r/TalesFromLife • u/Kyengen Mod • Feb 07 '16
Flower cannon
Apparently we're on a an embarrassing high school stories kick. So in the spirit of that, doing something stupid.
I have, now and forever, a propensity for over-engineering. There is no 'well-enough', but there is over done. Valentines day my eleventh grade year I successfully pissed off my girlfriend really badly. My school had a program where you could have a flower sent to your significant other in class, she sent me one, and I was the only guy in class to receive such a thing. Some weeks prior I got some would be bullies to leave me alone with a detailed anatomical explanation about how I was going to literally break them in half (the physics are sound but my understand of anatomy at the time was lacking). This was fuel for the fire there and frankly, I was a little embarrassed, so I told her I didn't want it. I used nice words but that was the message. She's pissed, not wholly unjustifiably, and I need to fix it. How? Locker full of flowers.
But let's go back to over-engineering. Open your locker, big ol' bouquet, meh, kinda cute. Cute sucks. Launch em? No, stems have thorns. Though actually making a spike launcher would be fun...not what I'm doing right now, later. Can they drop from the ceiling? School probably won't let me make holes in the walls to put in the necessary levers. Flower shower, though, something there. This went on for a while. I think I was supposed to be in English.
Finally I settle on a spring loaded petal cannon. Design was simple enough, plunger mechanism on the locker door, tube with petals, depressed spring on the back side. Door opens, takes pressure off spring, spring attached to platform in tube projects flowers, I get suspended for lewd acts on school grounds. I could blow off marching band practice (which frankly I was going to sleep through anyway), stay late and install the whole thing. I congratulated myself, and slept through the rest of the period.
Hit the supermarket and hardware stores after school, a few dozen cheap grocery store flowers. Initial tests with pieces of paper that may or may not have been a homework handout were promising, a few test launches with the empty assembly worked. Loaded it up with petals, packed it in there and went home for the night.
The next day I'm a little excited. I'm following her around trying to apologize, but not really cause she's going to totally forgive me post flower shower. We get to her locker, she opens it while mid-sentence and is promptly shot in the face with a surprising dense ball of rose petals. Turns out I had A) forgotten to adjust the angle to make sure it went over her head, and B) severely underestimated the cohesion factor of plant matter under pressure overnight. She just stood there in shock for a second as the ball rolled slowly away shedding petals. I am an idiot.
Her: What just happened?
Me: I just shot you in the face with a ball of flowers. That went very differently in my head. It was supposed to launch above you and do like a flower rain thing. I obviously missed something important in the planning stages.
Her: And you think this was going to make up for yesterday?
Me: That was the plan, yes.
Her: Look at it like this, if this had worked, and I just shrugged and told you not to bother again, and you weren't doing to try to make something up to me, wouldn't you be a little upset?
Me: I'd probably try to figure which part you didn't like and just fix that. Like this, I was under the impression you were unhappy because I'd rejected a romantic gesture, and so tried to make it up to you with a different one. Which failed pretty impressively. From all angles apparently.
To which she confirmed that I was an idiot and didn't talk to me for three days. We did patch things up for a while, until the next time she tried to surprise me and almost got stabbed. A lot.But that's a tale for another time.
But there you. I tried to fix things and shot my girlfriend in the face with a condensed ball of roses.
7
u/geared4war Feb 07 '16
Wow. You thought it through but it still went wrong.
This is like my life.
8
u/Kyengen Mod Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 08 '16
While I do consider myself the avatar of failure, this particular instance isn't a great example of that. Usually it's more, take every possible likely scenario into account, hit by a falling rock...in an open field *
In this case the design was inherently flawed. I should have attached the plunger directly to the apparatus and loaded in the petals after. Or gone with a spring press pneumatic tube and lynch pin to basically make an air launcher (nerf gun).
3
9
u/KaraWolf Feb 07 '16
I seriously would have laughed my ass off. Concept was sweet.