This stuff makes really interesting reading! :cool:

I don't have any "cool-stupid" stories, only "ridiculous-stupid" stories...

When I was fourteen, I was in the Air Force Cadets (yes, feel free to ridicule me for that!). It was my first and only time at the rifle range, and I was freaking out because I was sure that I was going to screw up somehow. Well, despite expectations I got through the first half of the day without doing anything wrong. Then, just as I was beginning to relax, I put my foot in it, big-time.

I'd just finished firing a clip, and I started to go through the safety procedure for the checking of weapons by the range supervisors - all of whom, on that day was senior Air Force officers. As I was hoisting the rifle onto my shoulder for the officer behind me to check the breech, it slipped in my fingers and I dropped it! I fumbled and caught it sideways, and started to lift it back up - and the next thing I knew, the scary two-metre-tall Warrant Officer behind me was screaming "PUT THE WEAPON DOWN!"

I realised that I was holding the rifle so the barrel was pointing sideways along the range, directly at my commanding officer... *gulp*. He was a really nice fellow - I respected him a lot, not least because he was the one who ran my cadet squadron and determined whether I was in or out! He said, "What do you think you're doing, pointing the barrel down the range? Don't you like me?" I was so freaked out, I'd lost control of my speech facilities. What I meant to say to him in reply was, "No that's not it, sir - I just dropped the rifle as I was putting it onto my shoulder! That was incredibly irresponsible of me, I'm so sorry, sir!" What came out was simply the first and last words of that phrase:

SQUADRON LEADER: "...Don't you like me?"
BEN: "No sir."

He was not amused. Not only did I never go shooting again, but I never made it to promotion courses, either.