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This is a question Brain Fade

Freddie Woo tells us how he recently spent ages trying to open his front door with his Oyster Card before realising he actually needed things called "keys". Tell us of times you've done stupid things while on auto-pilot

(, Thu 21 Mar 2013, 12:20)
Pages: Popular, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

This question is now closed.

I NEARLY let him completely slip my mind!

(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 15:43, 50 replies)
I bought a convertible
Yeah, I know, in the UK ha ha. The interesting thing about it was the little differences. For example, to fold down the rear seats you needed the key, rather than just pulling a lever. Why? Well, if you park with the roof down you want the boot secure. For similar reasons the boot release button in the door only worked with the roof closed.

You can see where this is going.

Girlfriend and I, driving back from the countryside with the car in "millionaire" mode (at 70mph having the roof down meant dropping from 35mpg to more like 25 - ouch) decided to stop for a cheeky pub lunch in the sunshine. So, we pulled into a likely looking village, parked up in the square and set about securing various road-trip valuables (ipod, emergency biscuits etc) in the boot.

After tossing everything in and closing said boot, I felt for the keys in my pocket to set the immobiliser. Nothing. The enormity of what I'd just done hit me like a train: it wasn't just music and sustenance I'd managed to lock in the boot. There was, by design, no way in without the key and the spare was 150 miles away in Berkshire.

I looked skywards to let out a moan and noticed that, just to rub it in, an enormous raincloud had appeared above us. Fucksocks.

Once the lady had finished calling me every word for "idiot" she could muster, we embarked on an extended and hurried problem solving session. I had a small screwdriver in the door bin (you can take a boy out of the cub scouts..) so I investigated whether there were any interior fixings or panels that could be loosened to achieve boot access or to fold the seats without unlatching them. No dice. I looked at the fuse box and considered whether judicious shorting might fool the car into thinking the roof was up long enough to trigger the release button. Non-starter; I didn't know even nearly enough about the wiring of the car to pull that one off.

Eventually we decided there was nothing to be done but call the AA and hope that the rain held off long enough for them to show up. I know now how ridiculous that sounds but at the time I convinced myself this was not only likely, but the only possible sequence of events.

I dialled straight away. Brilliantly, my call was answered within seconds and was timed perfectly with my slamming the car door to reveal, dangling cheekily in the lock, the keys.

The Mrs delivered a barrage of insults without repetition, deviation or hesitation, right through lunch.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 15:28, 8 replies)
Ice Cream Sandwiches
How the hell was I suppose to know that's another name for an Ice Cream Wafer...

and yes I used butter, Stupid fucking Americans
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 15:11, 5 replies)
A stoner friend. (Another forgetting where I live story...)
An absolutely lovely guy most of the time, who would imbibe any drug he was presented with and was therefore living on a completely separate plane of existence to the rest of humanity. He would usually divide his wages between rent, council tax, utilities, a months supply of beans and toast, alcohol and any disposable income went to whomever would sell him cannabis, LSD, speed or whichever other drug he fancied packing into his system to allow him to avoid reality.

Having turned eighteen, his mother decided to sell his childhood home and relocate to some hundred miles away. Not knowing any dealers in the new location, he elected to find a place of his own and managed to locate a one bedroom flat located above a dentists about one mile away from his old gaff. Everyone moved out of the house on the same day and they went their separate ways. To celebrate his new-found independence, he did what any other stoner would do. Spend the evening with some choice company, using the dentist’s chair (He had access through the surgery room to his flat) to drink lots of cheap vodka, followed with smoking through a large quantity of hashish.

I left after the drinking finished. Unfortunately the smell of weed makes me feel ill, so I unfortunately missed this, but after a few hours he decided he was tired out and decided to go to bed. He went down to the main entrance to the dentists, took off all of his clothes, walked out of the front door and walked all of the way to his previous house, wherein he curled up on the doorstep and fell asleep.

It was quite fortunate that he was discovered by one of his former neighbours, as in little under an hours time their would have been a lot of activity outside of his former house as hundreds of young and impressionable primary school children would be arriving at the school gates, located directly opposite.

