Ever nearly kill yourself as a kid? Tell me about it!

[Skald the Rhymer]

Bonus points if you escaped death at the hands of your own stupidity only to be faced with a furious parent.

When I was, oh, possibly nine, I saw some character on an action-adventure show--it might have been Wonder Woman--escape from a jail cell by sticking a fork into a power outlet, wrapping wire around it, and creating an electric arc that he used to cut a hole in the cell bars. (Why there was an open outlet in a cell was never explained.) I thought I'd try it. I had a power outlet in my bedroom, of course, and my parents had just put bars on the windows, and it had worked on TV, so it MUST have been safe, I thought...

Well, the outcome wasn't good for me. I only escaped a whipping because my father figured getting knocked out was by the shock was punishment enough.

Anybody else?

[JSexton]

8th grade gym class. Gymnastics week. We were supposed to climb up a wall that was maybe 5 feet tall, jump off, land on our feet on a mat, and do a somersault. I thought it'd be cool to do a mid-air flip like a ninja. (Hey, it was 1985. Ninjas were the height of cool.)

Turns out a chubby 8th grader can do exactly one half of a flip from that height. I landed on the back of my neck. I was briefly paralyzed from the swelling, but turned out to be fine. Although I still have neck stiffness to this day.

[silenus]

Somewhat along the same lines as the OP, only mine was accidental. Trying to unplug a vacuum cleaner when I was 8 or so, I managed to drop my fingers across both prongs of the plug while it was still connected. ZAPPP! Mom managed to knock the wires from my hands with a broom.

I'm leery of electrons to this day.

[Skald the Rhymer]

I'm leery of electrons to this day.

Um...you realize that the Web's pretty nothing but trained electrons, right? :dubious:

[silenus]

But they are trained electrons. It's the wild ones you have to watch out for. :D

[Earthworm Jim]

Picture a split-level house, with the front porch & front door about 6 feet off the ground. Picture ~15 year old Jim on a ladder on said porch paiting above the light, about another 6 - 8 feet off the porch for a total heigh of 14 feet or so.

A wasp does a fly-by. (No sting, mind you, just a quick 'buzz the tower' deal.) Of course, I did the only logical thing you can do when you're suspended precariously in the sky & a wasp flies by.

I jumped. Backwards. I simply let go of the ladder & pushed off for the wild blue yonder.

The miraculous part is that I managed to turn around 180-degrees in mid-air & land on the porch railing instead of plummeting to my death and/or several broken bones.

[Silence of the clams]

Suddenly I realise that most of my childhood escaping-near-death experiences have involved some form of skidding. One incident involves a flight of stairs, a cardboard box and some impulse to ride the same box down the stairs. Somehow I got down the stairs without the box cathing on one of the steps and flinging me headfirst down the rest of the stairs. Instead I continued in great speed down the hall to a dead stop with a chest of drawers. I guess I was too stunned from the impact to even notice my mother releasing fury over a cardboard box, a boy and an overturned chest of drawers.

Also, one winter, when rain and cold weather had turned the snow into a solid form we call "skare" (the snow is so hard you can walk on it), we raided on of the neighbours stack of materials. Here we found some pressed wallboard with a rough side and a smooth side. Perfect! This was a pretty big piece of board so it fitted four of us kids on it. Then we went to one of the hills merging into a long field going down towards the river. We figured this would be a long and nice ride with us slowing down in time before we would reach that far (and before we would have to walk too far back again). To cut a story of disasterous planning short, the board was too perfect, the snow was too hard, and we did not manage to decrease any speed. Instead we had to keep our limpbs well onboard and watch in horror as the river bank got closer, where we on the board would hit the river bank which by the snow had made a nice jump from which we were flung onto the river ice, crashing through it like rice paper. Luckily for us, it was shallow, and all we had to endure was getting up the steep river bank, the half hour walk back up the field and home to some explaining our wet and icy condition, and the fact that the neighbours wallboard was sticking out of the river like some ill performed piece of art.

I hope I never get kids...

[Millit the Frail]

I thought it'd be cool to do a mid-air flip like a ninja. (Hey, it was 1985. Ninjas were the height of cool.)

Ninjas are always the height of cool!

I stuck a metal nailclipper into a socket. Why do kids find putting metal into sockets so appealing? I swear, everyone seems to have a story about sticking something into a socket and getting zapped. Luckily, I don't even remember my "shocking" experience.

[kelly5078]

We had a swimming pool, and one spring we removed the cover to find that it was completely coated with algae. There was nothing to do but scrub it off by hand. When it got to the deep end, which was quite steep, I had to be on a rope. So I attached the rope to our garden tractor, which was about 10 feet from the pool, put it in gear (which I thought would keep it from moving), and lowered myself down. While scrubbing, I noticed I seemed to be getting lower, so I looked up and saw the tractor had rolled to the edge of the pool, 6 or 7 feet above me. Another couple of inches and it would have fallen on me. I still shudder when I think of that.

[Skald the Rhymer]

But they are trained electrons. It's the wild ones you have to watch out for. :D

Dude, electrons are like elepants. (Why, the first three letters of both words are even the same.) They may SEEM trained, but they're always just waiting for you to let your guard down so that they can attack.

[nivlac]

I still shudder to think how stupid I was once as a kid. One of my friends lived in public housing and I went for a visit. At about the 4th or 5th level of the housing project, we climbed onto the outside balcony and walked along the ledge! One small slip and no more future. :(

[Dung Beetle]

I hope I never get kids...
Don't worry, they're not contagious. ;)

[Burrido]

WHen I was 13 I tried to jump off a diving board through an inner tube. My face didn't make it through. It slammed into the side and wenched my head backwards. Blacked out slightly and sank to the bottom. Luckily I came to quickly and was able to swim back up. I was the only one in the pool at the time also. My buddy had gone in to eat or something.

[krisolov]

When I was in middle school i cut an electrical cord to a light in half with scissors. The electrical cord happened to be sitting in a pulddle of water, and I fortunately had plastic handles scissors. The flash blinded me and the shock knocked me on my ass. No lasting harm though.

Within a year of that, I fell off a bridge, head first, broke my wrist and did something to my chest that required exploratory surgery.

In the winters, we would climb to the top of some huge evergreens and jump out into the branches, falling to the ground, but slowed by the branches and snow. Most of the time at least.

Why yes, I did break a lot of bones as a child, why do you ask?

[Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party]

I made a "parachute" out of plastic bags and blue nylon washing line, like you take on holiday, and jumped out of a tree. The "parachute", surprisingly, didn't open or slow me down at all and I crashed straight into the ground. I don't know how I didn't hang myself with all those lines tied to my arms or break a bone on impact.

I also fell off a cliff when I was hiking with the Scouts in the Peak District.

[Shagnasty]

Don't worry, they're not contagious. ;)

Yes they are but mainly sexually transmitted.

[DiggitCamara]

I went to a friend's house when I was about 10 to make some kind of elaborate map. However, we soon got bored, so we went outside to build a nice fire and throw in some spray containers (you know, the ones that say "don't throw into the fire under risk of explosion"?).

