[Closed] What long range bad things have you done?

I was responsible for my wife reversing into a neighbors car. I was around 100 miles away at the time.  My fault as I had left the wheelie bin at the end of the drive.

Not sure of the distance, but many moons ago on arrival at a boys jolly to the former Soviet republic that is Estonia, Goodladyherindoors texts me to say that i'd left vomit over the cloakroom skirting board from the previous nights "pre Trip" warm up and i should damn well come and clear it up - to say the text was slightly abrasive would be an understatement. 4 days later her annoyance hadnt subsided one iota

i work in angola west africa.

my fault the oil tank had gone down to empty in the 4 weeks id been away due to it being cold and the heating coming on more....

of course I'm the only one who can check it .

It is my fault that my daughter needed very expensive braces on her teeth and the NHS doesn't cover Canada where my ex wife moved her over 10 years ago.

It is my fault so I have to pay. Apparently its the genetics so deffo my fault, even though my teeth appear fine.

4,600 miles away.

I regularly switch the signal source from HDMI 1 to HDMI 2 to stop the TV working when I am away on work. I have managed that from many different countries across Europe and once from America - all by the power of thought apparently.

Sometimes I leave it working for the first night I am away and then switch it on the second night.

My now ex wife once didn't speak to me for weeks over something I did in a dream she had. OK so physically I was next to her but what can you say when the offence was entirely imaginary and didn't occur in the physical world.

I didn't learn for years that this was the reason for her not talking to me and despite the fact that we are still on very good terms she still won't give me the satisfaction of being able to enjoy the really bad thing I did by telling me what it was!

Apart from breaking a friends neighbours greenhouse with a Diablo catapult and orange peel in my teens, nothing. Distance for that was a good 500 metres though. Neighbour came around and asked if we’d seen any kids throwing oranges.

A child that I had never met was horrible to it's mum because of me.

So said Louise,3000 miles away

My ex called me once  from the airport in mallorca to inform me that child 2 had been sick and that she'd lost her shoes on the beach that morning. I'm still not convinced that somehow I was held responsible for these happening

I caused calls to the emergency services for a plane crash/bomb going off/et cetera from over thirteen miles away, but then my firework displays did have a reputation for being on the loud side. 😈

I'm in the Canaries and it's my fault the dog is floating about in the yard in it's kennel because of a local high tide and flooding. The dog, a rescue hound from Battersea had taken more to her than me so would frequently attack me if I tried to get into her (our) bed so I'd suggested since it's summer he'd be better in his kennel, so my fault even though I'm thousands of miles away and she'd clearly also decided he'd be better in his kennel despite whatever local forecasts there must have been.

Got a phonecall when on top of a mountain in the Alps to say that the shed had been broken into and what did I intend to do about it. In fairness, it wasn't explicitly made clear that it was my fault, but the responsibility for dealing with it was laid at my reluctant feet. After a brief, focused conversation it was agreed that perhaps it would be better for her to inform the local constabulary (so they could pop round 5 days later to dust for fingerprints) than for me to incur even more international call charges (on top of the ones I incurred for her ringing me) sat on hold to the local cop shop. Ironically, the only thing that was nicked was my Cannondale racer..

Googlemaps says 914 miles by bike which I assume is the intended method of travel..

It's just my fault......

The house alarm going off whilst we were both in France.

My fault for not stopping her giving the spare keys to a neighbour who was going to 'pop in and collect the post', even though she'd not mentioned it.

From an almost exact distance of 388 yards, when playing golf.

Blokes in front were on the green, tee was 378 yards to the pin...not a chance thought I. Cue the most perfect drive I've ever hit...long, landed on a downslope on the fairway which punched it forward some more..

The bloke missed his putt (for a birdie) as my ball rolled to the back of the green in between him and the hole, just as he was taking his putt

Whilst away on a training course it was my fault the TV remote got lost and several sky programme's didn't record.

Two of the kids got chicken pox while I was out of the country, the same day that washing machine flooded the kitchen and the kitchen roof started leaking during a thunderstorm.  To be fair, I think I might have wanted to share the 'blame' for some of that around in the same situation.

I got in trouble with the mother for not checking in to say I was OK after a helicopter sightseeing tour crashed in Quebec.

I was in whistler at the time (and she knew this)

I cant compete for distance. I did once cause the work biomass boiler in Hebden Bridge to develop an airlock and overheat while I was walking down Bridport main street. Managed to fix it in a couple of minutes though.

That reminds me. I once got a bollocking off an ex for not asking how she was after the IRA bombed an army recruiting office in Leicester. I thought she would be ok as 1. She wasn't in the Army, and 2. She was on a placement somewhere in Yorkshire. Middle name was Louise.

We used to hot-desk/desk share at an old employer. Rule was that you left nothing out on desk when not there.

