A favorite Simpsons character is Sideshow Bob, a cerebral, spike-haired convict obsessed with killing Bart for sending him to prison. Sideshow has a recurring habit of stepping on rakes with the handles smacking him in the face. Once at a rake factory, he must have stepped on 20 in succession, muttering under his breath each time.

There’s nothing funnier than the moment someone does something painfully embarrassing, then tries to pretend it never happened. You know — the guy slipping and falling on the icy street, or the classic slipping on a banana peel, which doesn’t just happen in cartoons. As God is thankfully my only witness, I once slipped on the same banana peel on my kitchen floor three times before finally picking it up.

An early standout was in Pennsylvania when I first got my driver’s license and drove my sisters and mother to the shopping hub, Johnstown. I waited in boredom at a shoe store, but thankfully glanced over just in time to see Wanda lean into a display case to fetch a pair of shoes, and BAM! I’ll never forget that sick look on her face as she casually walked away from the still-rattling glass.

Scotty Pulse and I put together our “greatest hits,” immortalized into the “Bonehead Hall of Fame.” I submitted my romance-challenged, 6’5” friend Barney picking up a woman for a rare first date. Homer lived next door and just happened to be watching out the window as Barney walked to her front door with flowers in hand.

Homer related how he yelled to his girlfriend, “Hey come here; you gotta see this.” Barney had tucked his cleanest shirt into his “tightie-whitie” underwear, which were riding exceptionally high that evening.

Scotty nominated our friend Groundskeeper Willie for the “Lifetime Achiever Award.” A boxer and somewhat of a stud in high school, 30 years of beer drinking has dimmed that memory. Since several DWIs 10 years ago, he’s best known as “That little bald guy riding a bicycle in the snow with an 18-pack strapped to his back.”  

We used to drop him off at his dad’s place after a night out and watch him fall over the hedges — think old Dick Van Dyke Show intro — which he did 90 percent of the time.

Alcoholism is seldom a laughing matter, but if you knew this guy, you might reconsider. A few years ago, he often slept it off at his cousin’s new house and one morning Ned Flanders left for work early, so Groundskeeper Willie agreed to get up and take Ned’s kids the few blocks to their mother’s house.  

Problem is that Groundskeeper Willie continues drinking when he wakes up at night to use the restroom. So when the kids woke him, he was already fairly pickled. He hopped in his nice truck (since repossessed) and thinking he was in reverse, banged into Ned’s garage door.

The ex-wife reported him swerving and when two officers arrived back at Ned’s, they watched for 15 minutes as an oblivious Groundskeeper Willie tried to repair the garage door, going in and out for more beer periodically. When they approached and asked his name, Groundskeeper Willie replied after a long pause, “Um, it’s Ned Flanders.” The garage door still hung askew as the drunken identity thief was led off in handcuffs.

Another older friend of Budweiser who lives near me is best-known for showing up at any event that promises free food. But many of us most fondly remember Krusty the Clown from years ago when he sold cars (tried anyway) briefly at nearly every lot in town.

It was at one of Cody’s largest dealerships where he also mistook Drive for Reverse and drove a used car directly through the large showroom window.

I’m also no stranger to shameful displays. When I was 21, I accepted an invitation to after-work drinks from two cute, sister co-workers. Leaving the Pennsylvania factory, the girls were following me across town to Moe’s Tavern and pulled up next to me at a stoplight.

About to say something clever I had planned, I first needed to spit a large chaw of Copenhagen juice out my window. I forgot to roll the window down first. Wanda would have had the last laugh had she been there to see my face plastered in brown savory juices against the window of my ’66 Barracuda. I’m observant enough to notice they were giggling as they drove off, and the sister fantasies I had envisioned never even came close to fruition.

Yet, many insist I should be banned for life from the Bonehead Hall of Fame, simply because I sometimes wagered on whether Groundskeeper Willie would fall over his dad’s hedges or not. I’ve confessed, but swear I never bet on my own blunders.

(The names of the people in this column were changed to protect their identities.)