I really can’t recall if a thread like this has appeared before, so humor me. Injuries are fun. More specifically, injuries with good surrounding stories are really fun. So, share yours. Every do anything stupid and then end up hurt because of it? I want to hear about it. Since I come from a vaguely clutzy family I have all sorts of wonderful stories to share.
Picture it. Around 1985, my parents are outside tending to the lovely little garden in the yard. Dad is on all fours harvesting veggies for cooking, mom is probably 20 feet behind him raking the leaves. Dad works his way past the tomatoes, picking them and then putting them in a bag with loving care. He moves to the carrots, digs them up, wipes them off, and places them in a bag (once again with loving care.) He then moves to the radishes and gets the bright idea that if he were to jut pull them out and toss them in the grass, he can use a hose to wash everything off at once. So, while on all fours, he is pulling radishes, flinging them over his shoulder to the grass. He grabs a particularly large radish, figures a little extra oomph is needed to reach the grass and throws with all of his might. The next sound he hears is a large Ouch from my mom and a thump as her partially unconscious body hits the ground after being knocked in the noggin by the radish. She ended up with a pretty fair sized lump on the top of her head.
I’ll try to delve into my dad’s dalliances with power tools later on.
'm extremely clumsy. I could listen a dozen falls, accidents that are pretty funny, but i’ll just tell you the most recent.
ou know those thing that you stick in the ends of corn on the cob so you can hold on to them why you eat?
They have very sharp points. Well, i was eating and somehow one flew out of the cob and I stabbed myself in the cheek. This was quite shocking and painful to me while my SO found it rather amusing. I now have to red dots on my check that look like i was bitten by a mouse or something.
I have a bunch of stuff, not necessarily from being klutzy. (Although a good example of this is the At Least I Didn’t Kill the Cat thread.) A lot of it was just my sister taking advantage of her younger brother’s gullability (sp?).
When I was 5 - She convinced me, after watching Mary Poppins, that if I jumped off the roof with an umbrella I could fly. I tried it. I didn’t fly.
When I was 4 - She told me if I put a penny in the elecrical outlet, candy would come out. My mom stopped me before I could get my candy.
When I was 9 - She informed me that plywood on cinder blocks at the bottom of that hill (70ft high) makes a perfectly good ramp for jumping on my bike. The plywood brooke, the cinderblocks didn’t move. I rode at top speed on my bike just to smack head on into two stacked cinderblocks. The bike stopped moving but I didn’t. Ironically, this is the closest I’ve come to achieving the flying sensation I attempted to feel by jumping off the roof with an umbrella 4 years earlier.
This last one is all my own doing. At age 14, tired of carrying a ladder around the house to take down all the Christmas lights, I decided it would be easier to lay on the roof, hanging over the edge to retrieve the lights. (Who doesn’t see what’s about to happen?) I scooted to my left, hit a patch of ice on the roof and slid headfirst, reacreating the “Mary Poppins Incident.” My parents banned me from ever getting on the roof again.
Not sure how funny this is anymore…
When i was in 4th grade, my class had been doing science projects, and we were frantically taking notes and writing everything our teacher was saying. It must have been cold because i was wearing a jacket, sweatshirt and a t-shirt, when i took my pencil and shoved it in my jacket pocket. I was frustrated for some reason and bent over slightly to get up out of my chair to say something when the pencil in my jacket pocket (also apparently just sharpened, woops!) stuck in me. So i do remember being in a bit of shock at seeing a pencil stuck in me, feeling it, and watching as the class gaped at me with a pencil sticking in me through all my layers. I had slid the pocket around the pencil to see what it was doing, and the teacher helps me out of the room telling me not to pull it out, the nurse would do it. We get to the nurse and she just laughs at the kid with a pencil sticking out of his gut, she reaches over, yanks it out, pulls up my shirts and applies the wonderful alcohol which made it feel so much better of course. The class just thought i was even freakier when i came back, because it didn’t really hurt so much as feel uncomfortable, and i suppose i was ready to go on through the day without a care about it, and it left a nice little tattoo.
Long time ago, not me but my sister…
A bunch of us are out in the yard playing croquet… One of my cousins winds up, takes a big old golf swing, the head of the mallet flies off and clonks my sister in the head. Blood everywhere.
Off to the ER for stitches
The ER doc is British. Very British
He’s absolutely horrified that Americans can turn a nice civilized game like croquet into something violent.
Jake
I’ll let my “Why ChiefScott is afraid of Toilets” thread stand on it’s own.
I’ve been laughed at enough.