Since the first one didn't blow up, we threw in the second one. And that one sprung a cool leak and my friend (1 or 2 years older than me and far more experienced in these matters) told us it wasn't going to blow up anymore. So, naturally, I approached the fire and stoked it a bit...

The worst part was that I was going to stay overnight at this friend's house, so his mother decided a.) she wouldn't take me to the hospital nor even to the doctor since it was just "superficial burns" and b.) she didn't notify my parents :eek: and c.) she didn't even drop me off at my parents' house but at another friend's house.

I'm lucky I don't even have scars from that incident.

[Skald the Rhymer]

The worst part was that I was going to stay overnight at this friend's house, so his mother decided a.) she wouldn't take me to the hospital nor even to the doctor since it was just "superficial burns" and b.) she didn't notify my parents :eek: and c.) she didn't even drop me off at my parents' house but at another friend's house.

So how'd your Mom kill her? Pistol, butcher knife, or bare hands?

[LVBoPeep]

When I was six, I was floating down the river on a little raft when it swept under a car embedded on the bank (why this was I don't know) My raft punctured and I was left clinging onto a car in a pretty fast current. My dad was further down the river and couldn't hear me- I got very tired and came close to letting go when a man stepped out of nowhere (and later disappeared into nowhere) and saw my plight and flagged down my dad.

The second time I was probably 8 or so, I was a pretty gullible kid and I let my friend and her cousin talk me into playing "Cowboys & Indians", complete with a hanging. My mother didn't know until she saw the rope burns :eek: and I got in big, big huge spanking trouble and had to swear I would never do anything so stupid again.

[kushiel]

When I was a toddler my dad was a bad, bad person and left the baby gate open. About 10 or 11 steps later, I had finally landed in the basement, howling my head off.

The funny part was I never knew of this until about a month ago when embarrassing story time came up. My dad had apparently called my godmother for help, and called my mom at work to meet us at the hospital. My mom couldn't remember this incident at all and was outraged at my dad's incompetence. He told her to call my godmother if she didn't believe him, but she never did.

[RogueRacer]

The ones that come immediately to mind are almost getting hit by a school bus, getting hit by a car while bicycle riding, and climbing up the face of a 500 foot bluff.

The school bus could have been bad. It had just registered that I needed to move (NOW!) and that the ice and snow under me was going to make that impossible. Then I was roughly jerked out of the way by an older kid. Years later the same kid chased me and a friend off his farm (we were riding dirt bikes) and I couldn't even be mad at him since he had once very likely saved my life.

Getting hit (side swiped really) by a car on my bike wasn't bad. I still don't know where the car came from though. I had looked for traffic. Really. It was on a highway. The car was probably doing about 40mph. I saw it at the last instant and swerved. Even with it just being a side swipe, I still tumbled down the road a good ways. It was ok though, this was back when I was racing BMX bikes. I knew how to fall. I barely had a scratch on me from it. I jumped back up and ran to my bike to check for damage. Then it registered that there was a hysterical woman at my side yelling about how she could have killed me. Somehow she got my name out of me before my friends and I left the scene. When I got home that evening I got yelled at. Apparently the cops were called. They in turn tracked down my parents to tell them I had been hit by a car. My parents had spent the afternoon calling hospitals while I enjoyed the afternoon riding around with my friends (after some hasty repairs). How inconsiderate of me?

Climbing the bluff was with the same group of friends. We were exploring a picnic area near the top and followed a trail around the side of the bluff. The trail slowly ended. We found ourselves on the front of the bluff about 50-75 feet from the top, clinging to the face. Going up seemed easier than back for some reason. We climbed. The people at the observation deck (behind the safety fence) sure looked at us funny when we came over the top. This was probably one of the dumber things I've done.

I've had a few more since officially being considered an adult, but those weren't asked for. :D

[Dung Beetle]

Dang. Rogue Racer had one of those fun childhoods. :)

[DiggitCamara]

So how'd your Mom kill her? Pistol, butcher knife, or bare hands?

Actually she should have used a grenade (to match the crime).

[Hampshire]

When I was probably around 12 years-old I was messing with starting a fire in our fireplace with some kidling and newspaper. One sheet of newspaper I rolled into a long narrow tube and lit the end. While it was burning nicely I thought "Hey, it looks like a big cigar, I should suck on the other end and see what happen!"
I sucked in a lungfull and immediately my lungs fell like they had been lit on fire. I must have hacked and coughed for an hour after unsucessfully afixiating myself.
Looking back it was probably a good experience since I never tried or had the urge to try cigarettes.

[MrFantsyPants]

I was about 7 years old when I started noticing how badly designed most of the things around me were. Take, for instance, bicycle brakes. Two wussy little rubber pads that squeeze the wheel. I could do much better than that.

My solution involved a length of meccano that would poke into the spokes when you pulled on a string. I rigged it up on the front wheels so I could see if it worked or not.

That was also the day I learned to fly, however briefly. Not that I remembered it. Or my name, for a while.

[nocturnal_tick]

8th grade gym class. Gymnastics week. We were supposed to climb up a wall that was maybe 5 feet tall, jump off, land on our feet on a mat, and do a somersault. I thought it'd be cool to do a mid-air flip like a ninja. (Hey, it was 1985. Ninjas were the height of cool.)

Turns out a chubby 8th grader can do exactly one half of a flip from that height. I landed on the back of my neck. I was briefly paralyzed from the swelling, but turned out to be fine. Although I still have neck stiffness to this day.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Only mine was in the park outside my friend house and I couldn't even do 180. Landed perfectly horizontally on my back. Onto concrete. My friend and his brother freaked out not because i could be paralysed but because their mum was gonna kill them. I turned out to be absolutely fine.

[drm]

When I was 2 or 3 years old I was being babysat by my aunt and I walked into our pool area and fell in. I obviously don't remember it but I'm told I nearly died. My parents had our pool filled in soon afterward. I never found out until I was 6 or so and found remnants of our pool in our front yard while digging.

The rest of them are just stupid things I have done that had the potential of death:

When I was 16 or 17 I jumped off of our 50 foot ariel onto our trampoline. I thought it would have shot me way up in the air but I didn't take into account the fact that I was about 185lbs. I hit the trampoline then the ground as if the trampoline wasn't even there.

I've stuck a fork into an electrical socket to try and pry out a plug - twice. I was shocked - twice.

I'm sure I could come up with a few dozen things like that. Nothing all that interesting though.

[pinkfreud]

When I was 10 years old, I went riding bareback. I wasn't a very good rider, and I had never ridden this horse before, but I was confident that a bareback ride would be OK, since I'd seen Annie Oakley do it on TV. The horse went into a panicky gallop for no obvious reason, then sunfished and threw me off. I landed headfirst on a jagged rock, and lost a lot of blood during the 30-mile drive to the nearest medical facility. I ended up with 55 stitches in my scalp, which made me the envy of all my friends.

I have never ridden a horse since. I don't feel fearful of horses; I rather like them. But I just really don't want to climb up on one again.

