I know I was an idiot as a child...

[Eisa]

. I also had an irrational fear of Yeerks, slug-like things that would go into your ear and take over your brain, from The Animorphs. ... I would sleep with blankets over my head and everything. Yay fourth grade.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who was afraid of Yeerks. *shudders* Blegh, those things creeped me out.

...I still thought that gum stayed in your stomach until now. Somehow. Like bits and pieces or something...ok, I'll shut up now.

I don't know if it's an 'idiot' story, but it's one my mom LOVES to tell people. Including total strangers.

So when I was 2, my mom came up to me and she said something about how I was her little baby. And I looked at her, stomped my foot, and said, "I'm not a baby! I'm a woman!"

Also, Mishi, I used to think that, too! Although my parents never got pulled over, so I didn't have a chance to tell the police officer Dad was lying.

[hinakiba777]

This is a sad "stupid Lil Hina" story. But it's the best example of how I was Book Smart with no common sense.

When I was a tyke my brother and I had two Budgie Birds name Tea and Coffee. Around the time I was 4 one of them died, so we only had one left. We were playing outside, and dad was doing yard work. My brother and dad decided we should take the Budgie cage outside so our little friend could get some sunshine and air.

Now as I understood it, a cage was the Budgie's house. So how could he be getting air if he was inside his house with the door closed? I went up on the Patio and walked to the cage.

Lil Hina= Okay, now you can't fly away. I'm going to open the door so you can get more air, but you can't fly away. Everyone will be really sad if you leave us.

Then having warned the bird, I opened the cage door. And he flew away never to be seen from again.

Big Brother still likes to remind me of what I did.

[Jester]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't get the reference.

If it makes you feel any better, I didn't get it either. I was scratching my head going, "Huh?!?"

"You said you were broke in the store! Now your fixed! YAAAAAAAAY!"

This reminds me of a story from childhood. Not an idiot story, but probably the first time my parents truly understood that I had a quick wit and my father's sense of humor.

This was back in the Seventies (I'm an old fart, shut the fuck up), and we had one of those answering machines that was basically a tape recorder, so to turn it on you had to press the record button. Anyway, for some reason my parents were leaving the house to go somewhere, and I was staying behind, and as they were leaving they said, "Now remember, Jester, if you go anywhere, make sure the button on the answering machine is depressed." Me, perfectly deadpan: "Shouldn't I try to cheer it up?" Them: Then:

Mom still tells that story from time to time.

Policeman: I'll ask again, have you had anything to drink tonight?
Dad: NO! I haven't!
Me: But Dad, you had a Sprite! You're not supposed to tell lies!

More smartassery from me: on more than one occasion, I have been pulled over by The Man. One more than one occasion, they have asked me if I have had anything to drink. My standard answer for years has been "Nothing stronger than a Sprite."

A more amusing version of this was when I was out in northern California a couple years ago visiting some fellow Raider fans. One day I was borrowing one of my host's cars, and I got nailed in a speed trap out in the boonies (where my host lived). Now you have to understand that this car was littered with empty beer cans and had clearly been partied in many times previously, though I am relatively certain the driver wasn't drinking. So the car kind of smelled like beer. In addition, one of my buddies and I had gorged ourselves at The Stinking Rose in San Francisco the night before. The Stinking Rose is a garlic restaurant. We had each had more garlic than we had ever had before. And we found out the next morning that when you eat that much garlic, it comes back out through your pores, smelling distinctly like beer. We both smelled like freakin' breweries, and from a good distance, too.

In any case, I had had but one beer all day, for breakfast, and that had been well over three hours prior to my being pulled over. So all of these things combined into an amusing exchange with the Boy in Blue.

OFFICER: "Mr. Jester, have you had anything to drink?"
JESTER: "No."
OFFICER: "Mr. Jester, I'm going to ask you again, have you had anything to drink today?"

Normally this is the point in the conversation where the driver is toast. But all things considered, I was not.

JESTER: "And I'm going to tell you again, Officer, no I have not."

Naturally he gave me a field sobriety test, the whole nine yards. Naturally I nailed it, being completely sober. I did explain to him about the party car. I was not about to try to explain to him about the garlic thing. In the end, I got a speeding ticket (my first in over ten years!) for less than the speed I was actually going.

Back to stupid things done as a child: my family never let me live down the Disappearing Snow Shovel. It was a snowy day in southern New York where we lived at the time, and I decided to go play in the snow. I took one of my father's hefty snow shovels with me, for some reason (hell, the thing was almost bigger than me!), and played with it for a while in the snow. Then, being a moron, left it there, just in a snow bank, around the corner from where we lived. A while later, questions started up--where the hell was Dad's shovel? I left it just over....where there hell did it go? My father: "How the hell do you lose an entire snow shovel?" Even before then, my mother had tabbed with the nickname of The Absent-Minded Professor, but this incident made my father believe something was wrong with me. I think that was the closest he ever came to calling me stupid. Probably because he called me stupid. Frankly, I had to agree with him...that was pretty moronic.

And finally, the all-time classic I will never live down. My family was at some function at another family's house, some friends of my parents. Probably another family or two were there as well. All of them there with kids, some my age, some older. And somehow the kids started talking, as they will, about what they want to be when they grow up. What I meant to say was probably either "I want to be an astronaut" or "I want to go to the moon." What I actually said was "I want to be the moon."

Stone cold silence.

Pause.

Raucous laughter.