I can’t help but think that he should have left him alone, as telling children that drugs can turn you into a mess sounds like preaching, but letting them see what the outcome can be will likely to lead them into a drug-free existence.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 14:54, 2 replies)
One day in Hamburg
So there I was, spending a day shopping in Hamburg. At the end I had amassed 4 carrier bags of stuff, plus one fuckoff-sized bag containing a new suit, and then...

"Where the fuck is my train ticket?"

I searched and searched. Yes, I had definitely lost it. Crap. Off to the ticket machines (5 euro surcharge if you want to speak to a human being) I went, and lightened the wallet.

---2 hours of public transport rage omitted---

When I came home, there was no car in the driveway. "Germangal must be grocery shopping", I say to myself. Luckily, I had only lost the ticket and not my keys.
Opening the door, I was greeted by Germangal and the two Germandaughters.

"Where's the car?" ask I.

Then it clicked. I'd only gone and forgotten the fucking CAR in a city 180km away.

Went to the parking garage I usually use the next day, got back Germanride, payed for another train ticket and overnight parking. Total cost to bank account: 143 euros. Total profits for future alzheimer's doc: Probably millions. Total cost to dignity: Infinite.

First post be gentle, long time lurker first time poster, length, girth, something something star wars something, bins (stayed about from), magenta CDC.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 14:47, 15 replies)
Another "forgetting-where-you-live" story.
A little under two years ago, I took possession of my current home, which I named Casa Asbestos on account of the huge amount of work it needed doing to make it habitable - including the removal of asbestos.

One of the more easily-fixed problems was that the bay windows at the front had very rotten frames. However, they also had leaded lights which, while not particularly breathtaking, were at least characterful. I decided that, given the size of the rennovation job, I might as well get the old glass inserted between the panes of new double glazing.

This, of course, meant that the old windows had to be taken away and the gaps boarded up for the few weeks that it'd take to clean, restore, and remount them. Fair enough: not pretty, but worth it.

However, I must have got over-used to the idea that I lived in the house with boarded-up windows, and that must have become my visual cue for finding my own home. And this meant that, when the glass was finally replaced, I did managed several times to drive straight past my own front door, only to sit in puzzlement as I tried to work out where I lived.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 14:24, Reply)
Vagabond's story underneath this has reminded me...
My great-grandmother moved here from Ireland, long time ago. Family legend has it that she went shopping one day then, when getting a taxi home, forgot her address.

Apparently after "driving around for a while to see if she recognised anything" she told the taxi driver "take me to the pub and see if anyone there knows where I live"

:D
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 13:41, 2 replies)
A couple of mates and I went out drinking one evening.
I was crashing with one, the other had just moved that week, and was still living out of boxes.

We all went back to the mate I was crashing with for a few more beers and scran, and then we called it a night, and newly-moved mate went home.

Until an hour later, when he returned, and I answered to the door, to him saying "Can I stay here tonight? I can't find my house."
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 13:38, Reply)
This has just happened…
The gents toilet here at work is a small one urinal and one cubical room, with no windows. Most people leave the light on when they leave even though there’s a big sign on the door about being energy efficient and switching off unnecessary lights.

Stepping into the toilet, I realised that it’s not that dark in there, and I probably didn’t even need to turn the light on. Stepping into the cubical I locked it behind me and started to undo my belt…

…as the main door swung closed, rendering the room totally and utterly pitch dark. So unexpected was this, I completely lost my bearings, fumbled for the door lock, blundered into the sinks and had to feel my way round to the door and the light switch, all the while thinking “please don’t let anybody come in here now
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 13:28, 6 replies)
One of my ex-colleagues…
Let’s call her Marie (for that was not her name) used to suffer brain-fade on a regular basis. Highlights included reaching into her handbag for her mobile phone and pulling out her home phone, or on one occasion her TV remote control. My personal favourite though was the melon episode:

Marie used to bring a packed lunch in every day. Nothing fancy, just a couple of sandwiches, maybe some crisps, and a slice of melon. One Monday, she complained that the melon she’d bought wasn’t very nice; it was hard, a bit dry and not very tasty. Reasoning that it probably wasn’t ripe, she soldiered on and said she’d put it somewhere warm to ripen up overnight.

