Just remembered something shocking and can’t believe how naive I was.. what’s your moment of stupidity?

[Alwaysaware]

I remembered earlier and incident that happened about 25 years ago and looking back I can’t believe how stupid and naive I was.

I stupidly cut my finger quite badly on a tin and needed it looking at so my then boyfriend took me to A&E. I remember sitting in the waiting room with my partner when a clearly agitated man came in. He went to the desk and demanded to be seen, he got up and down, getting more and more upset as he wasn’t being seen quickly enough. At some point he came back and sat down opposite me and slid his sleeve up to reveal a huge knife taped to the inside of his arm!

What did I do? Nothing, just nothing at all. How bloody stupid of me! Why didn’t I go up to the desk quietly and report it? He could have gone mad and started knifing people. At the time although I felt a bit shocked I don’t remember thinking we were in danger. I just didn’t want to make a fuss. I guess I’d have been around 22 years old so old enough to speak up but I didn’t. Looking back I can’t believe how stupid I was. Maybe it’s just times have changed and we hear so much about knife violence now.

As it happened I was soon called into to have my finger stitched and I didn’t see the bloke again so I’ve no idea whether the knife was discovered. I’m just sick to think I possibly put others at risk.

Have any of you had close calls where looking back you were stupidly naive?

I got into a car with a complete stranger when he offered me a lift, in another country, by myself, and chatted with him the whole way and didnt speak a single word of his language. I look back and think at how insane it was. But it felt like the right thing to do at the time. I was very very young.

Maybe you just reacted that way because you were shocked and knew that if you reacted, that he might have reacted too?

Was in alarm with some friends and a friends boyfriend, we had never met.
A man comes over and starts chatting to
Us all, he’s drinking a lot, he gets a massive knife out and starts digging at the floor, starting to get a bit arsey.
He went away in the end, I naively thought it was a friend of my friends boyfriend, and he though I knew him, turns out know one knew him. I think we were lucky that day

A friend's Dad came in to their house one winter evening and asked his DD and I (young teens) to sit on his hands to warm them up .

I have a nasty, sneaking suspicion that I didn't think too much of it and that we may have done it!

I pulled up at some lights when I was driving my mum's car years ago and a woman opened the door and got in. She said she needed me to take her somewhere, gave me directions and I took her where she said. I have no idea who she was, but I can't now believe I just did what she said. I didn't tell my mum or anyone else as I think I realised how stupid it was. But I was at such a loss to know what to do, and even now I'm not sure what I would do.

I lived with a WW2 enthsuiast at uni. She found an unexploded bomb in fields in France so she brought it home on the ferry... I lived in a house with an unexploded bomb for 2 years!!!! she used to shine it up with an old toothbrush. Now I think...what the hell?! But then I just accepted it. She was cross that she wasn’t going to be allowed to take it home with her to Australia. The mind boggles.

Getting lifts off randoms when I went out. Going back to strange blokes houses for parties etc. All those sorts of stupid reckless things that we did in the 80s.

Can remember going home on the tube after a gig in London once, and the man opposite absolutely covered in blood, it was all over his front and his hands. God only knows what had happened, but I was way too scared to make eye contact.

Up until I was about 10 I though the laws were just the Ten Commandments. As in there were 10 laws- nice and easy to remember.

Then I was made aware that no, there are lots of laws. Like, thousands. I genuinely panicked- how am I supposed to know all these laws so I don't break them and get in trouble? I could be breaking the law right now and not even know it!

Still getting over that one tbh.

When I was 14/15 years old I worked as a Saturday girl in a hairdressers and I became very friendly with the main stylist who was a lot older than me, late 20’s/early 30’s. Let’s call her M. We had a staff night out to a Chinese at Xmas and afterwards we went for drinks, I managed to get in despite being so underage but in order to stay out I had to stay at hers so that my parents didn’t know I was out late drinking etc. Her husband who was in the army was also out with us. In the taxi on the way home to theirs, M was in the front and her Very drunk husband was stroking my leg in the back. We got home and M passed out drunk and her husband came on to me, quite heavily, touching me between the legs etc. I managed to tell him no and he stopped. The next morning he was really friendly to me saying how he had been so drunk he didn’t remember a thing from the previous night. Me being naive believed him. So when I got invited round to stay again for her bday, I went. Same thing happened, M got drunk, they had a row so she stormed upstairs and passed out. He then came on to me again, saying how he knew I’d enjoyed it last time etc. Was very persistent, lots of touching etc, but I said no and I would wake up M and tell her if he didn’t leave me alone. I didn’t go back there again but he did sometimes come and sit in the salon and smirk at me while I was working.

