What's the dumbest thing you've ever done in your life?

[Rev. Powell]

Driving under the influence of various substances.  Real stupid.

I've done that too, a long time ago in my youth.  Probably counts as the stupidest thing lots of people have done.

I also should have pulled out of the stock market a couple of weeks ago.

Personally, unless you need the money right now to live on, or need the capital gains loss to offset gains from prior years, I think locking in your losses is stupid.  Buy low, sell high.

[JJ80]

I've been fairly lucky in that most of my boners have been relatively minor in scale and collateral damage. However I have been involved in two vaguely beverage related incidents.

- When I was at Uni I started to make myself a cup of tea from a cafeteria dispenser when I noticed two girls (one blonde and one redhead) that I was keen on. I started to act 'cool' in front of the girls, causing myself to put my fingers under the pouring hot water. This caused me to loudly drop the 'F-Bomb' in front of the entire refrectory (which wasn't very big).   

-Last year I was hurrying for a bus while carrying two heavy bags of shopping. I decided to run down an entirely empty escalator but I tripped and fell down the bottom half of it. I looked like I had gone three rounds with Mike Tyson! 

[Dennis]

While in high school a couple friends and I decided that we could liven up our Saturday night by jay walking (running actually) across all 8 lanes of the 605 freeway, twice, we had to get back home.

[schmendrik]

I've never driven under the influence, but I let a friend who was pretty drunk drive me home once. I swore if I made it home alive I'd never do that again, and haven't.

Anyone else ever do anything Darwin Award worthy?

I was working as a summer employee in an electronics factory, in the engineering labs. This factory specialized in high-voltage devices, and there was a piece of equipment that fired 5000 Amps at high voltage (for comparison: your entire house is probably 200 A) through the device. The trigger switch wasn't working. I knew enough to know the contacts of the device I should short out to trigger the test gear, and I knew enough to worry a little, so I thought I was being smart, holding the aluminum bar with insulated pliers, making sure to use only one hand, standing on the lab bench so I wasn't grounded etc.

But for some reason my boss about had a heart attack when he saw how I was turning on the test gear.

Another time, same factory, I had my hand on one panel of some equipment on the assembly line and was feeling around underneath the equipment for a switch I knew was there. ZZZZAP! Found it! 220 V that time, straight across the chest. Apparently this switch (which wasn't known to the assembly-line workers) was just a bare switch with the contacts fully exposed.

One other time there was a cable that I was hooking up to an oscilloscope. I'd spent a couple of hours making a custom cable with the right connectors (probably a 10 minute job for an experienced engineer). Happened to touch the contacts of the cable to the case in such a way to short the 220 V supply. The entire cable vaporized in my hand, leaving me holding the connector. All I could think was "I spent 2 hours making this! I spent 2 hours making this!".

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

LONG AGO...There was a foregin exchange student in high school who was being bullied.  I stood in the back of the crowd and just was a yes-man to the whole process.  I knew I shouldn't have but I convinced myself it was good fun.
Sorry Dude. 
-Ed

[Mr. DS]

Two events come to mind in the past 10 years, both at weddings ironically.

The first happened a few years after I started dating my wife (around 10 years ago).  Background first, I never had gone to weddings much in my life.  I was under the impression for years that the guy who catches the garter would be the next to be married.  The story pretty much ended there so I thought.  I didn't know about the whole putting it on the girl who catches to bouquet thing.  Figuring that I wanted to look impressive to her and her mother (who sadly was there too), I made a great dive to catch the garter.  People were all laughing and talking sh*t and I couldn't figure out why.  That would be because a 12 year old girl caught the bouquet.    Luckily the DJ called off the garter ceremony. 

The second one was less embarrassing but I got plastered at my wife's aunt's wedding.  When I left I forgot about the step down and sprained my ankle.  I was too drunk to figure out I couldn't walk on it.  When I got home, I puked in everywhere but the toilet (kitchen/bathroom sinks, trash can, outside) and when I woke up I couldn't figure out where my key were.  My wife was p*ssed but the best part of the story is no one remembers me being drunk.  Rather they remember her yelling at me in the parking lot.