[Jimmy Chitwood]

My cousin and I stole his dad's pickup truck and drove it about 200 yards down a hill, straight into a tree. He was five; I was four.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

I climbed to the top of a set of monkey bars and with typical childhood bravado (which stemmed from the fact that I was the only one who could make it to the top) I stood up in triumph.

Oops.

As I fell I smashed my face into the bars and my chin got hooked under one of them. When I caught myself my head was all the way back and the only thing keeping my neck from breaking was my grip, which I wouldn't let go of even when the adults came over to help me.

[Mangosteen]

Crossed railroad tracks everyday to get to the beach. The crossing was just a dirt path that led to the coast. There was no road crossing for over a mile in either direction. You just had to stop at the tracks and lift your bike over them. When going to the beach you were going down a slight incline. There were many tall bushes around the crossing and the tracks curved as they approached.

One day I was coasting down the path toward the tracks and just happened to hit the wooden railroad tie. The instant my bike tire hit the tie, a train rushed by. If I hadn't hit the tie and the tire had gone all the way to the rail, I'd have been history for sure. Even after hitting the tie, I had to pull back as hard and as fast as I could. Because of the lack of nearby road crossings, the train never blew its whistle. I never heard it coming.

The poor engineer must have seen the whole thing.

[Laughing Lagomorph]

I was not much of a thrill seeker as a kid, indeed I am not as an adult either. I have one particular episode though that can still make me shudder, when I think about how close I came to dying or being seriously injured, and it would have been completely preventable with just the tiniest bit of common sense on my part.

I was riding my bike down our street as I often did back then, I must have been 10-12 years old. Our street was a steepish hill, and the houses weren't real close together so the driveways were a couple hundred feet apart.

I started at the top of the hill and got going down the hill at a decent clip, about as fast as cars drove down it. When we got to our driveway on the left side of the road I decided not to slow down and gradually turn in but just to do to do a quick sharp turn and let my momentum from going down the hill carry me up our driveway.

The world exploded in a screech of brakes and car tires skidding on the dry pavement. Unbeknownst to me a car had pulled up behind me and was just about to pass me on the left when I, with no warning or looking, turned into its path.

My sister happened to witness the whole incident and told me later the driver sat for several minutes with his head in his hands before driving on.

The punch line is the driver of the car was our pediatrician who lived up our street and was a friend of the family.

I came within a few feet of being killed or injured by my own doctor.

[Glassy]

This is a great thread. I love everybody's stories.

One winter when I was about 12 I was walking to a friend's house, and decided to take a shortcut across an apparently-frozen pond. This was really stupid: the ice was rotten and I went right in over my head. If you've ever seen anyone do this on tv, you know that as you try to get up on the ice, it breaks and in you go again. Fortunately it was a small pond and I floundered into the edge. Shivering with cold I made it to my friend's house, where, with the unthinking complicity of pre-teen girls, we put my clothes in the drier and never never never told my mom.

My other story is not quite as immediately life-threatening, but just as idiotic. When I was about seven another friend of mine decided to try hitchhiking. I don't know where we were planning on going; I guess we had watched The Incredible Hulk or something and were seduced by the idea of a life on the road. So there we were out on the shoulder of the highway with our thumbs sticking out. When my dad drives by.

Oh my God were we in trouble.

[minor7flat5]

We had a swimming pool, and one spring we removed the cover to find that it was completely coated with algae. There was nothing to do but scrub it off by hand. When it got to the deep end, which was quite steep, I had to be on a rope. So I attached the rope to our garden tractor, which was about 10 feet from the pool, put it in gear (which I thought would keep it from moving), and lowered myself down. While scrubbing, I noticed I seemed to be getting lower, so I looked up and saw the tractor had rolled to the edge of the pool, 6 or 7 feet above me. Another couple of inches and it would have fallen on me. I still shudder when I think of that.Usually I don't get to broken up about the news -- bad stuff happens and the world sucks. But, about a month ago I saw a story on the front page that really stuck with me: an 18 year old girl in central Jersey was cutting the grass with a lawn tractor when she drove one of the wheels over the edge of some kind of landscaping embankment. The machine flipped over and crushed her. Maybe it sucked more because they showed her graduation photo, but just thinking about such a senseless accident taking such a young life hurts.

[Ducktail]

So I was maybe seven or eight (nine?) and I'd been taking horseback riding lessons for several years. On this particular lesson, I was given a notoriously skittish horse, the name of which has since been lost to me...although 'Brown Sugar' seems like that might have been it...

So I had been warming up riding around the corrall with 10-12 other horses and riders. Suddenly, this other horse comes up and nips mine right on the ass...Brown Sugar bucked once, and I stayed on. Then she bucked again...and I went flying. Thinking back, I must have made a smooth arc around eight feet in the air before I came down squarely on my ass a good ten feet away from the horse...and directly on my right hand.

Surprisingly, I suffered only minor injuries, like not being able to move my fingers for a week because they had swollen to the size of dowel rods and my entire butt being a brilliant shade of purple. Amazingly, my parents never found out about this (I wore gloves for that week); my riding lessons would have been stopped for sure.

Still, I shudder to think what would have happened had I landed on a less padded part of my anatomy, or if I had been stepped on by one of the horses...

[Stainz]

Funny, I just posted a thread in GQ wondering if the bonehead move I ALMOST pulled as a 16-year-old would've killed me.

I was "dipping the tanks" at the gas station where I worked part-time. I found the stick hard to read in the dark, so I briefly thought of pulling out my lighter and flicking it on so I could see better. :smack: Then some innate sense of self-preservation came to life and made me hesitate, thank Og.

[TPRg]

I was about 11 or so. I didn't get out too much as a kid, so when I made a new friend who loved bike riding and wanted me to come along, I couldn't resist, despite my parents forbidding me to go out bike riding alone with him. We went out to the river bed (apparently a favorite spot for bikers to train). Happily speeding into the sunset, I glanced up and noticed I was now playing chicken with a massive adult going twice as fast as me.

I lost.

I spun backwards, my head slammed straight into the asphault, it was the nastiest impact I felt in my entire life. My entire body tingled. I didn't lose consciousness, the bikers (it was a group of them) helped me off the ground and warned me not to go to sleep (Brilliant). Panicky about my new brain injury and what I would tell my parents, I didn't think much of the biker who knocked me down. I don't know how name, but I'm going to name him now. Chicklet. Fuck you, Chicklet, you dumbass addidas-wearing hit and run asshole. I'm fine now, but every now and then I flinch when I think what would have happened to me had there been a sharp rock at ground zero instead of asphault. I learned a great lesson though: Some people are prone to zits, some are prone to obesity, and others are prone to attracting really hot mates. I'm prone to accidents, so stay as safe as possible. Remembering that has saved my life more than once. :D

[TPRg]

asphalt . :smack: I'm going to chalk that up to surviving a head trauma.

[boytyperanma]

When I was 4 or 5 my older brother and I were playing with matches and lit the forest next to our house on fire. The fire department was notified by a neighbor. ended up burning a 30 by 50 foot area. I don't think it was a near death experiance until the firemen left and my parents resumed the lecture.

