(NOTE 2: I've come across new information from both my mom, and the one I wrote about originally. He's done some real doozies in the past, so it deserves the second rewrite, as the story apparently was even funnier than I originally thought!)

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My father Peter, who just recently turned 56, is really, well, klutzy. He also tends to have that 'lack' of common sense that other people seem to have. It's a miracle that he hasn't removed himself from the gene pool through injury or infection, and we joke about him earning a Darwin Award...someday.

I have a few interesting stories of my father, and of course, the observations of his actions, such as placing barrels of flammable industrial liquid onto two metal beams improperly angled with plywood vaguely supporting it (thankfully, it WAS sturdier than it looked), or the time where he was walking on our mid-renovation deck, walking down a wooden beam that was obviously rotted to pieces (he ended up breaking through, cutting his hand), building a METAL roof without any real safety measures to prevent slipping, not using proper safety goggles or using ear protection while doing woodworking, improperly securing objects (which is a common routine for him, one time having a metal photocopier cabinet fly OFF of our pickup truck on the FREEWAY [no one was behind us, thank goodness] after telling him that it wasn't secured enough), and of course, the number of times he's done some 'watch this!' moments, which I admit aren't as high calibre as your 'Darwin' entries.

However, I do have two good ones for you. To start, when my dad was much younger, about in his twenties, he had a car which must have had a leaky gas tank. Under normal circumstances, that would be a good time to get your car towed to a mechanic.

Not my dad.

He ended up hooking up a portable gas can to the engine, bypassing the busted tank. Unfortunately, because it was a portable tank, he had to manually pump the gas with a rubber squeezer to run the engine. He did this while driving, so you can picture my dad, driving with one hand, pumping with the other. Oh, and did I mention that he was smoking a cigarette at the time?

Makes me wonder how he lived long enough to procreate.

The second one, a few years ago, he stored various iterms, mostly industrial equipment, parts, fuels and chemicals from his photocopier buisness he ran for twenty-five years, onto two temporary metal shelves inside our garage. Our garage, which is actually a two story separate unit that is more like a storage unit than a garage, had the things stored up there haphazardly with him and his forklift. Once something was put up, once it was up there and not moving, he decided that was 'secure enough' (sound familiar?), and left it be.

One of those things, a thirty pound concrete umbrella base for an outdoor table-chair set, was put up there with those huge industrial barrels, and put it on top of the outdoor lights set that, at the time, wanted to get down to do some renovations.

So what did he do? Go and get a ladder to get it up. Now under normal situations, this would be fine. However, he was feeling particularely lazy that day, and moving and positioning the forklift (which is a push forklift, not a drivable one) would take a lot of effort and time, he decided to step halfway up, and use his long metal hook to grab the box, and bring it down.

Well, so far so good. He shifted it, noting the weight of the box was heavier than he expected. He got it mostly unwedged to fall down...until he could see something green starting to slide off of the box, and fall down.

You guessed it, the concrete umbrella stand.

According to my dad, he said "Oh s---.", refering to the umbrella stand. It ended up falling towards his rock-hard head, and somehow just glancing his head on its way down, causing some pretty severe scalp bleeding.

Me, blissfully unaware of this whole scenario unfolding, suddenly jumped to my dad rushing into the house to have me call 911. Soon, the paramedics arrived, and took a look at his head. When they asked him if his neck felt okay, he immediately went to roll his head around, saying "Yep!" while giving me and the paramedics a heart attack.

So twice in one day, my dad could have Darwined himself; once for that concrete, and the other for possibly severing his spinal cord from an unknown injury. Ironically, this wasn't the end of the story; later in the same day he was grabbing something out of the freezer. He ended up dropping something as he was looking, so he leaned forward. He didn't notice the freezer door closing, then as he got up, the corner of the door hit the fresh wound from the concrete stand, and reopened it, shooting blood into the ceiling, and forcing him to put his head under water again. Needless to say, it taught him a lesson.

Mind you, with his usual antics, and some of the other royally stupid stuff he's done, maybe not.

Submitted on 06/17/2007

Submitted by: James
Reference: http://darwinawards.com/slush/new/pending20070608-125018.html

Copyright © 2007 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
Thanks for the update, James! A funny PA is now even funnier!

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
Thanks James!

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