Forgetting to think

What's your low-IQ moment of the day? Members of Salon's Table Talk community reveal theirs.

Published March 14, 2009 10:00AM (EDT)

Private Life

My latest low IQ moment of the day

Mendocino - 03:14 pm Pacific Time - Mar 11, 2009

Describe your "Duh! Why did I do that?" moments.

Yesterday I decided that a tall, skinny bookshelf holding some CDs needed to be moved a little to the right. Just a little bit, that's all. So instead of taking the items off the shelves (very tall, about 7' shelves), I just skooched the entire shelving unit over a little, contents and all. Wiggle, wiggle. Can you see what's coming next? Yep, the entire thing went crashing down on me and CD jewel cases were raining on my head. I have three sharp little bruises on the back of my head. The corners of those things are sharp! Ow.

jilz - 08:56 am Pacific Time - Mar 12, 2009 - #3 of 24

Went to the bathtub. Turned on the water. Shower dripping. Grrrr. Turned off the water. Turned the shower on to let all the water drain out of the shower pipe. Waited a minute. Turned on the water. Got a shower I didn't want.

Turned off the water. Turned the shower off. Turned on the water. Shower dripping. Ridiculous. Water off, shower on. Left the room to give it plenty of time to drain. Came back, turned the water on. Another shower that I didn't want. Disbelief.

Another reason to take my bath at night instead of in the morning.

nigelx - 11:41 am Pacific Time - Mar 12, 2009 - #4 of 24

My push lawnmower broke (handle came off the wheel). Neglected to get it fixed. Back yard began to turn into a meadow. Saw the landscaper riding around on his stand-up mower on the neighbor's minuscule lawn, got him to come mow mine for $30. Had to rake up the heaps of grass into half a dozen bags. Now hot and sweaty, I went into the bathroom to take a shower, where the door closed by mistake. Since the inside doorknob had come off, I was stuck in the bathroom. Luckily I still had my clothes on. No one was home. Tried calling out the window, attracting the attention of the girl watching the other neighbor's dog. Told her to open the garage where there was a door key. Unfortunately she turned the wrong handle, so the garage was now locked. I got her to carry the bags of grass to beneath the bathroom window (also luckily on the first floor) so I could climb out, which I should have done in the first place. Called my daughter, who did not have a key either. Finally was reduced to taking a brick and throwing it through the basement window so I could climb into the house.

Eventually everything got repaired.

Guvnah - 12:08 pm Pacific Time - Mar 12, 2009 - #6 of 24

My low IQ moment was yesterday -- went with DH and two kids to DD's school for a parent-teacher conference (standard report card time). Went into meeting, stayed more than we thought, came out to car. Open the door "ding ding ding." Oh, I left my lights on. The damn battery was dead. Ended up in the damned parking lot longer than I was in the school.

elsee - 04:24 pm Pacific Time - Mar 12, 2009 - #9 of 24

I went to the laneway behind my house to put my garbage out. My 5-year-old was playing upstairs and my baby was asleep in her swing.

As I went through the heavy wooden garden door I thought to myself - I wonder what would happen if this shut behind me? Suddenly a gust of wind slammed the door shut behind me. Full Panic. I was completely locked out of my back garden, the front door to the house was locked, the wall was far too high for me to scale. I ran gibbering down the laneway where I found some construction dudes working on a garage and they managed to figure out what I'd done, and one of them climbed the wall and opened the gate for me on the other side.

Then I did it again a week later. 

Samiratou - 06:56 pm Pacific Time - Mar 12, 2009 - #14 of 24

It started first thing in the morning. I schlepped my way into work from my car only to discover that I'd left my coffee in the car. Schlepped back out through the seriously windy, seriously below zero temps to get coffee, only to realize when I got back to my desk that I'd forgotten my laptop. At home. I don't normally bring it home, but we'd moved cubes the night before and so I brought it home. Talked my husband (who is on "vacation" with the baby this week) to load the kid up and bring me my computer. Once the computer arrives, I try to dock it for several minutes with it stubbornly refusing to lock in. I ask my cube neighbor to try it, as I don't trust myself not to break something at this point. It takes him about 3 seconds to figure out the lock switch had gotten slid over to "lock" during the move, and that's why it wouldn't let me dock it. Duh.

Later...

I had just heated up my lunch and went to put my split pea soup with shredded pork onto my desk when I completely misjudged where the edge of my new desk was (thanks largely to the 3" gap between the edge of the desk and the edge of the keyboard tray--don't get me started on all the useless, wasted space in these cheap-ass cubes) and dropped my lunch through the gap between desk & tray onto the floor, where it splattered my pants, my chair, the underside of my desk, cube walls, file cabinet, foot rest, etc., etc. Spent a good half hour getting it cleaned up. Got a salad for lunch. Banged head on desk.

Anglophile - 06:16 am Pacific Time - Mar 13, 2009 - #16 of 24

This morning I was in the process of making my tea and oatmeal. Got distracted by son's insistence on me fetching his giant Thomas the Tank Engine storybook (his latest obsession), came back down to the boiling kettle, proceeded to open the packet of oatmeal and empty into my cup (which had a teabag in it) and poured water over the whole thing only to realize I'd just made Tea Oatmeal. And there was no more water in the kettle, so I had to start over.

Probably not the stupidest thing I've ever done, but I am so not a morning person.

Cobrafrat - 07:16 am Pacific Time - Mar 13, 2009 - #20 of 24

Now I don't feel so bad for being stupid enough to print out my report single sided rather than double sided. This morning, I accidentally didn't change the page numbers and began a print query of 5,320 pages. *Gasp*

nigelx - 08:22 am Pacific Time - Mar 13, 2009 - #22 of 24

Anglo, you remind me of the time I was going to make molasses milk, and discovered too late that instead of picking up the unmarked molasses jar I had the unmarked soy sauce jar. "Well," I thought, "you've heard of soy milk..."

I don't recommend it.

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