When I was 10 I spent a good amount of time at the public pool. I used the diving boards quite alot. Once doing an inward dive, you dive off backwards and flip foward, I didn't spring out enough and came back head first onto the board. I lost consience and continued into the water. A observer pulled me to the side the lifegaurds had to be informed they had an unconcious kid over there. I came to. I didn't manage to cut my head bad enough to need stitches. They held presure on my head till it stopped bleeding and sent me on my way. I rode my bike home my parents where never informed.

Around twelve my and my freinds found a box of shotgun shells in my grandparents stuff. Not having a a gun to use them in we decided the road flares we had could set them off. Our process was to aim the shell put the flame from the flare onto the shell and run and hide behind a dirt mound. We learned they didn't fire to well like that. They tended to blow the back end off. So logicaly we just turned them around to aim them. No one sustained any perminant damage so all was good. Parents never found out.

13 or 14 working with my father I was in a basement cleaing up water. Outside they where digging with a backhoe to the foundation find a water line. Inside I saw the copper line pull outwards a bit so started going up the stairs to let them know. as I stepped up the pool of water i'd been cleaning exploded into a hail of sparks.

At seventeen I was driving. I ended up in a head on collision. Small fracture in my skull, pulverized a good chunk of my left femure. a couple brused ribs and a lacerations above my left eye and on my chin. The expectation was I wouldn't survive due to trama and blood loss. After a life flight and a couple weeks I was out of the hospital. then it was about a year of recovery. A few trips to the plastic surgion later the facial scars are barely visable. My left leg remains an inch and a half shorter.

[madhatter56]

Of course, it isn't as interesting as any other person getting hit by a car while on a bicycle, but in 6th grade I was crossing at the intersection of two highways at our towns stoplight (read:county's only stoplight...wow, I lived out there a bit...damn ohio) and a truck struck my bicycle and me and we fell down. He got out and talked to me - asked if I was ok, such and such - then, he drove off - damn guy, I wouldn't have called the police or anything, I didn't even know I was supposed to, but I rode my bike all the way home (a whole 4 blocks...it's a long way when you're a kid) and limped inside...I went and hid just so no one knew I was hurt, but my parents got very angry because I did not ever plan on telling them when they found out. The bad part...three years later, I had some knee problems (the same one I got hit in) during a track meet. I guess I'll never know if it was from the wreck or from countless other idiotic things I had done, but listen here, mister-red-truck-guy! if I ever knew who you were, well, I'd be angry! or not...but yeah...hah

[RogueRacer]

Dang. Rogue Racer had one of those fun childhoods. :)Ever have one of those lives? It didn't end with childhood.

Still, reading through these makes me feel lucky. I never received more than a few scratches. In some of these stories the people got seriously hurt. Heck, they could have died!

[Bryan Ekers]

elepants

So that's how he got into my pajamas.


I once tried playing "light-saber" with a fluorescent tube. Much bleeding ensued.

[delphica]

Ah childhood, what a magical time filled with near-death experiences. The closest I ever came to being in the running for a Darwin Award was when my cousins and I were monkeying around in the pool with stuff that floats. We realized that one of those heavy plastic Playskool-type wagons is hollow, and will float. In reality, it floats for a while, because it is not water-tight and eventually it fills with water and sinks. The strap on my bathing suit got tangled up with some part of the wagon, and I went down with it. I still remember that moment of clarity when I realized that (a) I was stuck to the wagon and (b) it was heavier than I would have guessed. Somehow I managed to wait until the wagon settled on the bottom of the pool, and then I kicked away from it as hard as I could with both feet against the bottom and fortunately I became unstuck. The plastic thing scraped a gash across my shoulders, and for the rest of the summer it looked like I had been literally whipped.

As these things are wont to go, when I came up, I advised the other kids that we probably shouldn't play with the wagon in the pool, and it was only when we were dragging it out of the pool that the parents saw what we were doing. Spankings all around.

[seoulsoul]

When I was 9, I gave a present to my parents for their anniversary. I believed that electricity made things "shake". So I put a stick inside a styrofoam cup, wrapped it with a piece of wire, and poked a hole in the side of the cup from which the wire protruded. I wrapped the other end of the wire around a penny, thinking it was a similar size to a standard plug. I thought it would make a good mixer :smack:

[J. Z. Knuckles]

I was seven years old, enjoying a caravan vacation on the picturesque Isle of Sheppey ('http://www.sheppeyscum.com/') with my mother, her somewhat unstable boyfriend (who I was terrified of, for good reason) and his two sons (who I was merely scared of, but for equally good reason). One evening, desperate for some kind of entertainment, the adults loaded us into their van and drove us to a nearby pub. When we arrived, I, in a burst of youthful enthusiasm, started running directly towards the pub entrance rather than following the path around; unfortunately in the twilight I had not noticed that the grounds were surrounded by a shabby fence, which consisted of a length of wire strung between fenceposts at the same height as my neck. This wire had evidently snapped in the past and then been tied together again, leaving two sharp rusty prongs very much like barbed wire. This was precisely the section of the fence I ran into.

I remember bouncing back and hitting my head on the floor and this being more painful than the laceration across my neck, from which large quantities of blood was spilling onto my T-shirt. I remember crying "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" to my mother's boyfriend: I was much more scared of how he'd react to me spoiling his evening than I was of my injury. And I remember an excessively long wait for the ambulance, apparently because the Kingsferry Bridge was up, so I was able to enjoy the interesting experience for a good 40 minutes before the ambulance crew arrived.

I had avoided slicing open anything important, but my neck was a ragged mess requiring skin grafts, several weeks in hospital and, a few years later, plastic surgery. My mother managed to sue the pub owners for about £13,000. The money was put in trust for me until I was 18; I'd spent it all before I was 20, I have no idea how. I still have an impressive scar and used to try to convince people that I'd had my throat slashed escaping from a serial killer.

I have never returned to Sheppey since this incident; I am quite certain the isle is waiting for a chance to finish its grisly task.

[OtakuLoki]

I have never returned to Sheppey since this incident; I am quite certain the isle is waiting for a chance to finish its grisly task.


Well, if something happens to obliterate the Isle of Sheppey in the future, we know who to blame. ;)

[Jennshark]

I was always gashing, slicing, and bruising myself. I was, however, a very stoic kid and rarely told my parents. Two episodes that stand out:

One of Grandma's lodgers left a bike behind that I inherited. It was jet-black and seemed to be made of iron or some other unbike-like material. It was very sturdy, but not an ideal bike to take over sweet jumps, like the one my neighbor set up for us to fly over the ditch. I did manage to fly over the ditch, but my bike tire came off mid-air and the front wheel forks planted themselves about 3' into the ground. Magnificent flippage and then bruising ensued.

