The bicycle helmets thread go tme thinking about my favorite head injuries. And my not-so-favorite head injuries. So ever been knocked out?
By far the stupidest way I’ve been KOed was when I fell off my friend’s motorbike. Of course, I wasn’t wearing a helmet… because it was parked in his driveway and the engine was turned off. I was just straddling it making “Vroom! Vroom!” noises. (Yeah, I was about 25 years old at the time, why do you ask?)
Getting off, instead of leaning forward and lifting my leg over behind me, I sort of leaned back and tried to lift my leg up in front of me as if I was putting my feet on a coffee table. Fell over and hit the back of my head. Trying to explain at the hospital that it wasn’t really a “motor vehicle accident” was fun.
But my favorite, wasn’t my KO. It was a really pretty girl I was dating. She was an aspiring actress and a starving artist, so she lived in a basement apartment. She was quite of tall and there was a pipe across her ceiling. She got a callback for an audition and was so excited she started jumping up and down. KONNNNNNNNG! Then slumped when she jumped up and hit the top of her head on the pipe.
I suppose I should have been more chivalrous about it, but she came to with me almost peeing myself from laughing so hard.
Ten years old (or thereabouts). The school library had those honkin’ huge steel double doors with push-bars on the inside. I’m just approaching the door from the outside, just starting to extend my hand to grasp the handle and HEAVE, and …
THUD!
I distinctly recall thinking “OH crap!” right before the corner of the door caught me in the forehead and laid me out flat. When I woke up there was no one around; the little shit who slammed the door open must’ve cut and run. I was out for a while - the librarian gave me a hard time about being late for class (it had been recess) until she realized I was a bit wobbly on my feet and I explained what happened.
Got to spend the rest of the day in the nurse’s office explaining that no, I felt fine. Heh.
It’s either the time I whacked myself in the eye and gave myself a shiner trying to slide down the slide at the playground, in second grade, or the time I was wandering along, reading a book on the street, and walked into a telephone pole. Good times. :rolleyes:
We were on a class field trip, and an extremely annoying kid was talking to me about something I couldn’t have cared less about. I’m not really making eye contact, so I see an opportunity up ahead: a street sign positioned at just about head-height. So I begin to act like I’m into the conversation so as to keep his attention, and slowly move a little bit closer to him, which forces him to subconsciously move over to maintain “social distance.” I also slowly speed up my walking pace, and he follows suit to be able to continue the conversation. Out of the corner of my eye I see the sign looming… WHAM! The kid drops to his ass, no clue what’s going on. I immediately felt bad; I’d honestly expected him to see it at the last minute and dodge.
I was playing racquetball and I violated the rule about keeping the wall to your back. I dug down to the ball in front of me and hit it so hard that the momentum spun me around and I whacked my head on the wall. I came to on the slide down the wall but it took a while to make my eyes focus.
I figured I did a fair imitation of a cartoon character with my legs splayed out, my eyes rolling from side to side and birds flying in a circle around my head.
I’ve never been knocked out, but I fainted in conspicuous way. When I was a freshman at university, I rushed and decided to join a sorority. The induction ceremony had all us rushees in black dresses while the members, dressed in white robes, surrounded us in an all-white room holding candles. I was all in awe of everything and forgot to bend my knees once in a while, so I suddenly went down like a ton of bricks in the middle of this ceremony.
Not my own story, but I went skiing with some friends over winter break one year. Kelly decided to try snowboarding for the second time. On her very first run down a bunny hill, she fell forward and the snowboard came up behind her and hit her hard in the back of the head. After a while she shook it off and stood up, declaring that she was fine and was going to try the run again. On the chairlift on the way up, she dreamily said, “Hey guys, look at all the rainbows around everything!”
Uh oh. Off to ski patrol we went, Kelly in tow (and off her snowboard). They had her lie down for a few hours, so the rest of us kept skiing and then picked her up at the appointed time. Kelly was bound and determined to do that run again so that the day wouldn’t be a complete waste.
Second time down, she fell again. Forward. Snowboard hit her head in the EXACT same spot. That was the end of that ski trip.
I was playing left field on my 6th grade softball team, (because I sucked) just kinda spacing out, counting clouds and dandelions, when the ball was unexpectedly hit directly at my head. I still don’t know who was at bat, but they had a fine arm.
It might have been good for me to be paying just a soupçon of attention to the game, but since I wasn’t…let’s just say I hear the spectators about peed themselves en masse.
For weeks I heard descriptions, barely intelligible through all the snickering, of my legs flying up in the air. Had a big goose egg and bruise on my forehead. I still can’t remember how I got back to the dugout.
I’ve never actually been knocked out, but once I was getting off a bus and banged my forehead against the top of the door. I have no idea how I did that; I’m only 5’9" and I didn’t remember actually jumping or trying for altitude in any way.
My cousin walked into a telephone pole while he was checking out a girl. Very funny.
Even better was the asshole customer at the grocery store who was verbally abusive to his wife. After yelling at her to go get something from another aisle, he concludes with, “You idiot!” and them promptly turns around and smacks his head into the support pole in the aisle. HARD. It was hard enough to make the very-solid pole give a loud thump and stagger him.
I’ve posted elsewhere about my encounters with street signs and support cables.
in grade school, my friend was a soccer goalie. He dove hard to stop a shot but forgot that he was only two or three feet from the pole. He came to with a crowd of classmates around him.
I’ve only been knocked out once (and I’ve never fainted either)
It was pretty spectacular.
I was playing hockey, I must’ve been maybe 8 or 9 years old. We were a few goals behind, and I was getting really upset.
