why do I do such stupid things sometimes?!?!

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It seems like neurotypical people do not have any problems with making stupid mistakes, but I reguarly do it. The problem is surviving in the world with the level of precision it requires!

This past weekend, I was cleaning up a little in my office room when I discovered two compact fluorescent lamps sitting on the shelf in there. Thinking that it was odd that they were not in the closet with the rest of the light bulbs and other home -maintence stuff, I decided to figure out why. I stuck one of them in the light fixture and turned it on...POW, the lamp popped, and the circuit breaker blew!. Hmm, now why would I save a dead light? I threw it in the trash and grabbed the other one, reset the circuit breaker and tried it too. POW! the same thing happened! Okay, now, the question is really gettin to me, why did I save TWO bad lamps?

I unscrewed the second blown bulb and looked it over to see what blew up....There was nothing wrong with the light bulbs, there was something wrong with ME! On the side of the bulb "FOR 12 VOLT FIXTURES ONLY! was written on the side. DOOUGH!! ! Those light bulbs were specifically designed to go in my 12 volt lamps so that I can have light when the electricity goes out. I just blew up almost $30 worth of CFL lamps because of my own stupidity! I set the bulbs aside so that not only to keep me from using them in 120 volt fixtures, but also so I could find them when the power goes out, but I was not only too stupid to rememer, I was too stuped to read the side of the @*&$!@! !! bulb!

Thats nothing that NTs dont do sometimes.

AV-geek,

THANKS! That IS stupid! I have done the SAME! I'M HOME!

HEY, just yesterday I saw a MORONIC mistake and stayed about an hour to track it and fix it. GUESS WHAT! IT was done by SOMEONE ELSE! Once fixed, I found ANOTHER error made by ANOTHER person! Probably 50% of my real work time, maybe more, is spent fixing OTHER persons mistakes! I doubt many of them are AS, and the average IQ in my line of work is SUPPOSED to be, according to one source, 130! Frankly I doubt that, as most don't seem that smart, but I have seen a few references to that.

SO, DON'T FEEL BAD! BESIDES, a LOT of the type of stupidity you talk about, including that SPECIFIC incident, was because of the INDUSTRY! I mean we have a method that is THOUSANDS of years old, but few pay attention to it. ALL they had to do is add a nib to the socket, or its mate, and keep them from being used wrong.

HECK, in the 70s!! !! The SEVENTIES! 1970s!! !! !! TWO companies worked to come up with a nice standard. It was called the Centronix/IBM standard! It was to provide connections for parallel equipment connections, and was later used for SCSI. There was ANOTHER connector, the DB25 used for RS 232 serial connections. Well, some STUPID company decided to break ranks, and use the DB25 connector for parallel connections. WHY???????

It was STUPID! If not for the different sex used on the computer, EVERYONE would have been totally confused, and service and help line calls would have SKYROCKETED! They are LUCKY that the printers still used the centronics standard. Also, new cables had to be made, even though the standard was used for 10 years or so, etc....

What was the name of the company that decided to break ranks and create all that confusion? You'll LOVE this! IBM!! !! ! They co-developed, or at least took credit for being that for the OTHER standard!

AV-geek, I bet when it comes to complex things, you have the average person looking stupid. Is that so?

i have done similar things. i just don't call myself stupid. never call yourself stupid. that's bigger mistake than blowing the bulbs. strictly from the logical point of view, once you realized your mistake there was nothing you could had done about it anymore. so the only thing you could do was to stop thinking about it and leave it behind.

I really belong to the line of thinking that most mistakes are just experiences that remind you what NOT to do next time. I'll bet you'll never put those bulbs into the wrong light fixture again, eh?

Here's my stupid experience that I will NEVER forget:

I was in high school, and my church youth group was singing as a choir in church. I was playing the organ, but was inexperienced with playing the organ. After the youth group finished one of their songs, I sat back on the bench and relaxed by putting my feet behind a support bar under the bench. While some poor soul was giving a talk at the pulpit, I began to kind of prepare for the next song I would have to play, noiselessly touching the keys of the organ to "practice."

Unfortunately, I lost my balance, slammed my hands on the keyboard, and the organ made a HUGE discordant blast right during this poor slob's talk ! ! ! Needless to say, all eyes were on me for a few minutes, and I heard about this incident for YEARS afterward.

Can you say "embarrassed?"

On the good side -- they never asked me to play the organ again . . .

Kris

That isn't stupidity, that's just being a little careless, and it happens to everybody. Like I regularly 'lose' things, only to realize I'm holding them -_-; Normaly I'm just really stressed, but it's so embarrasing to look for a pencil for five minutes and it be in your hand the entire time.

This is far and away my biggest problem. I have "foot in mouth" disease, saying careless things when I know better. I have had more than my share of stupid accidents, and feel like a klutz. I have constantly had to retrace my steps to retrieve items such as pens, pencils, and my glasses case that I have left behind. I was able to get A grades in difficult classes, but feel remarkably stupid when doing small tasks.

Meet the lord and master of doing and saying stupid things. I truly believe on top of everything else, that I have dyspraxia (clinically clumsy). And saying the wrong thing? Managed to upset my best friend by calling him cheap. Its true, but I didn't have to say it. And the other day I insulted another friend by telling her that her two favourite bands were the worst in the world, thus insulting her as well. It does become frustrating, especially when you notice other people don't do these things in the same circumstances.

I don't know, I really do think I'm abnormally absentminded about little things. I forget little things at work if I don't explicitly set alarms to remember them. That light bulb story sounds like something I would do. Just...little stupid things like that.

I *don't* think it's normal, even though my mom acts like "oh everyone does that blah blah blah". Well no, from my observations, they don't. (And back in grade school in fourth grade even a TEACHER was calling me the absent minded professor...)

yep...been there, done that! I walked out of a restaruant a few weeks ago and was totally puzzled because I couldn't find my sunglasses. I thought I threw them away on my lunch tray, so I asked a clerk to pull out the trashcan so I could check. He spotted them on the top of my head!



Yep, I can overhaul a huge pro grade Beta deck and get it working perfect on the first assembly, but I can't even change a light bulb!! !



yep, you are right about that! You gotta laugh at it after you've done it too...still, it's annoying wasting $30, especially after you took measures to keep it from happening! Heck, I blew a 20 ampere fuse changing a light bulb...You gotta laugh at that!

ive certainly done alot of stupid things in my time, i wouldnt worry about it too much