As a teenager I tried to impress a girl by taping a bunch of matches to my shoulder and settin fire to them. She had not asked me to this or given any indication that she wanted me to do anything of the sort, I just figured with 16-year-old logic that that was bound to look awesome. The pain was so strong and sudden that my shoulder started jerking around wildly, which was a problem because it meant that my instinctive reaction of trying to swat the fire out with my hand kept missing. By the time I managed to swat it out the heads of the matches had fused with my skin, which was blakened and had the texture of a cracker. Because I was a healthy teenager this somehow "healed" without leading to any seriouss infection, but to this day, that part of my shoulder is covered in shriveled scar tissue and I have lost all feeling in the tissue in that area down to the bone. The girl was not impressed.
Reminds me of when some friends of friends were playing chicken with a lit cigarette held between their forearms. One of them kept trying to get people to do this with them only to keep getting the response "that's dumb as shit." So I started talking to them, telling a story about how my father had showed me old scars on his arm from doing that, and the whole time I'm kind of leaning in and lowering my voice until I got to "and you know what he said about this?" Followed by yelling "it's dumb as shit!"
The story I told them was mostly true too: he had in fact showed me old burn scars on his arm and explained how they were from playing chicken with a lit cigarette and how exactly one did that, followed with a caution about how stupid and pointless it is and a warning to never do it. I just paraphrased the caution to match what other people kept telling them.
If we can bring other people than ourselves into it my own father half tore off both of his index fingers trying to rip a beer can in half like he'd seen on TV. Turns out the edges of the opening on a beer can are sharp and if you manage to fit both of your index fingers in there and you are convinced enough that if you just pull with all your strength you can rip the can in half, you are correct about everything except what you are going to rip in half.
As a teenager I tried to impress a girl by taping a bunch of matches to my shoulder and settin fire to them. She had not asked me to this or given any indication that she wanted me to do anything of the sort, I just figured with 16-year-old logic that that was bound to look awesome. The pain was so strong and sudden that my shoulder started jerking around wildly, which was a problem because it meant that my instinctive reaction of trying to swat the fire out with my hand kept missing. By the time I managed to swat it out the heads of the matches had fused with my skin, which was blakened and had the texture of a cracker. Because I was a healthy teenager this somehow "healed" without leading to any seriouss infection, but to this day, that part of my shoulder is covered in shriveled scar tissue and I have lost all feeling in the tissue in that area down to the bone. The girl was not impressed.
Reminds me of when some friends of friends were playing chicken with a lit cigarette held between their forearms. One of them kept trying to get people to do this with them only to keep getting the response "that's dumb as shit." So I started talking to them, telling a story about how my father had showed me old scars on his arm from doing that, and the whole time I'm kind of leaning in and lowering my voice until I got to "and you know what he said about this?" Followed by yelling "it's dumb as shit!"
The story I told them was mostly true too: he had in fact showed me old burn scars on his arm and explained how they were from playing chicken with a lit cigarette and how exactly one did that, followed with a caution about how stupid and pointless it is and a warning to never do it. I just paraphrased the caution to match what other people kept telling them.
If we can bring other people than ourselves into it my own father half tore off both of his index fingers trying to rip a beer can in half like he'd seen on TV. Turns out the edges of the opening on a beer can are sharp and if you manage to fit both of your index fingers in there and you are convinced enough that if you just pull with all your strength you can rip the can in half, you are correct about everything except what you are going to rip in half.