I feel guilty posting this as my troubles don’t amount to much when compared with some of the terrible things other posters are dealing with at the moment, but I just felt like venting a little about my clumsiness.
First, while putting together my food processor, I accidentally pressed my finger a little too hard against the blade and gave myself a nice deep cut. It bled nicely and stung like a bitch.
Second, I go to take the garbage out down the back steps of our apartment building and completely lose my footing on the first step due to ice. My feet flew out in front of me and I rode the steps all the way down on my ass. Thankfully I only suffered a bruised backside and a small gouge on my other hand (which also bled nicely). Oh, and of course all of the garbage flew out of my hands as I tried to save myself and I had to pick all kinds of fun stuff up out of the snow before coming back inside.
I now dare not move from this seat for risk of some other excitement. I’m certainly going to avoid any electrical outlets for the next few hours at least.
I have cut two of my fingers very badly. I sliced into the first one in a kitchen accident in the mid 80s, and the second one using a razor blade to clean a sticker off of a mirror. I went to the ER and got half a dozen stitches each time. Over 20 years have past since the first accident and that finger(left pointer) is still a bit numb, and if I hit either of them just right I get a painful jolt down my finger, hand and even arm. UGH.
I am VERY careful with sharp objects now. And thankfully have not had an accident like that since then.
If it will make you feel better, a month ago, I slipped while walking down a flight of stairs. I bruised MY butt and right hip badly enough to go to the hospital for x-rays and to demand pain medication. (Once I obtained a prescription for Vicodin, I found that a steady supply of Advil worked to control the pain 90% of the time. But I’ve been glad I had the option of a stronger pain killer available when I really needed it).
I’m generally young and healthy, so it’s kinda awkward admitting to it, but I’ve sure gained a lot of sympathy for why falling down and spending the night on her bathroom floor caused my grandmother to spend a month in the hospital, before finally having a stroke (which killed her). Um, I should clarify that Grandma spent a month in the hospital partially because of her bruises, partially because of mobility issues, and partially because was at a transition point and there was debate over whether she needed to go to assisted living or a nursing home rather than back to her apartment.
My adult daughter called me one day, sobbing that I needed to come over and take her to the emergency room because she had cut off the tip of her finger while making dinner. I raced over, and we decided she really didn’t sever anything, and that bandaging would do. Before we went to the store to buy bandage supplies, I decided to clean up the blood, and then finish up the meal she was making for the crockpot…and I managed to slice my finger exactly the same way she did! We walked into Drugmart with our hands wrapped up in paper towels and then bandaged each other up in the car…good times!
One time when I fell I managed to break my nose, snap off both of my upper incisors, grind off most of the skin on one side of my face and get a pebble in my eye socket.
A momentary lapse of coordination at work once hurt my right thumb pretty good. I had several lacerations including one that laid my thumb open from the first joint down into my palm. It was so deep they had to use a couple layers of stitches. They also broke off one of the needles when they were trying to spread the Novocaine around before they sewed it up. Two and a half needle’s worth, and it still wore off before the doctor finished sewing me up. I also had a couple bone chips in that joint; it still hurts regularly.
Once I fell off a telephone pole with shell rot. My arm hit the pole on the way down and I got three splinters through the inside of my forearm. They were about half the diameter of a wooden pencil; my co-worker pulled them out with a pair of pliers and then we dumped all the mercurochrome from our first aid kits onto the wounds, because the pole wood is saturated with creosote. Oh, and once I cut off about 1/8" of a fingertip with a pair of cable cutters.
Some friends and I once dropped the front suspension/steering assembly from a 1935 Plymouth on my foot. I still have a scar from that, too.
I staggered back against a barbed wire fence and then sat down - the scar looked like I’m in a body suit with a back zipper.
Having installed a wind generator on the back of the boat - a “Windbugger” I stood up and let it slice a gash in my head which required eight stitches.
I dropped my dads ashes.
I chopped the edge off my left hand index finger a la kittenblue - it’s still gone!
My forte is only just getting my toes on the step, slipping and bashing my head - surprisingly only two mementos remain - a dent in my shin and four stitches along my eyebrow.
I once slipped on dog shit and while falling put my hand through a plate glass window, which imbedded a hunk of glass in my left wrist. I still have a huge scar from it.
Anything else I’ve done with my clumsiness seems minor in comparison.
I’m so clumsy that it’s a joke with most of my friends. I try to do things too fast and then I drop or break things, trip over everything in my path and generally just bang into stuff because I’m not looking where I’m going. I can come up with hundreds of stories, including falling face first into a huge cactus, falling off the top of a three story hippie bus while it was moving (slowly, thankfully) and a few very near misses with chain saws. It’s so bad that my partner won’t let me use any of his tools and if it takes more than a thumbtack to initiate a home improvement I’m supposed to ask him to do it. I’d be insulted, but I earned it with a long series of unfortunate events.
One of my cats was having diarrhea, and after cleaning the catbox and filling up the trashbag with kitty mess, I showered and put on nice clothes for an important engagement. In a hurry to get there, I run down the four flights of steps to the dumpster with the bag. I slip on a step on the last flight and hit the bag against the metal banister. In slow motion, I watch the bag split open and hunks of solid and liquid-soaked cat litter spray the stairs, the wall, and myself.
