Perhaps you’ve heard of the Darwin awards?
If not, allow me to educate you . . .
These rather spectacular awards do not involve any kind of
prize because most, if not all, of the people who achieve top status don’t live to
brag about it. ‘Darwin’ awards are for those who, through their own foolish actions,
take themselves out of the gene pool.
Most are cringe-worthy. Some downright shocking.
Some, fairly laugh-able.
This is my favourite:
Larry decided he wanted to witness life from a few feet in
the air. Say 30 or so.
With this in mind, he roped a folding, aluminum lawn chair to
the ground then tied 45 weather balloons to it. He buckled himself in for
‘safety’ with a BB gun to shoot at the balloons when he was satisfied with
defying gravity and wanted to come back to earth . . . and cut his anchor
rope.
He definitely went up.
But not to the 30 feet he had been anticipating.
Nope. He zoomed up to 15,000 feet.
Justifiably terrified, Larry hesitated shooting out any of
his balloons, not knowing how quickly such an action would bring him back to
earth. Thus, shivering with cold in his lawn chair, and clutching his gun to
himself out of fear and the fact that his cold hands simply wouldn’t let go, he
drifted into LA airspace.
And was reported by passing aircraft intent on landing.
I can just picture the cockpit conversations: “Erm, base? We
have an armed interloper floating through our airspace in a lawn chair.
Response?
Helicopters were sent out to investigate/rescue the hapless
man.
Sadly, they couldn’t seem to get close. Every time they
approached, their whirring blades blew him away from them.
Finally, they decided to try coming down on him from above
and managed to get a line to him and pull him in.
Back on the ground, he was immediately arrested.
What was his crime? Trespassing? Posing an armed threat? Unconventional
use of weather balloons and/or lawn chairs?
Myself? I think he should have been charged with stupidity
and leave it at that.
Today is National Stupid Guy Thing Day. Seriously.
What an untapped treasure trove!
Go and see what the other entrants have concocted!
