I'm still a horrible dragracer so I guess this thread doesn't apply to me...but I remember my first time out racing.

I was driving my new Civic Si, and had just learned how to drive a stick shift a few months back. I launched around 4k RPM and got the most RIDICULOUS amounts of wheelhop. The front end was literally bouncing like one of those impalas on the west coast. I kept CD's in a cubby hole underneath my CD player and all of the CDs flew out and hit me while the car was hopping.

At the same time, while trying to swat the CD's out of my field of vision, I ended up hitting the blinkers on and off, and the wipers, all while trying to shift Needless to say I ground 2nd gear pretty bad and ended up running like an 18 second ET with a couple badly scuffed CD's.

My friends were all laughing seeing my car going down with it's wipers and blinkers on, and then making a very audible crunching sound. I've had some bad instances since then with gear grinding, but nothing as ugly or embarrassing.