When I was a wee tyke, SisterRiddles, who is 8 years older than me, and I both had favorite teddybears. Hers was named Mary.
We also spent (and still do) every Thanksgiving with my father’s family on Long Island. My father is one of 4 siblings. They ALL have children. You can imagine, then, how unfazed the adults were when my cousin stole Mary and ran through the house.
Well, I was not going to stand for that bully stealing teddy bears. I was four, my cousin was 7. I chased after him, screaming something like “Robby, you butt-wipe, get back here with my sister’s bear!” Rob went out into the patio where the adults were sitting and drinking, and out the door into the backyard. Swiddles went into the patio, put her little hand where the handle should be. Instead, there was a plate of glass there. I went through the door, and landed on the concrete platform below. I next regained conciousness in my Nana’s bed, with my father’s 4 siblings and thier assorted spouses and all my cousins huddled around the bed, and my Nana’s neighbor, a retired nurse applying a butterfly bandaid, which she claimed “did the same thing as stiches.” I still have the scar. Same thing as stiches, my ass…
SisterRiddles still has her bear, I’m proud to say.
I don’t know if it was an injury, but it hurt for a little while.
Last year, in college, I woke up at about 10:30 (normal college morning) and I couldn’t find my right arm! I meanit was not where it should have been. Have you ever slept on you arm so long that it fell completely asleep? Well, that’s what happened to me. I found it above my head, and picked it up and attempted to put it where it should have been. But, seeing as I had just awakened, my aim was a little off. Now, if you have ever moved an arm or leg of yours that had been asleep you would know that you can’t feel the arm/leg and it is very heavy, especially if you’re as big as I am. Well, I tried to put it beside me but ended up hitting myself very hard in the balls and that caused me to try and double up. So I quickly moved my arm up and away and hit my self in square in the nose, and, jerked it away and hit my self in the balls again, and harder that time. After the second shot to the nads, I sat straight up in bed and busted my head on the ceiling(I was on the top bunk). So lets count that up. I had been hit twice in the nads, had a bloody nose, and I couldn’t see straight because I slammed my head on the ceiling. I tried to roll out of my single bed with out hurting myself and get to the bathroom or at least away from my now demon possessed dorm room. As I roll out of bed I straddled the chair that had been so I could put myself up into bed and again, slammed my cojones down on the top bar of that chair. I went into the bathroom after I had picked myself up off of the floor and washed the blood off of my face and chest and tried to get as much as I could out of my shorts. My pelvic region was in a lot of pain and I felt down there and my left nut had swollen to about the size of a tennis ball. So I started flipping out and yelling and one of the R.A.'s came over from across the hall. We ended up going to the emergeny room, and I will spare you the details from there. So when I went back to classes the next day, i had to explain why I had a black eye. That was a fun day.
For those who want to know.
R.A. = Resident assistant.
I’m actually going to steal my first post here, and make thread out of it. I don’t think it belongs here.
ChrisP, your story had me roflmao.
All I can relate is one where I was working at the local Scout camp. I was the rifle range assistant and every day, we had to hike about 3/4 mile from the dining hall to where the range was where I worked. On the way to and from the range, we always walked past one of the campcraft areas (that taught pioneering, backpacking, camping merit badges). One one particular day we were on our way back and the Pioneering merit badge students were constructing a Monkey Bridge. (For those of you who don’t know what a Monkey Bridge is, it is a rope bridge strung between 2 A-type-frames.)
Well, being the helpful person that I am, I decided to help them complete the project. So I’m up on the bridge exactly in the center, adjusting a rope, when ALL of the steaks on one side of the bridge work themselves loose. I drop about 10 feet straight down and land on my right knee. I ended up going to the hopital and fortunately, I didn’t break or even tear anything in my knee, but I had to go around camp for the next 2 weeks on crutches and at staff Christmas that year, I got a rubber donut to sit on.
Gosh I miss those days!
Good story, ChrisP! Happy 300!
I’m sure you have, Chief, but just in case you’re wrong, here’s the link. Your story had me in stitches, no pun intended.
I’m not sure if this is funny, but it is nice and gruesome.
When I was in college I used to knit a lot, so I’d carry a knitting bag everywhere. If you’re going to do that, it’s best to get those little rubber caps for the knitting needles, but I never bothered. Well, one day I was leaving a class in something of a huff and got my backpack tangled up in the door handle. And while I was getting unstuck the knitting bag got between me and the door, and one of the needles, which had worked its way out a bottom corner of the bag, slid into my leg – and stuck (a size 5 needle, for the knitters out there). Well, I couldn’t very well limp to the student health office with a knitting bag skewered to my leg. So I got to pull the needle out … it was in over 2 inches :eek: Didn’t bleed very much, but I had to go get a tetanus shot, and I still have a neat little scar.