It’s only now I’m a grown up and a mum I realise how wrong this was, especially with the fact I was only 15 and he was probably early 30’s. I’d try and report him or do something but all I can remember is her first name. I have nothing else to go on.

I remember going into a random old man’s house because he had kittens for us to look at... Jesus.

When I was 14 I went to parties 20 /30 miles away from home with no idea where I was staying or how I would get home
Usually ended up waiting At the bus stop till the first bus in the morning, alone and drunk
Unfortunately there was one incident where I did pass out from being drunk, someone woke me up, put his jacket round me and called my parents

I hitchhiked in Israel in my late teens. I was with a couple of others, but it makes me feel a bit panicky to think of n it now.

16 years old, we went sailing with some locals (abroad) and they had us diving down to get to this underwater tunnel that lead to a cave. It was pretty tight. I do look back on that and think shit!!

I have twice been so drunk that I couldn't get back to my hotel (separate occasions) and invincible me decided to just walk. On both occasions taxi drivers pulled over and offered to take me home and I got in. Middle of the night, in city centres. All I had was the name of the hotels. Both times I got back safe, No fee taken just the kind words of "If my daughter was in your situation I would want someone to do the same" and "You need to be careful, there are bad people around". I am always grateful for those two men. How could I be so stupid twice? but also I am very thankful for being so lucky.

When I was young don't really know how old we were old enough to walk to the park by ourselves. A man asked me and my sister to watch and make sure no one comes and looks while he did a wee in the bush. We did. And obviously didn't think too much of it. But you just wouldn't do that would you. And I remembered it recently and thought it's just wrong.

I broke down when driving with a friend when I was 16 and she was 22. Some guys drew up in a van and offered us a lift, and we got in - to the BACK OF THE VAN. Luckily they were perfectly nice blokes and took us to where we needed to go, but even now I shiver in horror thinking about how two young women willingly climbed into the back of a stranger's van, with nobody else knowing where they are etc. Not to mention the danger of a car crash etc. OMG. :(

When I was about 19 I went travelling round europe on my own. In some internet cafe (remember those?!) in a dodgy train station some man comes in and claims he recognises me and starts trying to touch my thigh and badgering me to go for a drink. He was being really persistent but I was ridiculously british and polite about it and rather than loudly shouting "I don't know you, leave me alone" I quietly said "oh, sorry, no thank you" or something similarly pathetic.

He then went and stood outside and stared at me through the window for a good twenty minutes. Again, rather than pointing him out to someone or asking the people at the desk to help me, I just pretended I hadn't noticed. And then when it looked like he'd wandered off, I left on my own and walked down the back streets to my youth hostel in some equally dodgy area, praying he wasn't following me.

God knows what I was thinking, clearly I thought being raped and/or murdered was a better outcome than being seen to make a fuss

slept outside a famous persons house alone when waqqs 15 in london(not saying who) told my parentd i was at another friends house

Doesn't surprise me that a lot of these are teenage - adolescence really does a number on how your brain works, and like sunlighthouse says above, making a fuss seems like the worst possible thing in the world.

Consider that next time your teenager is saying you don't understand them. They're right. Because their decision making process is broken and fundamentally incomprehensible to an adult brain. Bless'em!

My worst was when I was about 6/7 a man at the end of my street said he'd give me and my brother some sweets all we had to do was get them out of his front trouser pockets. So we did to be fair, I was young enough not to know better my brother would have been 14 and definitely would have

The father of the children I used to babysit for back in the early 2000's was overly invested in me, love life etc. Once he called me through to his room (he'd come home for a 'nap' before going out to work) and sat talking to me and stroking my breasts and I just sat there and let him do it - frozen to the spot - like sunlighthouse said - making a fuss/drawing attention just seemed like the wrong thing to do.

I still think about it occasionally and wonder why I didn't scream/run away/leave the house - I only lived across the road (!)

Luckily he was thrown out for other reasons not that long after so I wasn't in that position again.

I was a fairly sensible teenager but get panicky when I think back to when I once walked down a really long pitch black alleyway alone on the way home from a friends house age 16. It was alongside a really big park with a reputation for attracting unsavoury characters. Can’t believe I took such s silly risk to avoid a slightly longer walk!