Breaking (accidentally, of course) some of your observing equipment ? I'm now going to set myself up for a curse by admitting that so far, I have not. I've come close (tripping on mount legs, dropping oculars on the grass, etc.) but so far the Gods of observing have been good to me. How about you? If you are willing to admit to a serious breakage, at least my sympathies are with you!

Mr Q 

 I took on a blind Border Collie (Star) a few years back and she knocked over the tripod with binoculars attached, it cost me three months and several hundred to repair. No good blaming Star, it was my fault for leaving the tripod out in the open.

I have been lucky up to this point! ::knocks on wood::

I have not yet dropped my Celestron refracting scope or any of the ocular pieces. I keep my telescope in the basement, and I'm usually nervous when I'm carrying it up the stairs. All it takes is one false step and I will be crying like a little school girl!!

Oh man yes!  I have been around for awhile so stuff happens in the dark.  When I was yet a lad I picked up a cheap refractor at a garage sale and thought it would be great to clean the objective lens with windex (ammonia D) and a paper towel.  As an adult many years later I was observing in the desert and dropped my 20mm Erfle occular in the dirt and small rocks. I found it by stepping on it.  At a star party some clod tripped over my tripod sending my 90mm Mak into the dirt.  It survived with a few scratches to the housing.  Overall though in some forty years of observing I have been lucky I think.

L

well, i broke my diagonal that came with my scope.  i've since repaired it to keep as a spare.  it was plastic.  other than that i haven't broken anything major. (more wood knocking here)

i'll tell you what i do more often than i would like to admit though:  after a patient time spent carefully polar aligning and getting everything just righti'll slew to my first targetlook at it for a minuteturn to go to my bag and get the cameraand trip on the tripod.

 My heart goes out to you with your mishaps. Some day something like that will happen to me, I'm sure. In a sick way, the damage posts seem a bit comical but that's what slapstick comedy is all about - funny as long as it happens to someone else! Hopefully, some more "damage" posts will come on and you won't feel as bad about your mishaps. Listen to me! HOPING to hear others' bad experiences? I didn't mean it THAT way, honest. Mr Q

I was trying to mount my FIRST scope (was actually my older brother's that I adopted...a 1977 Sears 50mm refractor) to my 6" Astroview for use as a guidescope. As I was mounting it I dropped it and knocked a collar out of the inside of it that I never was able to get back in there. After that the views were garbage.

I also deliberately took apart an 8x21 monocular to use as a focal reducer with some instructions I found on the web. It never worked. Everything was a smudgy piece of junk. Trashed 1 good monocular (at least it was a freebie from Marlboro for chain smoking... 

Well i have had some close calls, and droped an ep a few inches to concrete I was luckey though.(I am a klutz) Another time I droped an ep and managed to catch it but touched the optics a little. Ohh yeah and I learned that writing on wet paper with pen will bleed through and write on any paper below it. Even if it is your star atlis..

I would say I havent done to much damage for 7 months of owning a telescope

Accidents will happen, and I've had mine..  A few people here have already read about this one but I will tell you anyways.
I had got my Celestron C6R-GT all set up and ready to go on a day the sky was dry and clear. Something that is rare around here and I was ready to get some nice pictures. After I got the telescope placed on the mount I had noticed some gunk on one of the counter weights. How it got there I don't know. Assuring I had locked it down I removed the weight so I could clean it off.  I turned to the table that was only a few feet away and started cleaning the weight of real quick like. All of a sudden I heard a crunch, then turned to see the telescope had spun down and slammed into the tripod leg. I guess I didn't make sure it was locked tight enough.  I quickly went over to put it back up in the home position and checked everything on the telescope thoroughly. There was absolutely no damage to the telescope, whew!  However, it did jam the housing around the declination drive. It did damage the motor for the declination axis.  I can't describe the feelings and thoughts I was having at that time, but I can tell you they weren't the best.
I was able to repair the motor sufficiently enough to work with it as long as I took plenty of extra time performing drift test to ensure the polar alignment was dead on. That way I wouldn't have to make drift adjustments while manually guiding for images. The less I had to use that motor the better off I would be. 
Eventually I ended up buying a new motor anyways which cost about $165.00, if I remember correctly.  Nevertheless, I do consider myself very lucky. It could have done much more damage than that..  

Have A Nice __________ 

The diagonal & eyepiece falling out of the focuser during a slew . Luckily no damage . So now I make sure that the thumb screws are tight before slewing to the next object .