The other event occurred when I was 12. We were at the annual family reunion in Canyonlands (Utah) and I took off for my usual day-long hike. Several hours into the hike it began raining and I put my head down and ran for cover. I ran blindly for about 50 yards and then noticed that I had run out onto a 3'-wide natural stone arch that spanned a terrifyingly deep canyon :eek:

[M. Meursault]

When I was in third grade, I apparently tried to jump over a bench. I say apparently because I have no recollection of this event, as my foot caught on the side of the bench like a hook and caused me to slam my face into the ground. I had a concussion and the right side of my face was pulverized. No scars, which is good. The last thing I remembered was the recess bell and the next thing after that I was in the nurse's station in very bloody clothes.

When I was 16, I stepped out of an idling car to get a cigarette from a passing friend. My foot became wedged between the tire and the road (I was in the back seat). A "pressure explosion" (the doctor's terms) created an Oreo sized hole in the side of my left heel. I was on crutches and Vicodin for week.

Also in third grade, we were playing dodgeball and I tripped, knocking off about 2/3 of my right bicuspid. That required a root canal and a crown.

In high school, I got into a "pencil fight" with a friend. We were laughing & joking, wielding pencils like knives. I still have two small pencil ends embedded in my left forearm. No amount of prying with tweezers and needles could coax those bad boys out.

...Fun times.

[Poysyn]

My husband as a pre-teen was walking across an old, abandoned railway bridge that spans the Red River in his end of town. Halfway across he had a sneezing fit, got disoriented and fell off.

He landed in a "deeper" part of the river (luckily) and got away with not even a scratch.

This same idiot also used to jump from pick-up truck bed to pick-up truck bed on a local highway.

Ahhh boys.

[MaddyStrut]

I have a few:

* Plugged in some Christmas tree lights while mom was doing something with the fuse box and had told us not to touch anything. A blue flame shot out of the socket singing off my eyebrows a lot of my hair and burning my hand. Mom came upstairs after hearing screams only to be hit with the aroma of charred child. I told her my brother did it. She checked him out, but realized I had to be lying--I was standing in the bathroom running my hand under water while smoke was coming off me. I got in a lot of trouble for that one. I was 5 or 6 at the time. My eyebrows have never fully grown back.

* At age 7, I tried to climb up to my room on a garden trellis (as I'd seen in the movies). I was a small child, but this trellis must have been very weak or rotting. It broke when I was half way up. I told mom my brother broke it, but I was limping from a sprained ankle and had several cuts and bruises. That kind of gave me away.

* Hung a bag filled with my wet swimming suit and towels from the handle of my bike. This was back when no one wore bike helmets or pads. As expected, the bag got wrapped in the spokes of my bike wheel and I was launched several yards only to land on the sidewalk. I was 8 or 9 at the time and still have slight scars on my shoulder and over my left eye (a scar that would be covered by my eyebrow had I not had the injury mentioned in my first bullet).

* Decided, at age 8 or 9, that there was no reason kids shouldn't be allowed to drive cars. So I got the keys and started up my parents Dodge Dart. I have no idea how I got the car started or managed to drive it as far as I did (since I probably couldn't reach the pedals), but drive I did--until I crashed it into the ditch at the end of our driveway. Once again, I tried to tell mom my brother did it, but she was wise to me then.

[koeeoaddi]

When I was 10 years old, I went riding bareback. I wasn't a very good rider, and I had never ridden this horse before, but I was confident that a bareback ride would be OK, since I'd seen Annie Oakley do it on TV. The horse went into a panicky gallop for no obvious reason, then sunfished and threw me off. I landed headfirst on a jagged rock, and lost a lot of blood during the 30-mile drive to the nearest medical facility. I ended up with 55 stitches in my scalp, which made me the envy of all my friends.

I have never ridden a horse since. I don't feel fearful of horses; I rather like them. But I just really don't want to climb up on one again.
Man, that's almost exactly my story, right down to my age, Annie Oakley, the rock and the long drive from the toolies to medical attention. I missed out on the cool stitches, though. Instead, I got a bitchin' fractured skull and concussion.

Reason for the panicky gallop? Bus horn blast.

[Cardinal]

It probably didn't almost actually kill me, but:

My dad and I were throwing a tennis ball back and forth to play with the neighbor's full grown black Lab, which was attached via its leash to a clothesline that ran between two trees.

The dog hadn't been able to get the ball in a while, so when I dropped the ball, the dog made a dash for it, and between the dog's lack of understanding of physics, and my bending over, the chain wrapped about 3/4 around my neck and flipped me over.

My dad still somewhere has super8 movies of the mark on my neck at age 7. I'd like to see those again.

[TVeblen]

Not near-death, but some pretty good injuries, all in the name of youthful optimism and naivete.

I was about six. My parents only allowed us a half-hour of television per night but somehow my friends and I had all caught the same cheesey Tarzan movie. Or maybe they were different Tarzan movies. Who could tell? The main thing that stuck with us was the absolute coolness of yodeling our infant lungs out while--this was the killing neat part--nonchalantly zooming through the air from vine to vine. Yelling while flying. What more could life offer?

It was a much more innocent time, and we were blessed with acres of fields and hilly woods around our little island of suburban houses. And we gleefully roamed them at will. There was this really, really spooky old derelict farm house that was haunted, with real bats and everything, when they gave you a gazillion shots right in your stomach for rabies...but that's another story, and a quite different trip to hospital emergency.

Anyway, in our explorations we found a really deep, steep gully. It had a little stream at the bottom (rich in tadpoles and crawdads) then loomed up in rough layers of shale to a canopy of leaning big ol' trees...with vines trailing from them.

It was perfect.

So...thus invited, I grabbed a vine, backed up--way up--then took off at a dead run run, while of course yowling the scales like a pipe organ played by a drunk. Nailed the lip of the gully in perfect launch and flew perfectly...for about two seconds, when the dead, brittle vine snapped. Who knew those Hollywood wimps used ropes, and that southern Ohio didn't run to flexible vines?

I kept flying but my trajectory suddenly sucked. Instead of landing insouciantly on the other side, I slammed right into rock wall of the gully and slid. Fortunately I landed about a third of the way down so I only rasped against rock, twigs, icky stuff and more rock for about ten feet or so. Landed flat in the creek, scared the and just bled for a while. The disappointed outrage hurt more than all the cuts, bruises and scrapes. My gallant cohorts helped me scramble out of the gully but we only made it a little way before we all got spooked over how badly I was bleeding.

Sandy and Tom, partners in adventure, volunteered to run home and ask my parents for help. (That was true heroism.) My dad--bless his memory-- hiked to where I was huddled, calmly picked me up and carried me all the way back home, all without a word of reproach to any of us. Thus followed another trip to hospital emergency to be stitched up. We were on a first-name basis by then. In this day and age my parents would suspected of child abuse.

In terms of actual danger, this doesn't even rate compared to the time my sister tied a bathroom towel around her neck and dived face-first over the basement stairs, emulating Superman. She landed head-first on the concrete floor and was unconscious for hours. I don't know how parents survive kids.

