the side of the road we stay and waited a bit, talked to our friends in the other car over the walkie talkies and they pulled over with us when they caught up. When suddenly it hit me, I’ve been in hot ass desert for a week now, I would love to soak up some rain!
So I tell my buddy I’m going to “Experience the storm” and step out of the car and raise my hands up Shawshank style. And feel all the hair on my body stand up.
Since my earliest childhood I remember a photo of my parents on our living room wall, standing on either side of their beat up Toyota hands raised in a jumping jack pose. And I also remember my father’s retelling of the taking, in which they all dove into the car because their hair began to stand on end.
So I dove back into the open door and heard a thundercrack.
I bet that shattered your eardrums!
The time I dated a coworker. Things didn’t work out which made things very very awkward.
I raised my right hand and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
That wasn’t my best decision ever, and I kinda knew it while I was doing it.
I did it twice. I knew for certain the second time around, yet I still did it . Didn’t get me a third time, though. No regrets now, a long time later, but those extra years were hard.
Me to, brother.
Do you Americans actually still do that in schools?
That’s actually the beginning of the Armed Services oath you take when you join the military here.
But yes, kids do still say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools. That’s hand on the heart, not raised right hand though. And it also sucks.
Ah got ya. I think soldiers have to do something similar here in the UK. But we don’t do it in schools. That’s kind of weird if I’m honest.
Oh, no dude, it’s not kind of weird…
It’s fucking creepy and bizarre culty shit. And that’s coming from someone who grew up doing it.
I think he is a soldier.
Where I live, back when I got my driver’s license, there was always a several months long queue to take the driving test. When my turn came, there was a terrible blizzard. I knew I should just cancel it and wait several more months, but I didn’t do that. It ended in several injuries and a totalled car.
So you didn’t pass?
Actually I totally did! The terrible wreck happened on the way home. Real rollercoaster of emotions, that day was
It’s traditional for driving instructors to drive you home after passing if you’re using their car (at least in the uk).
Too many people have passed, then had a bad accident on the way home.
(Plus sometimes they only carry learner insurance)
That sounds lovely! I’m not sure how common it is here, since not many people I know in the U.S. have ever had a driving instructor. They exist, but most people I know just learned from family or friends.
I had no idea that what happened to me is so common, that’s honestly a bit of a relief.
I suppose if the storm was that bad they shouldn’t have rescheduled it anyway. People really shouldn’t be driving in that kind of weather.
I once hiked Longs Peak in Colorado. It’s an intense hike and has had a lot of people die on it over the years (quick search comes up with ~70 people). It took me and my friends about 12 hours to get up and back down.
Anyway, I was younger and dumber and wore my normal street shoes, which happened to have almost no grip left on them. I vividly remember a portion of the hike near the end where you came up to a ledge (overlooking vast nothingness), you turned to your left and climbed up a 45 degree rock slope. If I had lost my grip on that ledge, I would’ve tumbled down and out into space. I had lost my grip with my shoes multiple times that day before that last section.
I obviously didn’t slip or otherwise die that day, but I think about it pretty often. In a multiverse scenario, I figure quite a few of my parallel selves were lost that day haha
Hey! Bad decision buddy!! I also climbed longs peak in sneakers years ago. Seemed like a good idea until we got to the scree section near the top. I remember a lot of slipping on the way back down, too. I think I also killed a lot of multiverse mes that day.
At least the views were worth it. One of the prettiest hikes I’ve ever done.
I wanted to buy a sailboat in Arizona, but it was too heavy for my existing vehicle. Boat transport services are really expensive, so I bought a rusty, 16-year-old van. Literally the third time I drove it (1. Get it home, 2. Register it), I hit the road across the continent.
Now, this would be a really good story if that decision had gone horribly wrong, but I’m on that boat in Wisconsin right now. The van made it. I did discover that it had no spare tire when the exhaust pipe broke on the Kansas Turnpike, and I looked underneath for the first time. It was a loud journey through Iowa that day, but I had earplugs.
Once, I was pouring a can of petrol (gas, if you’re American) onto a fire, which spread up the stream of petrol into the petrol tank. I panicked, and my genius solution of how to extinguish it was to shake it around, kinda like how you might do to put out a match.
I poured burning petrol all over the ground and on my clothes, there was fire everywhere all around me. Luckily I was right next to the hosepipe, which I quickly turned on and doused everything in water before it got too out of hand.
Everything was fine, but it could have been a lot worse.
Edit: Don’t play with petrol/gasoline. Fire spreads through it way faster than you could ever imagine, it’s not like in the movies where it moves slow enough that you can stop it, it’s pretty much instant!
