When we are presented with a problem, we don't always approach it in the most ideal way possible.
Sometimes it feels like an issue is going to become worse and worse the harder we try, and we end up wanting to give up on the process entirely. If only there was an easy way out, a simple, clear cut solution to life's dilemmas.
Well, it turns out that sometimes the best solution is the one that requires the least amount of effort. Other times, a random guess can turn out to be the right answer. And then there are those rare times when pure, dumb luck is the best solution for everything.
These things happen to people every day, and we’ve compiled a list of 18 times that the unexpected actually worked.
1. "Before the age of well-known highly media-covered school shootings, a kid brought a shotgun to our high school, apparently with the intent to shoot the place up. He ended up in the courtyard surrounded by a bunch of other students gawking (not running away, people didn't have much knowledge of events like this)...
A teacher saw the commotion and broke into the middle of the circle to find out what was going on. He saw the kid with he shotgun, and just said "give me that right now" in a calm voice. The kid just handed it over. I later talked to the teacher about it and he said he was pretty much expecting to be shot when he saw the gun and had no idea what else to try."
2. "Back in college, I was walking to a lake and saw a very attractive girl kinda pouting next to her car with the hood up. I stopped to see if I could help even though I have no knowledge of cars. I kinda faked looking around the engine and said something like "probably a fuse". I opened the fuse box and just kinda fiddled with them all willy nilly like. The damn car turned on first try. I tried not to act surprised at all and she totally bought it. Went out a few times and stayed friends after. Still no idea what I did."
3. "Playing Drunk Jenga and it's my turn. The tower is balancing on 1 bottom block and its wobbly. I chop the bottom block out using a coaster, and the tower falls perfectly level. Proceed to freak. I have a video of it on my phone too."
4. "I was at a concert a few years ago. As a poor college student, I had shitty seats and was super jealous of people who had general admission tickets who could be right up close with the stage. The people with "general admission" tickets all had red wrist bands to get onto the floor. I was angrily eating a bag of doritos when I suddenly had an epiphany.
The color of the doritos packet is almost the same as the color of the wristbands and it's very dark. So my sister and I cut up the doritos packet and fashioned ourselves "wristbands" with it. Then we joined a large group of people entering the general admission area. I coolly just flashed the "wristband" at the security guard without pausing and kept walking. He didn't stop me. It ended up being one of the best concert experiences of my life!"
5. "A girl I had a crush on, constantly touched my beard because she thought it felt fluffy. I didn't mind. Then I said to her: 'If you touch my beard one more time you'll have to allow me to touch your butt.'
She touched it and I got to squeeze that ass.
And that was my 'holy shit, that actually worked' moment. I'm normally a shy guy and suck at flirting but that was a proud moment for me."
6. "The time I slapped a grenade out of the air.
I'm in a firefight with approximately six insurgents. There's ten of us, so I figure we've got this in the bag. I poke out of my cover and open up with some covering fire so one of our guys can press up onto their flank.
Next thing I know, I hear a 'DAMIEN! LOOK OUT!' and I realize I've got a grenade on a direct path to my face.
So I slapped that shit out of the air and into a nearby (fortunately abandoned) building.
I only realized later how fucking lucky I was that it had worked."
7. "Once in college, I stole a fire extinguisher from a dorm where I was partying. My friend and I left, solo cups in hand and started walking home.
A cop turns the corner and my friend says nothing, but turns around and walks away. I keep on walking straight, get stopped by the cop with a fire extinguisher in my hand (we had tossed the cups). Here's the exchange.
Officer: Hey, how are you?
Me: Pretty good, how are you?
Officer: Alright. Have you been drinking tonight?
Me: uhhhh
Officer: Don't worry, I don't really care about that, I was your age not that long ago. Just want to know for some context.
Me: well yeah, had a few drinks
Officer: Why'd your friend leave? That's pretty suspicious?
Me: Well if you were out drinking and you were under 21 and saw a cop, wouldn't you try to leave?
Officer: Makes sense, I'll allow it. Is that a fire extinguisher? Where'd you get it?
Me: I found it.
Officer: Found it? Where?
Me: Oh, just out and about. Why?
Officer: You didn't steal it? It was just lying around and you found it?
Me: Yeah
Officer: So why'd you pick it up?
Me: Well if you just found a fire extinguisher, wouldn't you pick it up? It was just there.
Officer: Hmm, Ok. Did you set it off?
Me: I tried, but I couldn't figure it out.
Officer: You know it's illegal to set off a fire extinguisher at random, right?
Me: Yeah, I know.
Officer: So why'd you try to set it off?
Me: Well I mean, I got a fire extinguisher. Why would I take it if I didn't mean to set it off? It's not like good for decoration or anything.
Officer: Fair enough, well good thing you didn't actually know how to set it off because you could get in trouble. Just so you know in the future if you do need to set one off, you have to pull that ring out first.
Me: Sweet, thanks. I'll definitely remember that.
Officer: No problem. Alright well you should get going. Don't drink anymore tonight and try not to take anything you find on the street.