Catrandom
Thanks for the link denbo!
That was too funny Chief Scott!!
My husband once stuck a screwdriver up his nose . . .
It was a slow day at work and they had him helping to take apart some cubicles, which entailed sliding the clips out from between the panels. Of course they did not have the proper tool for this, so he had to use a screwdriver to pry them up through the groove and out the top. And of course the screwdriver slipped and . . . WHAM! The world’s largest nose-picker. Luckily there was not enough force behind it to go up into his brain.
I understand that HR found the accident report quite amusing.
When I was living in Utah I once ran face first into a utility pole while riding my bike. Of course, I wasn’t wearing a helmet. When I got home I noticed that my face looked dented.
“Nahh,” I thought, “You can’t dent a face!”
I was wrong. Fractured my Malar bone (cheekbone-- accidents are always so educational) and assorted other stuff. I had to go into the hospital for PLASTIC SURGERY. I literally looked like Frankenstein’s onster for a month – blue-green discolored face, appallingly obvious sutures. I took to wearing dark glasses a la The Terminator.
Punch Line:
Some time later I mention my mishap to my new next-door neighbor, a very California surfer-dude-type intern.
“Yeah,” I said, “I fractured my malar bone.”
“Oh, Wowww!” replied the intern, “Where’s that?”
I think he was messing with my head. I hope so, anyway, for the sake of his patients.
I don’t know if this qualifies, but what the heck. A few years ago I was playing with my then-three year old son in our living room. I was in the Johhny Bench position and he would run across the floor and dive at me, while I tried to catch him and swing him around. On his last dive, I turned to get my wife’s attention to say, “Hey, look how far he can jump” when he caught me unawares and knocked me off balance. I threw my hand back to break my fall and heard a crack and felt a sharp pain in my wrist. Several days later (I’m never waiting that long to see a doctor again) I was in a lovely cast with a shiny new six inch metal plate and six screws in my arm/wrist. Still have 'em in there, too.
First, here’s the lame story about my stuid injuries. When I was 7 my sister, 2 neighbor kids and I were playing crack the whip on roller skates in my back yard, which happened to overlook a very deep canyon. I went flying and broke my right elbow. Fast forward 10 weeks. The cast has just come off, and my sister and I decide to celebrate by rollerskating in the back yard again. Needless to say, I went flying, and broke my other elbow. My parents took my skates away. I was never allowed to learn how to ride a bicycle.
Second, better story…a couple of years ago I was teaching junior high school. The kids aren’t allowed to bring anything that could be an inhalant to school (whiteout, glue, paint thinner etc.) One day I took the class into the library for a lesson on the card catalog. I notice that one of my kids is holding a tube of crazy glue. Now, he’s a good kid. I know he builds models as a hobby, is very proud of them and brings me pictures. I decided not to make a big deal about it during class, and just walked behind him a couple of times to make him paranoid (yes, I do enjoy terrorizing 6th graders). He immediately hid the tube in his fist. I knew he had it but I didn’t see it again. At then end of the period everybody leaves, but this kid. He’s sitting there, looking like he’s about to cry. Apparently in hiding the tube from he, he squeezed it too hard, and glued his fist to the tube, and the desk.
Two incidents come to mind:
The first was when I was in grade school. I was swinging b ymy arms between two desks (you know, you put your hands on the desks, lift yourself up, then pretend to be a gymnast) when my right arm buckled. I hit my head, specifically, my right ear, on the edge of the desk, splitting the entire lobe from the edge to the where it joins my head (not just cut, mind you; I basically wound up with two lobes!). Blood everywhere. I think I traumatized the entire class. The doctor who stitched my ear up put it together crooked, so I still have a ridge where my ear was put back together.
The second one occured a few years ago. My friend and I were in the kitchen. We both have a habit of cutting up those plastic six-pack holders (just so no poor fishies or birds or whatever get tangled up in them). I had one, and was pulling it, rather than cutting it. He tried to grab it from me, but I held on to it, and a tug of war of sorts ensued. Then he grabbed a knife. He intended to cut between us, slicing the plastic doohickey. He missed. Yet again, blood everywhere. He had sliced my thumb to the bone, and got my index and middle fingers as well. To this day, i still have some nerve damage in both my thumb and index finger on my right hand (I seem to really have a problem with my right side…).
And gee, these are just cover two of my…(counting…)… oh, about 13 distinct scars.