Appearing foolish is embarrassing to most people, but especially at a place like Stanford. Yet, paradoxically, risking foolish behavior is at a minimum helpful, and perhaps necessary, to truly succeed in original research. This talk discusses two "fool home runs" of the speaker, where doing something that initially appeared foolish led to highly regarded results. It also draws on quals questions asked of him (in January 1967!), quals questions he asked during his 25 years on the faculty, as well as highly regarded research results of others where the investigators were willing to "bumble around" before striking gold.