This happened again on Tuesday. And Wednesday. Then on Thursday, she came into the office and announced that she’d found out why her melon wasn’t very nice:

It was a pumpkin.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 12:09, 7 replies)
Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 1993.
There ostensibly to teach, the amount by which we'd misunderestimated the economy in saving some pocket money meant we were among the richest people in the city.

Thus, quite a lot of our time was spent drinking heavily.

One night about two months in, we'd decided to go to a pub with pool tables that we'd heard about, which, we discovered, had a decent-sized pond in front of it.

It being the middle of winter, the pond was completely frozen, and some kids had smoothed a long patch of ice, and were taking it in turns to run and slide along it.

On leaving the pub much later in the evening, and with the kids gone, it seemed the obvious chance for us to have a crack.

My malcoordinated friend went first, and unsurprisingly stacked it and lay across the smooth path, gibbering like a twat.

"Get up, you prick, it's my turn." I said, which he ignored, so I ran, slid, did a perfect jump over him, and carried on sliding. I truly am awesome.

I did this a couple more times, with him just lying there, like a twat.

"Come on, you silly arse" I said, going over to him, "You'll catch cold."

He just lay there.

Then I noticed a lump the size of a pool ball on the side of his head. He had knocked himself absolutely cold.

Oh crap.

I tried to haul him off the ice, but the fat fuck weighed nearly as much as your mum.

Shit.

"Er ... help?!" I called out to some passers-by, who also ignored me - probably because it looked like the archetype of a mugging set-up.

After a while a braver guy came and helped, and we managed to get my mate to vaguely come 'round, off the pond, and sit on a bench, where he sat, very, very dazed.

"So ... what happened ... ?" he asked, groggily.

"Well - we were skating on the pond, you slipped over, and smacked yourself clean unconscious." I said.

"Pond ... ?" he asked.

"Yeah ... outside the pool pub."

"Pool pub?"

"Yeah. You know?"

"Pool pub where?"

"Er ... Cluj?"

"Cluj ... ?"

"Yeah. You know? Romania?"

"Romania?!" he said, frightened.

"Er ... yeah ..." I said, not knowing quite how to field such.

After a while, he enquired, "So ... what happened?"

"You fell over. On the pond."

"What pond?" he said.

"The one opposite the pool pub."

"Pool pub?"

"Yes. In Cluj. We're in Romania."

"Romania?!" he said, frightened.

Rinse.

Repeat.

It took me two hours to get him back to his place and deliver him to the family he was staying with - he seemed to remember the way, thankfully, as I hadn't a clue.

He still wasn't right when we flew back a month later.

tl;dr man falls over, gets concussion.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 11:33, 10 replies)
Motorcycle Emptyheadedness
I once had a motorcycle which, while it was a thing of beauty to look at, didn't handle that well. To be honest, it cornered about as well as a drunken puppy on an ice rink. But, at the time it was the most expensive vehicle I'd ever bought, so rather than do the sensible thing, which was to ditch it for something better, I decided to set myself the challenge of mastering the twitchy bitch.

So every day on my regular work commute, I'd practice the various corners. There was one in particular that I found difficult, and I could never seem to get it right.

Then one day, everything slotted into place, and I made the perfect turn. Mark Webber would have paused in his violent pummelling of Sebastian Vettel to applaud from the side-lines, as I powered past the apex in perfect balance, and smugly rode off down the road with that sense of mastery over a machine that comes all too rarely.

Then I remembered that it was Saturday, and I wasn't going to work, so I was now heading in entirely the wrong direction.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 11:13, 4 replies)
I peed in the kitchen bin once.
I got up, went to the kitchen, put my foot on the pedal to open the lid and did my pee. I even aimed at and tried to move an envelope in the bin with the stream before I suddenly realised what I was doing.