Ooooh.
I was working on a weedeater (strimmer, if you’re a redcoat) when a very sadistic friend of mine noticed a puddle of gasoline on the ground and threw a lit match at the puddle.
The fire immediately raced over to me and into the fuel tank.
My instinct was to blow the fire out. That’s right, a fire, fueled by gasoline, in a plastic tank. I burned my entire face.
That erased the birthday candle instinct from my mind and I have been more careful since then when confronted with fire.
What ended up happening?? Any permanent damage??
No, thank goodness. I had a big nasty blister on my chin, a few on my cheeks, no eyelashes or brows, and I had to get a haircut.
My neighbor had some burn cream that she rushed over and put on me. She said it would have been way worse without it. I’ve always just taken her work for it and been thankful.
Damn! Hope that friend is now an ex-friend, what a crazy dangerous thing to do! Hope you recovered okay from the burns <3
My brother did that with ethanol in a small fire. That thing exploded and we nearly had a wildfire.
Its the same as pissing on electric wires, DONT
God damn. You dodged a bullet. I had a somewhat distant uncle die recently after a gas tank exploded while pouring it onto a fire. Burns over his entire body and he was too old to really regenerate. Died in the hospital after 50+ days of agony.
Yeah, I know how lucky I am, for sure. That’s horrible what happened to your uncle, what an awful way to go :(
I hope it’s obvious from your story, but just in case. Everyone, please don’t ever pour gasoline on a fire. It isn’t worth it.
When in doubt, gasoline.
I was hiking and drinking with my friends. It was a hot day and I was drunk and dehydrated and we decided to climb down this large cliff that had waves at the bottom. If we fell it would have been death 100%. I remember holding onto this little plant thinking haha if this comes out I’m dead.
Kudos to that strong little plant! Let’s hope it lived a long, happy life.
Now you must spend your life planting plants along cliffs to pay it forward.
Do you want to be the reason the person went to grab a plant that looked well established just to find out some guy JUST stuck it in the ground?
On the sixth level of a scaffold next to a staircase in the shell state, which was still completely open (from above I could look down to the floor a few stories below and possibly also fall), I was supposed to glue polyurethane strips and a sealing sheet to the roof slab. However, the scaffolding had already been partially dismantled, which meant I was hanging on the scaffolding with one arm and bridged the distance of over a meter with my body and outstretched arm to do my work. No safety, I could have become goo very quickly… stupid sense of duty and disregard for all the rules. I knew full well I shouldn’t be doing this right now, but let myself get pressured. But in the end it was a valuable lesson in self-esteem and fuck your boss’s deadlines.
Had a similar moment, but refused to work on the basis of safety, and don’t regret it one bit. Installing speakers on poles for a rooftop bar 20 stories up, and we needed 6-foot ladders to reach the mount. Boss said do the thing, I said you can fuck all the way off until I’m in a harness. Boss didn’t want to wait for the harness that was already on its way, and did it himself.
He knew he’d be turbofucked if it took longer than his boss thought it would take because he didn’t think to bring a harness in the first place, and even more turbofucked if it came to light that he requested we work without it, so he just did it himself to save his own ass. It doesn’t matter if he survived, he was a stupid idiot for stepping one rung up on that ladder without a harness.
For reference, this is the same dude who said that driving 17 hours in a van to a job site was just the same as sitting on the couch at home, so we should feel lucky that we’re getting paid for it. He was not a smart man.
That is borderline suicidal.
Just for my personal clarification: what does “turbofucked” implies? Because it sounds scary.
Turbofucking is what happens after finger blasting, if I remember correctly
Yeah. It’s two in the pink and one in the turbine.
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I’ve never made a mistake in the last ten years, and this is the biggest mistake because I’ve learned nothing from life.
Right? Playing it too safe is a mistake all on its own.
Once I coded a module to completion with no errors. I still wake up with night terrors that I missed something.
This sentence was a mistake.
Was fidgeting around with a lighter when I thought I could get the flame bigger with more pressure. So I thought it might be a good idea to use the refill bottle for that. While preparing it I thought, if that explodes I might burn the house down and maybe lose a hand.
For some reason my curiosity got the better of me and I went ahead. Of course it went wrong, luckily only the lighter exploded and all the gas in the air around it, I remember it as a bright flash of heat accompanied by a bang. I thought, I must be disfigured now but luckily only the hair on my arm was burned off and my eyelashes a bit singed.
So that’s probably one of the dumbest dangerous things I did. Was a teenager at the time though.
my friends and i were also teenage pyromaniacs, and one night we learned that blowing fire straight down a sewer grating propels it right back towards your face
