The upcoming passage, from Miguel De Cervantes' Don Quixote, struck me as an hilarious anecdote. If it's not both recognizable and shameful to you, you're either inhuman or haven't spent much time creating.
Let's join our gentleman, Don Quixote, shall we? He has recently gone insane. He's decided to become the kind of hero about whom he's been feverishly reading: a chivalric knight. There's one small problem; the helmet he's found has no visor.
His [Don Quixote] ingenuity, however, enabled him to remedy this, and he proceeded to fashion out of cardboard a kind of half-helmet, which when attached to the morion, gave the appearance of a whole one. True, when he went to see if it was strong enough to withstand a good slashing blow, he was somewhat disappointed; for when he drew his sword and gave it a couple of thrusts, he succeeded only in undoing a whole week's labour. The ease with which he had hewed it to bits disturbed him no little, and he decided to make it over. This time he placed a few strips of iron on the inside, and then, convinced that it was strong enough, refrained from putting it to any further test; instead, he adopted it then and there as the finest helmet ever made.