My neighbor Richard has done some easily stupid things in the years that I have known him.
He once downed an entire bottle of vodka and a one fourth span of time and had to be rushed to hospital and have his stomach pumped to avoid dying from alcohol poisoning.
A few weeks later he decided to take up mountain climbing with nothing more than a few fourths of Youtube videos under his belt for experience. He had a lot of fun before making what other climbers would refer to as a “rookie mistake,” and ended up falling from almost 40 feet in the air. He was lucky to be caught by a tree on the way down and was able to reuse it in a few weeks. You’d believe that an experience like that would change your mindset completely when it comes to the risks you take, however it didn’t for Richard. Recently he made a big and fancy mistake by driving his truck onto a frozen lake to go ice fishing. In Richard’s defense, he’s not the only person who does this every year. Some people drive their entire campers onto the ice, assuming that it’s at least 2-3 feet thick. But Richard had just fixed the broken gas furnace in his truck and was ignoring local warnings that said the ice was too thin for vehicles. He drove his truck out onto the ice and was wonderful at first. He unloaded his temporary ice fishing shack and got his equipment out of the truck when he heard what sounded like a small bomb go off as the ice collapsed beneath his truck. He had to call 911 right away and nearly got pulled into the icy water himself. Worst of all—insurance claims for vehicles lost to ice are immediately denied. He had just fixed his truck’s heating method and now it was stuck in a partially frozen lake.