I was called* while boarding a plane to be interrogated where a particular file was, and why I had not left it out.^^

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*by boarding, I mean tannoy at Stanstead to call passenger matt_outandabout to make himself known to an airport staff member asap. I only responded as mrs_oab was pregnant with eldest_oab at the time. Flight delayed by moi.

^^clearly it wasn't a bad thing, it was the right thing, but hey its a vaguely amusing story.

I also called mrs_OAB's work (pre mobile phones) to let her know to go to Liverpool Hospital as I had broken finger and was catching the bus into town to get it checked.

This was translated as 'mr_oab is heading to hospital with a life-changing and disfiguring injury, by ambulance' as the message.

Cue mrs_oab sprinting across city centre and bursting into A&E in panic....

I meanwhile was calmly sat on the no.23 about 5 miles away.

I horribly inconvenienced my wife one morning by failing to check that she knew where her car keys were before leaving the house with my own set.

Regrettably, by the time she called to inform me of my mistake, I was already underway on the last train which would feasibly get me to work on time (well, I say “work”, it’s not a responsible position with a statutorily defined remit – I really just sit at a wee plastic desk, colouring-in all day between naps. Certainly nowhere near as important as her job). She wasn’t best-pleased when I informed her that I’d have to get off the train and wait for another to take me home so that I could deliver the keys home.

Needless to say, she was more than a little frosty when I dropped the keys back at the house. Totally understandable.

The saddest aspect of the whole scenario is that, if I’d just done the one sane, obvious and caring thing that any proper husband would have done (checking the car glove compartment as I left the house), I’d have found her keys there where she safely left them, and could have returned them to the house.

I still feel thoroughly contrite to this day.

My now ex wife once didn’t speak to me for weeks over something I did in a dream she had. OK so physically I was next to her but what can you say when the offence was entirely imaginary and didn’t occur in the physical world.

Oh I get this semi-regular... although we're still (happily) married, I get the odd day of cold shoulder for things I've done in he dreams.

I've had 'The Hot Water isn't hot' at 4700 miles from my Wife.

Oh and "the Sky box is broken" on at 10,500 miles from my Mother, who had bought a new TV. 4 months from the last time I'd seen her, I was in Sydney at the time. This was my fault as 5 years previous to that when I last lived at home I'd bought Sky and they'd taken it over when I moved out. Actually as I recall it was "YOUR Sky box is broken"  10k miles and 5 years after the fact, it was my fault that they couldn't get Sky to appear on their new TV.

I managed to hide the garage keys in my (at the time) wife's pocket 5 years ago, according to facebook. I was only 10 miles away, which seems comparatively unimpressive.

More recently I believe I have been responsible for her boiler in her new place losing pressure whilst I was about 8 miles away on a muddy bike that she'd just told me I couldn't bring into her flat to see the kids (so I assumed I would also not be allowed to show her how to sort the boiler).

I'm sure I will continue to do long range bad things for eternity, regardless of where she and I end up.

Not distance away but the same sort of thing.  I once aligned a mates rear brake for him before setting off on a ride as it was rubbing.....  Two years later he blamed me because there was no life left on the pads and he was genuinely upset.  Any problems he's had since he gets a concerned "oh dear that's not good!". Allen keys stay safely tucked away.

Most memorable one isn't a huge distance but still my fault, apparently. 18 miles or thereabouts.

When i was 16 (25 years ago), i had the police and social services knocking at my parents house. A very irate woman had been in touch with them saying i hadn't paid any child maintenance (or whatever it was called back then) for 'our' child.

Never heard of the woman, or the kid. My parents had to produce my birth certificate and everything to prove who i was and my age. For the child to be mine, i would have been a dad at 9 years old.

My wife phoned me when I was ski touring in the Alps because the burglar alarm was going off. It was going off because she'd power it down and it thought it was being attacked. Unfortunately, I couldn't fix it over the phone as I didn't have the rest code on me and didn't offer to skin 2 hours up to the pass into the next valley with a road, hitch hike to a railway station, take the train to Geneva and fly home.

She eventually persuaded a builder to knock the alarm box off the wall with a hammer which seemed like a good fix to me.

I got an abolutely ridiculous bollocking from my otherwise sound bloke of a boss over the phone because he wasn't happy with the content of an opening arguement in a murder trial which had been prepared by a highly paid barrister (and which I had no input into whatsoever).

I was in Zimbabwe on another case entirely and he was in Manchester. It was quite a stressful time and we both went at it shouting obsecenities down the phone at each other. When I got back to the UK three weeks later, the trial was over, the offender convicted and it was as if the whole thing never happened.

Many years later at his retirement do I told him he'd been a tit. He completely denied that the conversation had ever taken place.