Users of Reddit were asked “What was your ‘I can’t believe that worked!’ moment?” Here’s some of the most astonishing answers!
1. In high school I became overly frustrated with my increasingly struggling PS2. It wouldn’t read the discs sometimes and it was only getting worse. Threw it down the stairs. It worked perfectly for a few years after that. I still think that should not have worked.
TheMekar
2. When I was a kid my sister sat in front of me. I held my hamster in front of her toe and said “bite!” for fun. Well, he did it and it was the first time ever he bit one of us. There was some blood and we were stunned.
Jojamder
3. I was short and chubby. This HUGE 6’1 morbidly obese dude walked up and knees me in the back of the thigh, almost taking me down.
I turn around, reach as high as I can, and punched him in the face. Dude broke down crying.
Then he tried the SAME THING the next week and the exact same thing happened. Smh.
hazelfoot
4. I was running very late to school one morning and pulled into the parking lot where I saw a classmate who was in the same boat. On our way to class, we were discussing what sort of excuse we could make to not get a demerit. We discussed that to be fair, there was some police activity out on the main road to school. I don’t know who joked and said “We should tell her that there was a naked man running across the road” but I foolishly thought it was one of those stories so audacious that there was no choice but to believe it if told “correctly” and with conviction.
I burst into the classroom out of breath and went into this long winding story about a naked man running up, down, and across the road and how police were trying to catch him and held up traffic. I was somewhat of a mischievous youth so my teacher was unconvinced until my classmate, on cue, walked in and said very calmly, “Did you guys see that naked guy on the street?”
I think it’s the first time I saw that teacher laugh. Whether she believed us or just the gall of it all, she told us to take a seat. No demerits.
jhy10
5. I once had a math test in High School that I knew I was totally going to flub. I was normally a really good student and did well at math, but today wasn’t my day. The test questions were all on one sheet and we were instructed to use blank pages to write our answers. I sat during the whole test just doodling on the blank pages. At the end, I put my name on the question sheet and folded over the corner as if there were other sheets with it, and put it on the pile and walked out.
At the next class the teacher pulled me aside and profusely apologized because she though she lost my answers! She said she’d just leave it out of my overall class score for the semester. I couldn’t believe that worked.
nopoles613
6. When my nephew was young, like one, he was eating and my sister told me to give him a spoon. I tossed him a plastic spoon, it landed correctly in his hand and he used it to eat like it had been there the whole time. Didn’t even slow down, I looked at my dad and said tell me you saw that.
Frostedbutler
7. Back in high school I used to skip assembly with some friends, or just by myself. A few of us did, and the teachers started sending out prefects to basically hunt down students. A couple of them found me without me noticing, and started to escort me to the principal’s office.
As we’re walking, assembly is let out and a flood of students head towards us. I’d been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed at time, and decided I’d give the ‘blend’ thing a shot, mostly as a joke. As a group walks past us, I turn, bow my head and walk with them. Totally worked. I even glanced back and saw the prefects looking around confusedly like a couple NPCs.
Obviously by my describing my appearance, the teachers caught me anyway. But it was great.
TKeep
8. Was trying to get into a developer bootcamp I was woefully underqualified for. Memorized as much of a “100 top programming interview questions” list as I could and BSed my way through the interview.
Managed to learn enough on the fly to not look like a complete dumbass and here I am almost 3 years later, making way more than I should at a job I had no idea how to do when I started. Thankfully I’m a solid developer now, but holy shit if I never did that, I’d be stuck in tech support forever.
catfroman
9. Years ago, my friends and I were drinking in a park at night on a really cold night because drinking age is 21 and we’re all around 19 or 20 at the time.
Out of nowhere a cop car appears and slowly drives up to us.
Cop1: “What are you guys doing standing out here in the middle of the night?”
Friend: waves hand like a jedi “Its ok officer, we’re just drinking”
Cop1: “Oh, OK”, proceeds to drive off
Cop2 to Cop1: “WTF are you doing!?”
Cop1: “****!”
cop car stops couple of hundred feet away and reverses back to us
Red Faced Embarrased Cop1: “Just dump your beers and get out of here!”
exner
10. After a long night I realized I had spent (ahem drank) my last 20 and so couldn’t afford the train fare home. Decided to try the ATM anyway. Put in my PIN and tried to withdraw cash. ATM threw an error code then gave me 20. That money never showed up on my account ledger so free gift from a broken ATM!
zerbey
11. Back in the day we would hop a fence to go night swimming in a closed community pool. It was always a quick 15 minute swim, then we’d get out. One time someone yelled “police” and we all got out and ran. While running I almost tripped over a string someone put in his yard to keep off his new grass. False alarm, so we went back to the pool and started swimming again. 5 minutes later I see flashlights all around the perimeter of the pool. Its like they called in the entire police force to get us. We all split and ran. Unfortunately one cops eyed me and gave chase. He was on me like the Wile E. Coyote on the Roadrunner, for a few blocks. Remembering that low lying string, I ran back to that house, and just as he was reaching out to grab me I jump the string, he trips on it and falls hard on to the driveway. I couldn’t believe that worked.
imcrowning
12. When I was a 14 year old and a pretty douchey person, I found out one of my friends was going door to door selling chocolates to raise money for her netball team. I convinced her to double the prices on the chocolates and we went door knocking and actually sold them all. We gave her netball team the amount of money we were supposed to make and pocketed the rest with a nice $120 dollar profit.