[DMark]

Learned to swim at about age 4 and you couldn't keep me out of the water after that. Once, on vacation with my parents at a motel with a pool, and about 9 years old, I got up early and went for a swim. I was the only person at the pool. Had a great idea! Climb down the ladder on the deep end, lay flat on my back at the bottom of the pool and hold my breath. To keep me flat so I wouldn't float back up, I would simply stick my legs under the ladder, against the pool wall. Worked like a charm...flat on my back at the bottom of the deep end, legs stuck under the ladder and looking up. OK...time for air...hmm...legs are stuck...yep...legs are really stuck behind the ladder...getting dark...need air...

To be honest, I don't remember how my legs became unstuck as all I really remember is holding the side of the ladder, gasping for air and waiting about ten minutes until I had the strength to climb the ladder and get out of the pool. Didn't swim the rest of the week we were there, much to my parents' amazement (never told them my little story.)

And to prove kids never learn:

About two years later, decided to make my first jump off the high dive at the local pond. The dive was about three stories high. Inhaled, held my breath and then jumped...might have been wiser to inhale on the way down, as by the time my feet entered the water, I was pretty close to being out of breath. Needless to say, was frantically trying to swim upwards for air as my body was still sinking downwards in the water.

[Askia]

When I was six years old and a latchkey kid home alone, I watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon... yadda, yadda, yadda... that's how I learned Hefty Bags don't make good parachutes.

[OtakuLoki]

People claim that all dogs are alike. I disagree. There's a generic similarity, but they have vastly different personalities and traits. Some dogs wouldn't hurt a human for any reason. Others are touchier than cats.

And some are just plain obsessed over something.

When I was a toddler we'd had two dogs. Sheba and Jay. Sheba was my father's dog, and a rather laid back bitch. Except about one thing: her son, Jay. (While they'd lived in Pennsylvania she'd gotten fed up with her pup still being around, and so took him up on the mountain behind the house they were living in at the time, and left him there. She was rather upset when he managed to find his way home some hours later.) Jay, however, had only one love in life: food. As a young pup he'd been regularly deprived of the food from his bowl by a neighbor's cat. This went on until Jay realized that as a mostly grown German Shepherd Dog/Husky mix he outmassed the cat by a signifigant margin.

My parents managed to train him to be relatively civilized about food that wasn't in his bowl, but once food went into his bowl - it was his, and Og help the dog, cat, person, or angel that tried to take it from him.

So, what does this have to do with risk to life and limb to me?

Well, as a toddler I tried one day, after looking at the opportunities for supper, to get something better for supper. My parents had little sympathy for my pleas that what they were eating was unsuitable, and that I wanted (I think) a PB&J sandwich instead. So they told me that if I didn't eat what was offered, I was going to go without. Then they told me that they were going to give my dinner to the dog. I said, please do - he's stupid enough to drink out of the toilet, so why should he object to this crap you're trying to feed me?

For some reason, there was little sympathy for my pleas, no matter how insistent I was about them. I can't imagine what might have prejudiced my case.

Well, they cleared the table, and put my portion into the dog's bowl, and gave it to him.

And I thought about it. And realized I was hungry, and if they really weren't going to give me anything else... maybe, just maybe it wasn't as bad as I'd been saying it would be. So I went to discuss the situation with Jay. Perhaps he would see reason.

I was not, perhaps, using my intellect to actually consider all the ramifications of this decision.

I have to take my parents' word for what happened. I used to have vague memories of this incident, but they've faded, and I can't recall what happened, vice what I've been told happened.

As my parents tell the story, the first they knew of my decision to reclaim my supper was when they heard the argument coming from the back porch, where the dogs' bowls were kept. It began with my toddler's reasoning about why Jay should relinquish his claim to the food in his bowl, by right of my prior ownership: "Mine!" Jay responded with a rather pointed commentary about possession being nine-tenths of the law, and if something was in his bowl, he had possession of it: "Grrrrrrrrr." The learned debate did not rise to a more elevated level after that.

By the time my parents managed to stop laughing enough to move, they'd heard several iterations of our respective arguments and were justifiably worried that Jay would take our disagreement to the uncouth level of physical confrontation, since he couldn't make me budge on my the merits of his own argument. It didn't help that, by this time, we were each pulling the bowl to ourselves as we repeated our learned debate.

"Mine!" Sound of bowl being dragged half a foot towards me.

"Grrrrr!" Sound of bowl being dragged half a foot back towards Jay.

"MINE!" After all, if one's argument isn't sufficient on its own merits, perhaps an increase in volume will do the trick. Sound of bowl being moved back to it's proper position.

"GRRRRRRR!" Jay, too, knew the winning power of volume when added to an already irrefutable argument. Sound of bowl being moved back to his own proper position.

"MINE!"

"GRRRRRRRRRR!"

Finally they got up, and seperated us. And confirmed Jay's possession of my meal.

And then gave me that PB&J sandwich.

It wasn't til I was much older that I'd realized just what a risk I'd taken that day.

[Moirai]

I told her my brother did it. She checked him out, but realized I had to be lying--I was standing in the bathroom running my hand under water while smoke was coming off me...

... I told mom my brother broke it, but I was limping from a sprained ankle and had several cuts and bruises. That kind of gave me away...

... Once again, I tried to tell mom my brother did it, but she was wise to me then.

That is SO kid- years before Eddie Murphy said "It wasn't me, baby," we had ALL used the brother/cousin/best friend line!

When I was 9 or 10, my cousin (one year older) lived close to a very steep hill in San Clemente- we called it Beach Hill because it led down to the beach, duh. One of the older bikes in my cousin's garage had no chain, and it was fun to ride it around the driveway, pedalling crazily and going nowhere.

Someone got the bright idea to ride this bike down Beach Hill, not realizing that no chain = no brakes. Being the people pleaser I was, and desperate to show I was brave and cool, I volunteered.

So I take off and pick up speed very quickly. My cousin and younger brother are flying down after me, sitting on skateboards (at that point I think they realized it was going to end badly).

As I am passing driveways and plantings, I realize that I am going incredibly fast, and that if I fall, I'm dead (a neighbor who saw me fly by estimated that I was going at least 30 mph when I passed her driveway) About this time, the bike picks up a wicked shimmy. I decide I will have to bail and hope to hit some soft plants off to my right, but I look over and see iceplant. Forget it, too pointy, I think.

At the bottom of the hill, there is a long cul-de-sac going both ways. I decide I should just ride around and around and around until I slow down enough to jump off. Great plan, except that when I get to the bottom I find I can't turn the bike.

I slam straight into a curb at the edge of a vacant lot, hitting my head, right elbow and left knee (I have no idea in what order). A neighbor calls my uncle, who runs down the hill. I am bleeding profusely, already in shock, and hysterical. I make him carry me back up the hill because I'm scared of driving in a stranger's car! :D

Endgame- Aunt & uncle can't find a medical release (my parents were gone for the day) so the hospital doesn't want to treat me, and apparently my cousin scored the beating of a lifetime, as my uncle assumed correctly that he put me up to it.

Final tally of injuries- concussion, a permanent lump on the right side of my forehead near the hairline (hair has grown in white there ever since) & permanent ugly scar shaped like the state of Texas on my left knee. And family ridicule forever, of course!

