“Did you consume any alcoholic beverages before the incident? Did you take any non-prescribed medication or inhale any chemical stimulants? Were you under the influence of ANYTHING?”

The nurse wrote down a string of no’s, shook her head, and left me to bleed in the lobby. On the bottom half of my face was a large piece of gauze, and on the top half was a look of shame.

Once again, I had been brought to the emergency room and once again, I had no excuse for it.

There’s an episode of “Beavis and Butthead” (and I apologize for the reference) in which Beavis acquires a six-pack of beer, and the two teenagers drink their beverages on the steps of a convenience store. A policeman approaches and asks them to perform a series of sobriety tests. Instead of touching his nose, Beavis touches his “nads,” and Butthead, in trying to say the alphabet backwards, can only manage “A...B....A....What comes before B?” before convulsing wildly and spilling beer all over his shirt.

The policeman is convinced that they’re drunk, until he lifts up the six-pack to reveal it is in fact non-alcoholic beer. He memorably quips, “You guys aren’t drunk, you’re just stupid!”

And that’s just it. That’s the story of my life.

I knew perfectly well at the time that to try to surf on a Slip N’ Slide was a bad idea. But as I stood in the mouth of the beast, ready to begin my journey, only one thought flashed through my mind: “Man! Even if I fall, this would make a great story!”

I was doing well for the first three-fourths of my hanging-10. But Slip N’ Slides hide behind their fun exterior a sinister demonic core, and this demon lashed out against me as I received a 3” by 2” by .5” gash at mile mark 0.76. As I stepped off the Slip N’ Slide, trying to play off the massive slash as a simple scratch, I have to say that I regretted what had just happened.

The same goes for my attempts to do a marathon yoga session (5 yoga classes in one day, because, no lie, I was in danger of failing), my almost trip to the sperm bank (the 75 dollars was tempting, but they can find you when they turn 18) and my skinny-dipping jump into 20 feet of water from 10 feet off the ground (next to a sign reading “do not jump here”).

I don’t know what causes this exactly, but if I’ve got a choice between doing something stupid and having a story to tell, and wisely abstaining, I invariably choose the former. Some part of me thinks I’m an action hero, able to do idiotic things but come through in the end, with the hot chick and the car.

I like to think, though, that it’s not just me: It’s a sort of college disease.

One might think that here at Stanford, such a disease would be less prevalent. But au contraire, students here have much less common sense than the average Joe. I’m not alone in my foolish attempts to become a celebrity. In fact, we find even more clever ways to be stupid. Before entering college, I didn’t know what the explosive thermite was. I didn’t know how far a two-liter bottle could shoot up into the air when you put subliming dry ice into it. I had never heard the sound of a pumpkin hitting the ground from atop a 6 story building, and I didn’t know the calculations necessary to ensure that the resulting splat didn’t hit the nearby table at the bottom.

When you get a bunch of 18-24 year-olds together in one institution, no matter how intelligent all of them are, this kind of stupidity is bound to happen. And injury is seemingly inevitable in this situation — regrettable, but memorable, injury.

But! For the sake of our hospital bills, our chins and our mothers, let’s all try to lay off the legend-making a bit. It’s possible to retain the element of celebrity without creating life-threatening danger. Most of us may lack a single grain of common sense, but even animals know such simple truths as You Do Not Stand Up On a Slip N’ Slide.

It may sound a bit hypocritical coming from him, but Nat sees myself now as at least a temporarily reformed man. Write him with stupid college stories at nat.hillard@stanford.edu.