It's said that pipe smokers look smart. Something about pipes and their connection to such luminaries as Einstein, Tolkien, Hubble, and Sartre improves the image for the rest of us, though we aren't immune to occasional stupidities. Pipes themselves offer opportunities for impressive lapses in judgment. Many of us are familiar with some of the dumbest things we can do with pipes, and you may have found yourself experiencing one or more of the examples gathered here. I can't be the only one.

Autopilot-smoking accounts for many blunders. I smoke while writing — lighting up, putting the pipe down, wrestling with a word I don't like, relighting, putting it down, not thinking about the smoking process, just going about my day, and when there's a threat of gurgle, inserting a pipe cleaner and giving it some absorption time.

The problem is when I distractedly pick that pipe up for a relight and jam it in my mouth to discover the pipe cleaner, still in the stem, skewering the roof of my mouth, which makes me drop my still-lit Old Boy while spitting the pipe onto my desk to discharge ashes into my keyboard (don't worry, it's a company computer), then leaping up and barefoot-stomping the red-hot lighter before the carpet ignites, and leaving myself confused by a bizarre diversity of unanticipated owies.

It happens about every five years, which is evidently the memory-expiration window for pipe cleaner-pierced palates. Pipe cleaners are among the greatest of human inventions, but I don't recommend employing them orally.

Speaking of barefoot, have you ever been outside enjoying the grass in your toes and absent-mindedly knocked the smoldering ash from your pipe on the sole of your foot, expecting a shoe-leather barrier? Automatic behaviors are often the origins of dumbness.

Smoking outside poses other risks, particularly in winter with the wrong pipe. The cold can sometimes loosen a stem, and it's disappointing when a pipe in the teeth abruptly becomes a stem in the teeth and a bowl in the snow.

... the memory-expiration window for pipe cleaner-pierced palates

One of our opportunities to demonstrate that we are not Einstein clones occurs while driving, and I blame Richard Carlton Hacker, author of The Ultimate Pipe Book, who related his story of having trouble breaking-in a pipe and trying to accelerate the process with high-speed wind.

He warned that holding a pipe outside the window of a moving car destroyed his pipe. I'd never heard of this break-in strategy, and despite Rick's admonition, I tried it myself with a new pipe because I was obviously immune to the air-velocity physics of combustion that ambushed Rick. He put the idea in my head, so he owes me a pipe. I didn't previously understand the impressive temperatures generated or how near-instantaneously a bowl of tobacco and the briar surrounding it could be incinerated.

I blame Richard Carlton Hacker

That's an extreme example, but there are other dumb things we can do with our pipes while driving. For me, the most common is looking over my shoulder when changing lanes only to whack my pipe against the window and drop it into my lap, generating even more opportunity for dumbass scenarios, because once your lap is on fire, the universe's sense of humor is relentless.

Imagine, for example, screeching to a stop on the Interstate because your pants are smoldering toward some of your favorite anatomy, and leaping from the car while passersby call emergency services to report a distressed individual running down the median screaming and waving his arms with his groin on fire.

The solution, of course, if you insist on changing lanes, is to drive with the window open, but if a passenger tells an amusing story and you spontaneously laugh when turning your head, that pipe can tumble out the window to bounce once, twice, three times in your rearview and disintegrate under the tires of the angry state trooper in the fast lane, who, with no compassion for your lost pipe, issues you a $50 littering ticket.

... there are other dumb things we can do with our pipes while driving

"Littering? That wasn't litter; it was a vintage Stanwell Billiard."

"Whatever it was, it went out the window and under my car."

"But not deliberately. I was smoking that pipe when Dave here made me laugh."

"So it was actively burning. Maybe you'd prefer a charge of attempted arson on a law enforcement vehicle."

"Y'know, now that I think of it, littering sounds fair."

Mistakes don't always bring negative outcomes. I once started filling a bowl, was interrupted, and without realizing it, finished filling the bowl with a different tobacco. I was surprised when I reached the halfway mark of that smoke, but I liked the combination and continued smoking it for months. A good mistake.

But mainly, errors create inconvenience, like when you're in a staring contest with a llama and blow smoke at it. It's a mistake. The llama saliva now covering your face and fouling your tobacco attests to that fact, and don't be fooled — llama spit is not a desirable tobacco topping.

Even we pipe smokers are human, and mistakes come with the territory. We've all done it. I believe I read somewhere on the internet that Homo sapiens is Latin for "prone to nincompoopery." Perhaps you've experienced or seen examples. If you know of other stupid pipe stunts — or different permutations of those mentioned — please share them in the comments. We all need to be forewarned or reminded of these self-inflicted aggravations.

... errors create inconvenience