I finished my wee in the loo and covered the wet rubbish in the bin with a few scrunches of kitchen paper.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 10:58, 1 reply)
My first job was in the head office of a Halfords-y type shop
One day the bike buyer says, "Oi, pineapplecharm; if I get you a new bike will you test it out and let me know if it's any good?" Being a selfless and generous man, I agreed and only a few days later was rewarded with a shiny new bike. Front and back suspension, whizzy decals, even a bottle holder - this thing had it all! RRP was about £79.99 (for all its features the thing was made out of processed cheese and string) but it was a FREE BIKE and I wasn't going to be snooty about it.

After a few weeks of speedy two-wheeled commuting, I provided the feedback required and was then told I could keep the bike. Result! As luck would have it my father was in town so I decided to ride the new steed to the pub to meet him and celebrate. Dinner was consumed, beer was drunk, bills were paid by a willing parent already nostalgic for the days when my every penny came directly from his wallet.

Upon my return home, I locked the bike downstairs in its usual place by the door and retired to bed to dream of pixies and cut price car accessories.

In the morning, the bike was gone.

My fury and shame drove me to extreme acts of justification and paranoia. I didn't think it was sod's law that the very night the bike passed officially into my possession was the one chosen by the thief. That would be too simple. No, I was convinced it was no coincidence; they knew. They had been watching. And once the corporate might had been removed from the ownership picture, they struck.

It took three months for me to pluck up the courage to admit what happened to my colleagues. I mean, what kind of an arsehole loses a bike - a free bike mind you - from his own front yard? What kind of a pillock would leave it locked up where it was visible from the street? Who could live with themselves knowing they treated with such disregard such a treasured, generous gift? It was a character forming moment when I approached the buyer's desk and, in a wavering voice, admitted my transgression.

He reached for the phone, clearly to warn the rest of his department never to trust me with company property again.

"Hi, is that Darrell? Can you send another one of those P-100's over? No, we won't be paying; it's a sample. Yeah, head office. Cheers." He looked at me. "Should be here on Tuesday. Alright?"

I was, if anything, doubly mortified that I'd felt so bad about it.

When the bike arrived, I was determined not to lose it. I rode it home that evening absolutely convinced I had to find a new place to lock up the steed so that this time, no matter how psychic the local criminal fraternity were, they would be foxed by my cunning and bamboozled by my brilliance.

This time, I avoided the front yard and cycled round to the car park behind the flats, hidden from the road. This was a good start. There was no bike rack, just eight parking spaces which offered little you could loop a chain through. The fence was solid, which was good for privacy but lacking in lock-friendly orifices. The lighting was on short poles which weren't much use for attaching anything a man could lift. I was running out of ideas.

And then I noticed that the building didn't quite meet the fence on one side. Approaching with rising excitement I realised there was a good 18 inch gap - more than enough to fit a bike in. It would be completely hidden from anyone - in fact even other residents using the car park would be unaware of the bike's presence. Genius! I hurried over and peered around the corner into the gap.

And there, leaning nonchalantly against the wall with its arse towards me, was the old bike. It wasn't even chained.

Three months of walking to work. Three.

I can only surmise that, after a particularly inspirational pint of local ale, I had been struck with the idea (possibly after my dear Dad saying something along the lines of "obviously you're not still locking that bike up in the front yard are you?" in his normal passive-instructive way) of researching a new storage location but, cruelly, also robbed of the memory of such research.

Still, at least my flatmate got a free bike too!
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 10:58, 3 replies)
tired and hungry
I once put a chocolate digestive into a bap and took a bite.
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 10:12, 7 replies)
Wait a minute!
YOU'RE not Miss Jackson!
(, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 9:59, 3 replies)
Keys, again.
Delivering to Culver Square Colchester today. When I'd finished unloading I got security to buzz me out so I could go to the cashpoint. Got back to the lorry, got in..."Fuck! Must have left the keys in the delivery point!". Banged on the door, "sorry guys, I left the keys on your desk".

"No, you used them to lock the trailer".

Went back to security; had they seen me drop them?