Me: Can I take the fire extinguisher with me?
Officer: No, get out of here."
8. "Way deep in the woods I had to get a bunch of tools out of a shed that was inundated with thousands of horseflies. So I took a glass bottle I found in the trash, filled if with gasoline, put a rag in it, lit it, and tossed it into the toolshed. Gasoline by itself cannot work like napalm, where it sits on the surface and burns a long time. The gasoline consumed itself almost instantly killing most of the flies in a giant fireball, the smoke chased away what was left. The tool shed and everything inside was in great shape. I was worried it would burn the whole shed down. Holy shit, that worked."
9. "Was trying to see a concert but the tickets were sold out to the club. My friend introduced me as 'Sean Combs' to the bouncer, who checked the list, then parted the velvet ropes to let me in.
Sean Combs is P. Diddy's legal name, he was supposed to attend the same show. I am a white dude."
10. "This is my grandfathers story. He grew up in the rust belt, through the great depression. When he was able to start working, he found a job in the steel mill making train axels and stayed until retirement. He was a gangly Irish guy, fond of a good joke. On cigarette breaks, he could always be found fooling around with his coworkers.
After bragging about how well he could blow smoke rings and blow spit bubbles filled with smoke, his friends called on him to demonstrate his prowess. Never one to disappoint a crowd, he obliged. He decided to begin by blowing a smoke filled spit bubble. He gently blew it from his lips. As the spit bubble popped on the way to the floor, a tiny smoke ring emerged from it's center and grew into a decent sized ring.
Everyone was shocked, but no one more than my grandfather. He had demonstrated 2 of his tricks in one shot! What luck! His coworkers begged him to show them how he'd done it, but he played coy. They never found out that it was a one time occurrence. He quit smoking not long after. He had a feeling it wasn't good for you."
11. "Once I got a new video game and was too lazy to run and get scissors. I had short nails, so how the hell was I supposed to break open that annoying plastic wrap? I looked over to my large, fat cat gently sleeping in the corner of the couch. It then dawned on me. So i reached over and grabbed my cat's paw and squeezed, unsheathing her magnificent claws that I then used as a knife to open the packaging. It's my only and best MacGyver moment."
12. "When I was in college, I was crushing on a girl in my friend group. Thought she was straight, but in a laugh and joke kind of way I asked her out and she said yes.
Still thinking she was joking, she hit me up later that day on MySpace and asked if I'd been serious cos if I was, so was she. Couldn't believe it."
13. "My friend and I were working on our final engineering project in college. We'd been up 48 hours straight designing this electrical device, creating a wire-wrap diagram and whatnot. As we began wire-wrapping, we had hundreds upon hundreds of wires to wrap, all based off a chicken-scratch hand-drawing that we'd worked up on the fly on no sleep. We realized we would have no time to actually try and get it working, we just had to wire-wrap everything as quickly as possible just to get partial credit for completion. As we finished, both of us delirious, with the sun coming up and the project due in an hour, we decided to power it on just to see what would happen.
switch on
Both of us: '....did....did that just work on the first try??' "
We got an A.
14. "My wife and I hadn't had sex in 8 months. Lots of issues: her mom died, she was pregnant then had a c-section, we moved and had to live with my parents for 2 months while they finished remodeling our house, she has a 40 year old brother that was still living with her mother that we now take care of, and we slept in a room with my 3 other kids."
15. "Nerdy doctor shop talk following. I'll try to use as little jargons as possible and include some Wikipedia links for easier understanding. Here goes:
While I was working in the emergency department, a patient came in with palpitations and general feeling of being unwell. ECG subsequently confirms a cardiac rhythm disturbance, the AV nodal reentrant tacycardia. Essentially this means that an electrical signal which is suppose to pass from one chamber of the heart to another end up not doing so but decided to go round and round within the first chamber.
We can fix this with drugs. However, some non-drug treatment have been described. One of them being the carotid sinus massage. What this does is stimulating the carotid sinus body, which in turn lowers the heart rate with the hope of encouraging the electrical circuit to follow its designated pathway. Now this works about 25% of the time. For me, this works 0% of the time since it never worked the many times I've tried it.
So here I am, talking to the patient and explaining the treatment options. I casually placed my fingers over his carotid sinus and put some pressure over it to demonstrate what we will be doing first before trying drugs. And right there, on the cardiac monitor, his heart rhythm reverts back to normal rhythm. Like magic.
Holy shit, that actually worked."
16. "Poured pure grain whiskey in a boat motor gastank while being stranded on a lake with a dead motor and a storm coming in. It actually got us close enough to the bank for us to pull the boat on the bank and seek shelter."
17. "Well, I got laid off, so I started this company..."
18. "I had a Ford Bronco II from 1989. Once the starter was failing, and a friend of mine said I should try poking it with a stick a few times. I thought to myself 'this bullsh*t can't be true.' I tried and for my surprise my freaking car jump started in the first try. I was mind blown."
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