Stupid Is as Anthony Does, Part 2

You know the drill.

Here we are again, talking about some of the stupid things I've done at various points throughout my life, as I've done in a previous post. There have been so many of these embarrassing incidents that this subject could probably be a weekly series. The memories I thought I'd obliterated have been re-materializing like medical waste washing up on the sands of Jones Beach.

I given a lot of thought to my stupidity, and I believe these events can organized into a number of categories:

• Curiosity. I consider myself very cautious, but I often am the guy who just has to push that shiny delicious red button that we were warned not to press.
  
• Speaking or acting without thinking. Again, I think I'm a pretty cautious person, but I can be a little too impulsive, especially when it comes to saying something that I'll regret later. Anyone who's viewed my Facebook wall during my "Facebooking While Full of Red Wine Night" will know what I mean.
  
• Not paying attention to the dangerous world around me. As I stress positive characteristics of my personality right before I provide evidence to the contrary, I would like to note that I consider myself a very aware, "in the moment" kind of guy. But that doesn't stop me from those kinds of moments you likely had as a kid when your mom/dad/teacher/priest asks, "Why did you do that [thing that makes absolutely no human sense whatsoever]?" and you can only reply sheepishly, "I don't know."
  
  As a parent, I now find myself asking that question all the time, as does Mrs. The Anthony Show. But in her case, she's usually asking me that question at least once a week.

Enough prologue. Let's get to it...

This is making you hungry, right?

INCIDENT: Biting a Nerf football.

REASON: See the YEAR/AGE.

YEAR/AGE: Somewhere between 3 and 4.

DETAILS: Just recalling this incident reinforces how Different Things Are Today. I was no more than 4 years old, and I was playing at the next-door neighbor's house with no adult supervision. (It was Ken's, where a few years later we'd get "drunk.") My son is almost 7 yet we get nervous watching him from a window when he's in the yard by himself. Anyway, we were playing with some kid who lived across the street from Ken's, Tim, who was around 8 but when you're 3 or 4 a 8-year-old seems like an adult. I think my brother was there, too, and we were playing some sort of keep-away game with Tim's Nerf football. Whenever I'd get the ball, I'd bite it and run around with it in my mouth, which annoyed everyone but was to me an act of comic genius.

So...by the third time I bit the ball, one of the kids grabbed it really quickly, and I ended up biting a large chunk out of the it (the ball not the kid). A Nerf ball sans bitten hunk is still a usable plaything, but the aesthetics are now all wrong. I panicked, and hopped on my sleek red tricycle, and though no one chased me, I pedaled like all hell, probably close to pooping my Garanimals. Though Ken lived next door, his house was actually behind mine (ours was the corner; his was the first house on the next street) so I had to pedal around a corner that was on a slight downhill. I pedaled so hard that I actually tipped over. I don't recall being hurt, but I stayed away from Ken's house for a week.

That wasn't the scariest thing that involved Tim or his family. He had an older sister who had a couple of missing fingers, making it appear to my young eyes that her hand was frozen in the position for a shadow puppet of a bird. A very nasty bird.

*     *     *

I think my wife is starting to suspect something.

INCIDENT: French-kissing a 9-volt battery.

REASON: Curiosity or a dare.

YEAR/AGE: Probably at age 8, and again at age 10.

DETAILS: I touched on this in yesterday's post. I know I've licked one of these batteries at least twice in my life, but at least I haven't done it lately. I don't have much of a need for 9-volt batteries anymore. When I was younger and more in the mood to slobber on 9-volt batteries, I had a bunch of electronic games that would make a Nintendo DS look to a circa 1982 scientist like a time machine, and they all took 9-volt batteries. If you want to learn more about these games, or are jonesing for a crazy flashback, or just want to freak out the under-25 set, check out this page. According to that site, the Electronic Quarterback game (made by Coleco, a company whose name once meant "cutting-edge entertainment"), appeared in the original Tron. But I digress...

*     *     *

Han does look constipated, right?

INCIDENT: Dumping hot ashes and embers into a garbage can.

REASON: Not thinking.

YEAR/AGE: Late September 2002.

DETAILS: During the first year that Mrs. The Anthony Show and I lived in our house, when we didn't have kids yet and we both had decent-enough jobs for the economy and we hadn't yet taken out a home-equity loan that only Quetzalcoatl knows how we're going to ever pay that off and spent money like the lazy grasshoppers we were at the time, we didn't think it was out of the ordinary to spend close to a thousand dollars (if my fading memory serves me) on a backyard bash with old friends and new neighbors.

The theme was Oktoberfest and we bought a lot of liquor and food, rented tents/tables/chairs, and set up two metal fire bowls. I'm generally a slob, but when it comes to outdoor parties, I want to eliminate the evidence immediately. Fortunately I was able to clean up almost everything at the end of the evening before I could finally relax and compress the several hours I spent hosting into 10 minutes of drinking and later threw up.

The next morning, the memory of which makes me sigh because this was before kids arrived in my life and I was able to sleep UNTIL I ACTUALLY WOKE UP ON MY OWN WOW THAT CONCEPT IS AS FOREIGN TO ME TODAY AS INVISIBLE FLYING CARS, Mrs. The Anthony Show and I decided to go to IHOP because that's what childless couples did on a lazy Sunday morning that began at 11am. I decided to do a little more cleanup before breakfast, so I dumped what I thought were cooled-off ashes into one of the plastic garbage cans.

I learned of my folly while I was hacking through my stack of chocolate-chip pancakes. My wife's brother, who was living in our basement at the time, came home and noticed that we had ignited the largest tiki torch he'd ever seen. He was able to extinguish the blaze right before it melted one of the small propane tanks in the can (empty, but likely with some propane inside), which probably would have created the opposite of a "controlled explosion."

I took a picture of the carnage but, alas, I can't find it, so I'll have to describe the image. Basically, the can melted down about a third of the way, and everything inside the can — bottles, Solo cups, miscellaneous garbage — solidified into a thick, head-cheese-like mass.

It looked like what would have landed on the floor of Jabba's Palace on Tatooine if frozen-in-carbonite Han Solo took a dump.

THIS IS THE END, BUT REALLY ONLY THE BEGINNING
So yeah, that's enough of my stupidity for now. Maybe for my next installment of this series, I'll ask friends and relatives to share their memories of some of the dumbest things I've ever done. Won't that be fun?