I put all my anger in to skating (I had taken a few years of power skating) and when I got the puck, I made a breakaway down the ice, by the the time I crossed the other team’s blue line, they weren’t even in the centre yet (hey… It was a bunch of 8 year olds playing hockey… Most of them didn’t even know what was going on)
So I’m just flying down the ice, in what should have been the defining moment of my hockey career.
I reach the net and take a shot.
The buzzer goes. I miss the net completely. ( I could skate extremely well… Shooting and passing were not part of my repertoire. I was a minor league hockey “enforcer”)
In my moment of disappointment, I put my head down and forget about the most important point: stopping.
I slam in to the boards, head down: I’m out cold.
The next thing I remember was both the refs standing above me. I tried to say something, but all that came out was gibberish. Then the refs laughed and skated away. It goes black again, and the next thing I see is the coach over top of me.
I still can’t believe that the refs just laughed and skated away.
School ski trip. Overconfident 13-year-old skier. (Naming no names ) Three trees at side of slope. Big gap between two trees. Tiny small gap between two other trees. Rest of group skis through big gap. Said cocky skier goes for small gap, but encounters wind-hollow at base of tree, filled with powder. Skis decide that both going to same side of tree would be too predictable.
What’s worse is that, after 15 minutes to recover, I decided I was quite happy to carry on skiing with the group – and two minutes later got wiped out from behind by another skier and landed on my head. Again.
(Yes, I always wear a helmet while skiing these days!)
Well, it didn’t knock me out, but I had a heckuva concussion.
It was during a 3rd half (post-game) rugby party. We were doing “Naked Beer Slides”, which consist of sloshing the tavern floor with beer, then getting a running start and diving naked at a group of plastic cups arranged like bowling pins.
Being a touch inebriated, I misjudged my leap and slid quite forcefully into the base of a electronic dart board machine. So hard, in fact, that if it hadn’t been for a few people standing nearby it would have fallen on top of me. I had a lump on top of my head the size of a kiwi fruit.
Our (co-ed) swim team was playing “animal ball” – water polo with the only rule being “don’t drown someone for too long if they don’t have the ball.”
So, I had the ball and Michelle was underwater trying to get it away from me (games got a little odd sometimes). Since she couldn’t break my grip, she decided she needed more leverage… so she pulled her knees in, rolled back, and kicked up
:eek:
All I remember is a white flash of light, as she soundly connected with my groinal area. I apparently popped up out of the water from the force of the kick.
All the other guys on the team cringed, but hurried over to fish me out of the water. (Michelle went on to score, wondering what the big deal was…)
After they’d hauled me to the side there was much asking if I hurt, me looking blankly at people, and them realizing that didn’t tell them if I was still incoherent or now coherent and just incredulous at their stupidity.
So it wasn’t a concussion, but if I didn’t actually pass out it was close enough for me.
I’ve got two times that stand out, though in one I wasn’t knocked out, but was pretty close.
Numero uno: Some friends and I, the summer after my sophomore year of college, went to the local gorge for some swimming and cliff jumping. The climb up, the jumping, and the climb down were all uneventful. But to get back to the parking lot required a walk up an old dirt path. I was looking down at the ground, and not where I was going, and slammed the top of my head into a metal pipe that was sticking out of the ground. I fell down and rolled partway back down the hill, and my head was bleeding for a while. Didn’t lose consciousness, though.
Two: My friend had a radio show on the college station, and several of us were always guests on the show. it was fun to just hang out, play songs, and sometimes have weird conversations with the weirdos who listen to college radio at two in the morning. Anyway, I was sitting on the couch in the DJ booth, when somehow the topic of contortionism came up, and I mentioned that I am able to put both my legs behind my head (if I was a chick, this probably would have gotten me laid a lot.) They all ask me to prove it, and I do so just fine. However, rather than gently “untie” myself, I just “pop out”, as it were, with my legs flying forward and my head flying backwards…into the wooden sofa arm. I next recall being on the floor, everyone hovered around me (including the DJ, resulting in dead air, a big no=no in the radio biz.)
So yeah…I was knocked unconscious because I put my legs behind my head.
Let’s, when I was maybe 8 years old, playing tag on a side street with friends. I was running away from someone, looking back at them and not where I was going. I turned my head forward just in time to smack into a telephone pole. Ended up spread eagle on the grass.
Next, when I was around 14 or so, again playing some sort of hide and go seek with a lot of running, this time in a woods. Again I collided with something I didn’t see. No, not a tree. A barbwire fence with a single strand about 3’ off the ground. Here’s my memory: I’m running along. Next thing I know I’m on the ground looking up at the sky. Friends say I did a 270 degree flip.
And, once I was in college, I took up skating. Let’s just say I ended up on the ice with people holding up fingers for me to count more often that I’m going to admit.
As a wayward teenage youth we sometimes engaged in stupidity. Leaning out of a passenger side car window and wacking at mailboxes for example.
One night we were crossing railroad tracks and I screamed Stop! I was sitting on the door frame and took a swing at the red lens of the crossing gate. The bat bounced off and hit me square in the forehead. Knocked me out cold and I fell out of the car.
When I was 17 it was nighttime and I was standing on the side of the road with some friends. A man on a ten speed bike hit me. I must have been facing him since I’m told his front wheel went right between my legs. My face hit his helmet breaking my jaw, left cheekbone and the orbit of my left eye. I woke up in the hospital.
) Three trees at side of slope. Big gap between two trees. Tiny small gap between two other trees. Rest of group skis through big gap. Said cocky skier goes for small gap, but encounters wind-hollow at base of tree, filled with powder. Skis decide that both going to same side of tree would be too predictable.