Missy888
Note: The following is very dangerous and will usually just push food further down.
13. I grabbed a chunk of roast beef and chewed it a little bit, then tried to swallow.
…It was too big to swallow. It got stuck in my throat and now I’m choking.
Should I mention I was home alone? ‘Cuz, I was home alone.
After a moment of realizing I was going to die, I just shoved my hand in my mouth, put my fingers down my throat and GRABBED the roast beef chunk and pulled it out.
After I calmed down a bit (Realizing you’re about to die tends to make the adrenaline pump) I said “I can’t believe that worked”. Literally, those were the first words I said out loud.
To this DAY, I still can’t believe that worked.
Endulos
14. A friend burned me on the face with a cig while talking to a girl. I said to her that it hurts and it could stop hurting if she kissed it, made her laugh and made out the whole night.
majorfran
15. I have a friend who opened up his Xbox 360 to see if he could fix its Red Ring of Death.
He cut himself on some sheet metal from the chassis and bled all over the motherboard. He gave up, put the Xbox back together, and lo and behold, the thing booted up perfectly.
dblohm7
16. When I was 18 and visiting my 19-year-old girlfriend, who was home for the weekend from college, her father came home unexpectedly. We were not wearing clothes.
My first thought was to hide under the bed, but I thought better of it and jumped in the closet. She tossed my clothes in after me and threw on a bathrobe.
I was in that closet for hours while she chatted with her father, made some sandwiches (handed one to me in the closet), and washed clothes. While she was getting her clothes out of the dryer, her father came into her room as I watched from the half-inch opening (it was a sliding door). I guess he was making sure she had packed everything for her return trip to college, because while he was in there… he looked under the bed. I was trying to use Jedi mind powers to make myself invisible in case he opened the closet door, but he didn’t.
Before they left, she packed a backpack for me since I had no car and would be hoofing it to the nearest mall to call a friend on a payphone to pick me up (this was in the eighties). They took off, and about 15 minutes after they left, I did, too. Seriously can’t believe I didn’t get busted.
bigcup321
17. I didn’t do my math homework in school and the teacher asked randomly students to tell the answers. When the teacher asked me I said a random number (like: 2,97) and the number was right.
18. I swam when I was in high school and when I was in the locker room getting ready for practice, my friend told me he couldn’t remember his locker combo. It was one of those dial masterlocks that has 3 numbers from 0-39. I told him “move over, I got this” and randomly spun it to 3 numbers and pulled down. I got it in the first try.
clf1394
19. Once I had a deposit of $400 in my account that I didn’t make, so I went to the bank to ask about it. They said that because it was made as a deposit through an ATM, they couldn’t do anything about it, and I would have to call the number on the back of my ATM card. So I called that number and after a week of arguing back and forth they finally just said “Look, whoever deposited that check must have written the wrong account number or something and we can’t do anything about it if the bank staff won’t. Just enjoy the free money.”
Every few months (I was unemployed and literally dependent on food banks) that same person would accidentally deposit money into my account, and it usually happened when I needed it most (like, going to be homeless if I don’t get money somehow need). Eventually the deposits stopped and I was able to find out who was depositing the money- it was supposed to be going to a church whose account number was very close to mine- and I told them what happened and offered to pay them back. They told me to consider it a blessing because God guided them when I was most in need and so the occasional mistake on the account number was clearly a sign. I’m not particularly religious but I still really appreciate the sentiment (plus FDIC regulations means they were probably reimbursed since they had receipts with the check images) and I was able to go back to school, and now I start law school in the fall.
Good times.
CSUSBro
20. Randomly asking a friend if he had a metal detector when we lost car keys in 12 inches of snow. He did had a metal detector and we found the keys.
Mcgovlau
21. Setting the stage: conservative family, no sex talk growing up, kinda kept on a tight leash in terms of “going out”
Anyway – I go over to a girls place, I was a little over 18 I think, of course all sorts of wild dumb teen sexytime happens. Problem was she left a really bad hickey on my neck. Crap.
Fast forward next morning, thinking how to explain this, I see my opened computer power supply laying on the other side of the room and get an idea: I scream out really loud “Ow…. damn… ooooooowwwww”
My mom starts saying “what’s all that noise?!?!”
Told her I was tinkering with the power supply and the wires burned my neck.
She chased me around for the next few days trying to put burn cream on me, so I think it worked pretty well.
MrNerd82
22. I performed a Heimlich maneuver/grip on an old man who was choking on a piece of chicken a few years ago. Never done it before and it worked immediately on the first try. That piece of chicken then proceeded to fly through the air over several meters and hit one of the restaurant waiters standing nearby :-). I was rather impressed with myself.
Heiminator