This would have been around the late Seventies, I think. Here it is 2010 and I am still hearing about this verbal face plant. Hell, my mom cited this very incident when I announced that I was going to major in broadcasting and pursue a career as a DJ. How could I possibly do that when I both mumbled and said things like "I want to be the moon." It was not until my mother actually came on my radio show and saw me at work that she understood that I could do it. Actually, that's not quite true. At the radio station, talking to Mom before I went on air, she still said, "How can you be a DJ? You're mumbling now when you're talking to me, and talking way too fast!" I replied rather matter-of-factly, "Yeah, but I don't do that on air." Mom clearly thought I was either full of shit or delusional. Or both. And then a short time later when I flipped on the mic and started talking on air, she had to swallow her words, as I was clear, concise, well-paced, and pretty much dead on on the air.

But I still get shit for the moon thing.

[Mikkel]

But I still get shit for the moon thing.

I have an idea for your new avatar...

[Imogene]

Another, I was a moron as a kid story from me:
One time, the parents had company over, and they went out, and left me to cook the ham for dinner.
Mom left instructions for turning on the oven, leaving the am in, etc.
About the time I was supposed to, I put it in, at 550 degrees.
I swear, that's what mom's directions said, 550... for two hours... I think...
Parents get home with their guests... smell smoke. They pull the ham out, it's black on the outside.
Mom tells me her instruction said 350.
...
Ooops...
The family had slightly smaller ham slices for dinner, a bit overcooked, but otherwise mostly edible.

[Jester]

I have an idea for your new avatar...

If you even suggest the moon, I swear I will reach right through the internet and smack the silly out of you.

But that's right...it is August. Time for a new avatar!

[ApolloSZ]

I was staying with my dad once. He was doing some DIY work, and wanting to do something that looked fun with dad, asked if I could help. After dad's agreement and instructions, there I was happily holding the extension cord leading to his drill.

What were the instructions you ask?

"Hold the power cable up so the electricty can go downhill and speed up"

[Jester]

Just remembered one that was almost the death of me.

I was about 4. Dad was on the phone with a business contact, a client or some such. He was on the phone in my parents' bedroom, and I was laying on the bed watching. And I started asking him what those two little buttons in the cradle of the phone did. You know, where you hang up the receiver? Yeah, THOSE two buttons. He tried to shoosh me, and specifically told me not to touch them. Being a curious and obnoxious 4-year-old, I completely ignored Dad, wanting to know what those buggers did. So I pressed down on them.

Disconnecting Dad's call. His business call.

I don't know for certain, but I am pretty sure they heard him yelling at me three zip codes over. I thought for certain I was not going to live to see my 5th birthday.

Any of you that have seen some of my rants know that I can get pretty explosive when I go off. I get that from Dad. Only he was far worse. At least, he seemed that way to a small child like myself. And he had a bit worse of a temper than I have...I tend to have a good control on my anger. Dad, not so much.

Bill Cosby had an old routine where he and his brother referred to their father as "The Giant." I looked on my father as "The Ogre." And there were times when I was scared shitless of him. Basically any time he was mad or I was in trouble. Thank the gods I had two sisters to distract his attention!

[Eireann]

When I was a kid, I wouldn't eat crabapples.

I thought they had crabs in them, and I was afraid of those beasts.
I thought (since crabapples aren't that big) that they were some kind of miniature crab that could, somehow, exist outside the ocean and inside an apple.

[Mikkel]

If you even suggest the moon, I swear I will reach right through the internet and smack the silly out of you

Good thing you stopped me .

[lordlundar]

As a kid, I believed what probably all of us were told, that if you swallow your gum it'll stay in your gut forever.

Well, not forever but a really long time.

Both my sisters and I had moments of stupidity surrounding the same event.

I learned it was stupid to grab onto a hot lawnmower engine (riding mower for those of you wondering). The burn was so bad it actually required a ventilated cast.

My sisters then learned it was stupid to make fun of me while I had said cast on. Said cast made for a great club.

[Gravekeeper]

I did the "drinking and driving" thing to my dad too. He had orange juice. >.>

When I was really young, I didn't know what decimal points were yet. But I could still read price tags. So I would attempt to split the prices of things at the store with my mom based on the decimal point. I would pay for everything to one side of the point, she could pay for everything on the other side.

I would randomly pick the number on the left or the right of the decimal point. So sometimes it was rather lopsided in my favour, sometimes it wasn't. <cough>

I also wasn't convinced the moon orbited the earth. I didn't think it looked that far away. I always figured it landed on the earth when the sun came up, and crushed thousands of people in some distant country. >.>

[Whiskey]

"Nothing stronger than a Sprite."

Okay so it was cute when I was five, not when I'm eighteen. I was living out of my car and I got pulled over for driving at 4am. The cop pulls me over and asks me if Ive had anything to drink tonight. I was half delirious so I didn't get what he was asking and i just go "I had a... dr... pepper? *points to the can*"

[teh_blumchenkinder]

This may not be 'idiot' territory, but... it's still a good story.
I was eight. First time actually cooking anything by myself: burritos, in tin foil, in the oven-- they get nice n' crispy that way.
My parents were in the living room, on the other side of the apartment, which was in no way in sight of the kitchen. I had finished making them, put them in, turned on the light to watch-- O___O
"MOMMOMMOMDADTHEOVENSONFIRE~!"
(and no, our range was not gas-- electric, actually)
There was a small flame, about the right size of a large candle's flame, actually, on the electrical element. I ran, yelling that the oven was on fire, not ten minutes into 'cooking.' Mom ran back, we watched the little flame scoot along the m-shaped element until it went out on the other end. I was so afraid the oven was going to explode and kill us all.
I think Dad called the fire department, and it was all one big shrug moment.
I felt pretty silly for almost exploding the oven. No, not for panicking or yelling or anything, just almost exploding the oven.

[Jester]

I also wasn't convinced the moon orbited the earth. I didn't think it looked that far away. I always figured it landed on the earth when the sun came up, and crushed thousands of people in some distant country. >.>

So your psychosis started that early, huh? Explains much.