No, but they'd seen me unlock the cab and leave them in the door.
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 21:39, 1 reply)
Once upon a time in the snow...
Got up one morning to find that it had snowed quite heavily overnight. No problem, a bit of shovelling is good exercise. I first went out the front door to check for mail, then donned parka, hat, gloves and boots and proceeded out the side door to attack the drifts. Just as I slammed the (self-locking) side door, I realized I had left my keys in the house. Bugger. No worries, though, my neighbours (a charming retired couple) had a key. I rang their bell but no reply, then I noticed their car wasn't in the garage. I shovelled my driveway. I shovelled my neighbour's driveway, then both sidewalks. By this time it was getting bloody cold and I realized the neighbours weren't coming home any time soon. I couldn't even use my car to drive to my mom's place where there was a spare key also, as my car keys were with my house keys. And this was before the days of mobile phones. Inspiration- I'll get the ladder out of the garage, climb in the second floor window and Bob's yer uncle. This proved a bit trickier than I had thought, and I almost ripped my balls off sliding through the window. After leaving huge muddy footprints all over the duvet of the bed under the window and down the hall, I finally retrieved my keys - then turned to look at the front door which was still standing open from earlier. It was a while before I saw the humour in the incident....
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 20:28, Reply)
I sometimes forget what I'm supposed to be doing with my life for years at a time. One time I got so out of it I ended up with a job in IT

(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 20:16, 1 reply)
One day the network goes down at the office.
I walk up to the IT room. "Travis, why'd the network go down? I can't save my work. I have to save it to my local drive and move it to the network after, and I got yelled at for that last time."

"I had to take it down to replace one of the mirrored drives, because it fried last night in the thunderstorm."

"Well, couldn't you have let us know?"

"I did! I sent out an email about it!"

"I never got it. When did you send it out?"

"Just after I... ummm..."
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 18:52, 1 reply)
Probably just me being terminally shit:
On holiday in Prague last week, I went into town on my own one day, thinking I'd walk to the tube instead of 'bussing it, for shits n' giggles.

Half way in I turned around and went back as I'd forgotton my gloves.

Out I went, then back again for my scarf.

Out I went, then back again for a travel ticket off reception.

Out I went, then back again for my camera card.

By the last time I left, the two girls on reception were openly laughing at me.
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 15:13, 2 replies)
UPS: unthinking pillock's stupidity
The engineer working on our uninterruptible power supply tells a tale of a customer who rang up, irate, because their UPS had failed to keep them going during a power cut. The engineer asked about their set up; they had a diesel generator which cut in as the back up.

"So is it pumped fuel, or gravity fed?"

"Pumped."

"And how is the pump powered?"

"Well, it's just plugged in to the.... oh."

.
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 14:59, 4 replies)
I got stoned for a whole month, one night.

(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 13:59, 1 reply)
in which smash monkey sees the light
many years ago, i decided to leave the family home and get my own place. as i was still a teenager, this meant somewhere i could get pissed and stoned with my mates, without anyone complaining.
one particular night, me and my mate sonia had partaken rather heavily of k cider and were resting on my floor. suddenly, i realised that i had 20 smokes, but only one match left! not only that, but the shop was shut!
"what can we do?" asks sonia.
"i know!" says i, "we'll light a candle! that way, we can light our ciggies on that!"
"we can't!" says sonia, "we've got no matches to light the candle, soft arse!"
"no worries, i'll just light it with my lighter"......
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 13:41, Reply)
Lodger...
a few years ago when I used to take on lodgers, I'd got a lift home from a friend rather than drive myself to work. I had a USB key on my keyring and I'd left it in my PC at work.
I got home, got my lodger to let me in and then asked if he wouldn't mind driving me to the shop to get some milk/bread etc... as I'd been a complete numpty and left my keys at work.
We went to leave the house and just as I was about to shut the door, I said "you HAVE got your keys haven't you?".
"yes" he replies, "Oh, my car keys yes, my house keys are inside. I assumed you had yours on you."
Doh!
Skanked my hand right up putting a golf club through the letterbox to unhook the catch.
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 13:21, 1 reply)
Getting ready for work on Thursday last week
I got up and looked at the list of things I needed to take with me that morning (I needed a list to prevent exactly the kind of brain fade this question is about). Sunglasses! Ah, there they are on the side. I picked them up and cleaned off the dust, then went for a wash and brushed my teeth. Next item on the list - black suit, white shirt, black tie. I put the shirt on and ironed a pair of trousers while the kettle boiled. With my trousers on and cup of tea in hand, I went up to the study to get the next item on the list - hi-viz yellow jackets - and then down to the guest room to get the assault rifle, shotgun and pistols from under the bed. At this point I realised I was going to need my kit bag to carry all this stuff, so I went back up to the bedroom to rummage around under that bed, only to be informed by my grumpy, half-awake girlfriend that my kit bag is at the back of the big downstairs cupboard. So I dig the kit bag out of the back of the cupboard and head back to the guest bedroom to fill it with guns, back up to the study to add the hi-viz yellow jackets and then back into the bedroom to add my laptop and all the other general work stuff I might need.