[Skald the Rhymer]

Learned to swim at about age 4 and you couldn't keep me out of the water after that.


Which reminds me of my little sister's first experience at the pool, at age four:

Skald's Sister (at poolside): I can swim.
Skald & his siblings: No you can't. (ignoring her)
Skald's sister: I can swim! (inching closer to the pool)
Skald & his siblings: No you can't.
Skald's sister: Yes, I can swim! Watch!
SPLASH!
Skald's oldest brother: Holy crap! (Immediate dive into the water to rescue drowning sister.

[Mama Zappa]

When I was a toddler my dad was a bad, bad person and left the baby gate open. About 10 or 11 steps later, I had finally landed in the basement, howling my head off.

The funny part was I never knew of this until about a month ago when embarrassing story time came up. My dad had apparently called my godmother for help, and called my mom at work to meet us at the hospital. My mom couldn't remember this incident at all and was outraged at my dad's incompetence. He told her to call my godmother if she didn't believe him, but she never did.
Hmmmm ... dads don't always tell moms, so I wonder if he really called mom at work?

When I was 4, I wandered away from my father while at church - I got curious as to the whereabouts of one of my brothers. "At communion" made no sense to me, perhaps that meant he had gone back to the car? When I discovered he was not at the car, I headed back to church. This entailed crossing a busy street in front of the church - somehow I'd survived the first leg of that journey, but I wasn't so lucky on the return. The car that hit me just bumped me, no damage done. Dad evidently didn't mention this to Mom, as I discovered 15 years later when I referenced the incident in a chat with Mom. Who promptly tore Dad a new one!

Couple of years after that incident, age 6, I thought it would be interesting to put a safety pin into an electrical outlet. Fortunately, my only injuries were slightly burnt fingers. It was a couple of years before I'd go near an electrical cord after that though.

[Tomcat]

I really shouldn't be alive right now, y'know?

One of my earliest memories: Fucking with a water mocassin (Cottonmouth snake) while on a canoe trip in Louisiana. Snakes must like peanut butter and crackers as much as I do, right?

Launched myself off of the 3rd or 4th story landing of an apartment building we were living in when I was three (four?) ala Superman. Hit one of those big green electrical boxes, walked all the way back up the stairs, looked for mom in all the different rooms, then finally found her and only then started to cry.

Mom told me to look both ways when crossing the street. So I did, but I forgot that I didn't live in the UK, so I looked right first as I pulled out on my Big Wheel from between two parked cars. Looked left just in time to kiss the bumper of a station wagon. Was told I flew about 20 feet before hitting the ground. Went to the Emergency Room where my cuts and bruises were looked at and the x-rays done. Helga-of-the-North nurse tried to scare me into good behaviour and told me never to return to the Emergency Room.

Was reading a book on the floor in my room and hooked my foot into my bedside stand. Heard some noise behind me (it was the lamp sliding off the table) and turned around just in time to get hit in the temple by a heavy wooden object. Knocked out and blood everywhere. Went to the Emergency Room. Saw Helga. SCREAMED to everyone to not take me in there as she was going to kill me! I suppose Helga felt bad after everyone worked out what happened.

Bike flips? Check.
Falling off walls? Check.
Getting clotheslined by a tree branch in the dark? Check.
Hit by a car on my bike? Check. (with bonus points added for style - I did a perfect flip over the hood).
Almost drowned at pool? Check.
Almost blow face off trying to make a bomb out of model rocket engines? Check.
Climb up steep cliffs without any protection? Check.
Jump off high cliffs on a dare? Check.

-Tcat

[control-z]

Around age 10 or 12, we were on vacation at Cape Hatteras, NC. I was swimming, riding the waves for a long time, when I finally noticed I was a LOONG way out from the beach. I of course wasn't actively swimming in that direction, so I had no idea I would get gradually pulled out. My parents were way off in the distance, and I was treading water and getting tired. I tried yelling for help but they couldn't hear me over the surf. No lifeguards, Cape Hatteras is not crowded at all.

I was pretty worried because I could tell I was getting pulled out further all the time. I guess I found extra energy from adrenaline, and I got back to shore by diving underwater and swimming as far towards the shore as I could, then coming up for air. In that way I finally made it back to the beach, exhausted.

I don't think I even told my parents, I figured they wouldn't let me swim any more.

[Viridiana]

When I was 2 I happily crawled out the window of my bedroom. It was one story, but underneath the window there was a bed of rocks, which I landed on, apparently on my face. I broke my nose a little and still have a little scar at the top. I don't recall (obviously) if anyone was angry at me about it, but it prompted my dad taking me back to SF (from Hawaii, where i was with my mom).
Then when I graduated middle school I went to an afternoon celebration with a bunch of my friends in a nearby park, where we were sort of running around playing with those giant rubber balls, just happy not to be at a desk. I dove towards one as the others were doing, but instead of landing on it and rolling in the grass, I slid right over it and landed on my neck. I remember feeling it snapping, but I walked away fine. If things had been positioned differently that would have been a pretty crappy graduation gift.
I also got hit by a car when I was 7, but it wasn't my fault. I *was* hurrying across, but in the crosswalk with a green light. It was a hit and run that slammed into me, flinging me across the intersection, and I had a concussion, eye, knee and spleen injuries. I landed right on the muni tracks, so thankfully no trains were coming! I remember being all banged up in the hospital and my mom saying to my brother (who had been with me but couldn't stop it), "you don't like seeing you little sister like this, do you? That's why you need to protect her," or something, and he started to cry, and I felt really bad. That's the only thing I remember about the accident at all.

[Viridiana]

Oh! and once when I was back in Hawaii one summer and at the beach (perhaps I was 5-7), I'd head out as far as I dared in the water and then 'pretend' to drown to get my brother's attention and he'd come and grab me and tow me or toss me back. We did it a few times and I loved it. So of course the one time he's busy with something else, I head out further than I can handle and nearly do drown before he notices. Pretty stupid of me.

[El_Kabong]

Well, nothing too original here.

Age 2 or so, Christmastime. In front of parents and various relatives, I pick up a pair of pliers and cut through the cord of the transformer for my Dad's American Flyer train set, which happens to be plugged in at the time. I remember the before and after, but not in between, so I'll have to take the witnesses' word for the colorful light show that ensued.

About age 7, sitting with my younger brother in the back seat of the family's '57 Olds wagon, which is in the driveway of an antique shop near Somerset, PA. My youngest brother, who is an infant, is in the front. My Mom is inside the shop negotiating a purchase. Youngest brother, bored, reaches over and flicks the transmission lever into neutral, and the car immediately takes off down the driveway. Youngest brother is loving it, younger brother is screaming in terror, I'm wondering whether I should maybe climb over the seat and try to steer it or something. The car rolls across a busy highway; I look both ways and heavy trucks are heading towards us from both directions. The car coasts slowly into a field, then gently comes to rest against a chain-link fence, without a scratch on it. My Mom came dashing up in a complete panic to find all of us sitting calmly as though this sort of thing happened all the time.

Around age 9, and I'd been tormented for months by a neighbor's kid who was a couple of years older and bullied the younger neighborhood kids mercilessly. On the mile-or so walk to school, there was a busy road we had to cross. It was a snowy day. I was waiting for traffic to clear when I spied the bully coming down the street. At the mere sight of him I panicked and started running across the road. As I reached the opposite lane, something brushed my arm and I spun around and fell down. What brushed me was the mirror of a passing car that skidded to halt on the slushy road a few yards beyond. The white-faced driver got out, sure that he'd run right over me. I didn't even have a scratch, and although several adults gathered around and wanted to take me to the hospital, I insisted on going to school (what can I say, I was a nerd). Word got ahead and when I arrived the school nurse grabbed me and hauled me in for a thorough check-over.

A few weeks later, the older brothers of another neighbor kid who had been one of the bully's many victims cornered him and gave a righteous ass-kicking. Didn't have any problems from him after that.

[bauble]

When I was just a pup, I discovered the power of ant immolation via magnifying glass. It didn't take long before I started to wonder if I could use this power to produce actual fire. Grabbing some newspaper (since the thought of using one of my comic books was sacrilege), I gave it my best shot. Nothing. Giving it a little (damned little) thought, I went to the shed where the lawnmower was and poured gasoline over the newspaper and tried again.

Did you know you can have gas fumes on your arm, even if you haven't actually poured gas on your arm? I didn't. I can still remember the flames covering my arm (Whoosh!). I made a move like a Big Jim (http://www.dollsandtoysaustralia.com/Bigjim.html) karate chop (stupid, I know, but I was young and panicked) which luckily did the trick. My folks never noticed that instead of hairs on my right arm I had little black dots.

[GargoyleWB]

Let me count the ways...

Neighborhood kids were playing "Summer Olympics" discus throw with a metal ten-speed sprocket. The would-be record throw hit me in the temple as I was playing some chase with other kids running around a blind corner. It knocked my unconscious and bleeding.

While playing with a BB gun, practicing trick shooting while on my skateboard, I had a spark of artistic genius. My clear gel transparent skateboard wheels, already looking cool, would look even more enviable if they also had shiny copper BBs suspended inside of them.

I took my gun, gave it a healthy 10 pumps, and aimed the gun at my skateboard wheel at a distance of about 12 inches. BAM! The impact was a near perfect display of conservation of momentum in elastic collisions, and the BB bounced right off the wheel and lodged just above my right eyelid. I came a scant few millimeters from a jellied eyeball.

At home with my brother, parents over at the neighbors next door. Our fireplace was dying down, and no more wood was split. I got a grocery bag of trash, mostly paper I thought, to throw on the fire. I tossed the whole bag in, but didn't replace the fireplace screen.

The fire whooshed up nice and warm as the papers caught and my brother and I sat warming ourselves in front of the fireplace. That's when the aerosol can of paint in the bag exploded, showering me, my brother, and the entire living room in flaming ashes and coals.

We rushed around like monkeys, stamping out flaming paper in the air and on each other, and scooping up coals from the carpet and furniture. We got the whole place cleaned and very well Lysoled by the time my parents came back.

[Dung Beetle]

While playing with a BB gun, practicing trick shooting while on my skateboard, I had a spark of artistic genius. My clear gel transparent skateboard wheels, already looking cool, would look even more enviable if they also had shiny copper BBs suspended inside of them.

I took my gun, gave it a healthy 10 pumps, and aimed the gun at my skateboard wheel at a distance of about 12 inches. BAM! The impact was a near perfect display of conservation of momentum in elastic collisions, and the BB bounced right off the wheel and lodged just above my right eyelid. I came a scant few millimeters from a jellied eyeball.


Reminds me of the time my brother and I decided to make clay targets to shoot with our BB guns. We molded a little man (complete with a huge weiner) and stuck him to one of the wooden posts of the dock. My brother took the first shot, and WHOCK! At such close range, the BB went right through the wet clay, ricocheted off the post, and chipped my brother's tooth.

[Katriona]

I was a big fan of the Bionic Woman, and had seen her jump out of a tree or window or something, and (IIRC - my memory is sketchy now) her shoes sprouted wheels and propelled her downhill and out of danger. So I went up a tree, thinking I'd just put my skates on and then jump, since obviously I didn't have those cool shoes.

Good thing I was too scared of heights to climb very far off the ground. I twisted my ankle, and my brother and cousins didn't rat me out that it was anything more than me just going splat from my usual klutziness on skates.

[Moirai]

We rushed around like monkeys, stamping out flaming paper in the air and on each other, and scooping up coals from the carpet and furniture. We got the whole place cleaned and very well Lysoled by the time my parents came back.

Oh man, do I know that drill! My mom has always said the way she always knew we had been up to something was that the house was WAY too clean when she got back! ;)

[John DiFool]

When I was nine, I drowned in Puerto Rican surf one morning. Note I did not say
"almost drowned", but the real thing...

My Dad and I went out early just after sunrise-surf was kind of rough but only about
3 feet. My Mom was on the beach and actually filming us with the old Super 8
camera. Well we both got caught in a runout (before anyone knew what a runout
was-this was 1971)-my Dad actually tried to throw me back to shore (probably a
bad idea in retrospect). Last thing I remember was Mom frantically running up and
down the beach in full blown panic mode...

Here's where it gets a little weird. No oddly enough I didn't have an NDE (no idea
why, something I still ponder to this day), but I just spontaneously awoke on a

surfboard belonging to some Puerto Rican surfers (whom my Mom got to rescue us)-
when I tried to get up one of them promptly pushed me back down. No need for
any CPR or mouth to mouth (my Dad was a doctor actually), I just revived all on
my own for some unfathomable reason (I don't even recall coughing up that much
water really). Perhaps I got knocked out before I swallowed any of the ocean,
or something, or perhaps it just wasn't my time yet.

[Nava]

Ninjas are always the height of cool!

I stuck a metal nailclipper into a socket. Why do kids find putting metal into sockets so appealing? I swear, everyone seems to have a story about sticking something into a socket and getting zapped. Luckily, I don't even remember my "shocking" experience.

My mother has the theory that there's certain things One Must Do In Life. Forget about trees, books and kids, she refers to the real important items like "stick a piece of metal into a plug", "draw on the walls" or "go skinny dipping", things that you're supposed to do when you're little and which parents spend a lot of time trying to prevent.

Middlebro stuck a pair of scissors into a plug when he was 9 because "he wanted to see if it made sparks" - the experiment was succesful. Littlebro was talking on the phone, idly toying with Mom's tweezers, started poking stuff with them, inserted them into a plug - at 19! He was sitting on Mom's bed and the plug was at floor level. Good thing the floors in that house are hardwood.

I'm told I did it at 3, one day we were visiting Grandma, but it isn't even a particularly scary "childhood accident" in my case. Apparently I wasn't very accident-prone and most accidents were caused by adults hitting me because they hadn't realized I was there.