I had a sit down and finish my tea and then with ten minutes to spare, put on my coat and shoes and prepared to leave the house, confident that I'd got everything. Except I hadn't, because nowhere were my sunglasses to be found.

I then spent the next 15 minutes checking the kitchen, the study, the guest room, the big cupboard and the bedroom for the sunglasses I knew I'd just had in my hand. They'd completely vanished into thin air. Fuck's sake. I checked all the rooms again, thinking that this is impossible, these are the only places I've been today and there's no way that two pairs of sunglasses can just disappear like that.

Eventually I gave up and decided to just head into work, rather than make myself late looking for them, but that tea had gone straight through me, so I went for a piss only to discover that I'd left both pairs of sunglasses next to the bathroom sink first thing that morning.
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 11:04, 6 replies)
I was sucking this girl off the other night when I suddenly thought
...hang on a minute
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 10:22, 2 replies)
I moved abroad for work in the 90s.
Was given a company car about a month after I arrived.

On more than one occasion I got in the car, closed the door, put on my seat belt, then looked and asked myself "Oh. Where's the fucking steering wheel gone?"
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 8:41, 4 replies)
My old mum
always used to stick a lottery ticket on for me. Right from the first ever draw, I'd had the same numbers, and despite me never handing over the quid, every week she'd put it on, and every time I won anything she'd give me the money. In around 10 years, I had garnered a massive £40 from this.

One day, though, she came over to me as I wandered into her house and handed me a lottery ticket. "Look" she said, with a little smile on her face.

I started reading the ticket. There they were, my numbers..... all 6 of them! My hand started shaking. I stammered "Oh..... Oh God! I've...... I've won?"

"Yup" she said, "a tenner. Better than nothing though, eh?"

Took about 10 seconds for my brain to stop shaking enough to realise the national lottery don't print out the drawn numbers on tickets and post them to your house.
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 4:00, Reply)
It was 1998. I was 18.
I was extremely stoned, and waiting for my bus. I was paranoid; every pedestrian walking past could see my red eyes, white face and idiotic grin. They could smell the low grade hashish I was carrying, and they were laughing about it. Yeah, and the people driving past? They were on their way to the police station to report me.

My bus pulled up, I got on board. I asked the driver for a return to Aberdeen.

'Are you a fool?' he asked me.

I was stunned. He knew. He was going to either harangue me about the stultifying effects of cannabis resin, or he was going to somehow contact the police.

'What?' I stammered.

'Are you a fool?' he repeated. Was I on the wrong bus? I was! I must be! Why else would this man be asking me if I was a fool? I was a fool! It was the wrong bus! It wasn't though, I saw the number. It's the right one, so what's he getting at?

'What?' I asked again. I was adrift on a floating island of confusion.

'Are you a full fare, or a half fare?' he barked out.

'Adult fare!' I replied, then realised that I had just answered the question he hadn't asked, and I was in fact, a very stoned fool.
(, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 0:05, 1 reply)

This question is now closed.

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