I have managed to cut my middle finger on my left hand badly enough to have a scar there ten years later. The amazing thing is, it was with a butter knife. My ex-boyfriend from high school (who I was and am still friends with) had a job selling Cutco knives. I didn’t really need real kitchen knives, since I ate all my meals in the dining hall, but I figured their butter knives would be sharp enough to open packaging but safe because they weren’t pointed. Ha. I was using it to cut open a plastic package, and cut my finger really badly. I was running around looking for the Band-Aids (I’m not the most organized person in the world) and wondering if you can bleed to death from a cut finger. Then I started hoping that, if I did bleed to death, my atheist friends were right about there being no afterlife. Killing yourself with a butter knife isn’t exactly the sort of thing you want to be explaining about for all of eternity… Fortunately, I did find the Band-Aids and the bleeding did stop. But I have a scar there now, more than 10 years later.
Then there was the time I fell up some stairs. I was in grad school and was renting a room in a split-level house. I generally don’t wear shoes inside- I’d rather be barefoot or just wear socks, given the choice. I was wearing socks and walking up the few stairs from the entryway to the kitchen. Unbeknownst to me, someone had just waxed those stairs. I slipped and fell, and bruised my shin really badly.
And there are all kinds of more mundane examples of my clumsiness. I’ve sprained my ankles and fallen and skinned my knees and stuff like that too many times to count.
I have a form of MD, and one of the effects is that I just can’t stop myself when I fall - people can trip and “catch themselves” befor they fall. I can’t. When I fall, I go absolutely FLYING, legs akimbo, hands splayed - it’d be funny to watch if it weren’t me…
I am not going to even try posting my stories in detail. I don’t think the hamsters could take it. Let’s just say that when I was a child, my mother wrote an article for her college newspaper. Among other things, she wrote about her fear that CPS would be called to investigate our family due to all the times I had to be taken to the emergency room with very odd injuries (fork in the eye, fractured skull from falling off a rocking horse, slit wrist).
In the 22 years since then, I have only gotten worse. I get made fun of every day, multiple times per day. When I went for my last Pap, the Planned Parenthood nurse asked if I was being abused by my boyfriend (which I don’t even have), when she saw my bruises.
Amazingly, other than the fractured skull, I’ve never broken a bone and my only stitches were from back surgery. I just bruise, sprain, slice and dice.
My most severe moment of clumsiness was when I flew down the stairs in our townhouse and broke my ankle in three places (I still claim that the carpet and my bathrobe were conspiring to do me in).
The best story, though, was when I was making a cucumber salad using my mandoline, and turned away to speak to my father-in-law for just a second…stupid, stupid, stupid. I ended up slicing the tip of my ring finger almost all the way off (at least it felt that way-- there was a flap, although I don’t think the blade cut even halfway through). Since it didn’t hit bone, and it did stop bleeding after a while, I just bandaged it up, and it turned out okay. I still have a scar, and a good portion of the tip of that finger is numb (but none of the pad, so it doesn’t interfere with my recorder playing or anything).
I threw out the mandoline with extreme prejudice after that. (The Wikipedia article mentions something about metal gloves…wish I had known that!)
ETA: I forgot about the time I fell off the stage at an anime convention while I was narrating my husband’s martial arts group’s performance…in full Heian court clothing, too. I think that tops my embarrassment list.
Sprained my ankle before the holidays tripping over the doggie gate that keeps the arthritic dog off the stairs. DH was still asleep, so I didn’t turn on the hall light, and then miscounted the steps down to the gate.
Also slipped on some ice, and probably would have been fine if I’d just let the fall happen. But somehow it seemed like a good idea to try to grab the mailbox. Which I missed.
(Yeah, my co-workers throw themselves in front of plexiglass to protect it from me)
I mostly hurt myself daily. I’m getting some deep gouges that have left some nasty scars in the last few years. I currently have a messed up toenail that is coming in after I bashed my toe getting out of bed. It’s only a matter of time until I break a finger or toe and I think I may have fractured one this fall. I have failed to get my fingers out of the screen door handle many times and bent my fingers back. one of these times it will snap them. I gave away the meat slicer years ago. I’d probably drop the blade now and slice open my stomach while it lands on my foot cutting it off on the instep. I try to avoid all things where bad coordination is dangerous.
I figure I must still be in the “awkward age”. It ends at 34, right? Right?
I slipped on the snow on our front steps this morning. This snow is a pain in the butt, quite literally.
I’ve broken enough toes that I’d only go to the doctor if it was a big toe. All they do if you break a toe other than your big toe is tape it to the toe next to it. I do that at home when it happens now. It gets better in a few weeks. I don’t consider breaking a toe a big deal any more.
Me too. It rather limits my options for exercise. I try to avoid anything where I’m likely to twist or sprain an ankle, so anything with a lot of jumping around is out. I avoid anything that relies on good balance, since I don’t have that either. Forget anything that requires throwing anything, catching anything, or hitting any non-stationary object.
One form of exercise that worked well for me was water aerobics. You’re in a pool, so a fall is less likely to end up with you getting hurt. The only problem with water aerobics is that it’s most popular with retirees (the classes I went to were almost all old women), so it can be hard to find a class that meets at a time that a working person can make it to.
Yoga has also worked well for me. There’s no jumping, so I don’t have to worry about that. The yoga instructor I went to in California at least was pretty good about modifying poses for people with bad balance. Props like yoga blocks helped a lot, too.
Nowadays, I walk home from work for exercise, but only when there’s no ice or snow. I’ve learned the hard way many times over that I should avoid walking on a snowy or icy sidewalk whenever possible.
I’ve never even tried to use power tools. Me with power tools would be like that old Far Side cartoon of the baby porcupine playing with a balloon- you’d know it wouldn’t last long or end well. If it’s anything other than tightening something with a screwdriver, changing a light bulb, or hammering a nail into drywall, this looks like a job for somebody else.
I’m nervous around kitchen knives and sharp kitchen gadgets that I could hurt myself with. If I’m using one of them, I’m concentrating hard and probably have the tip of my tongue sticking out of my mouth, and am trying to keep my fingers as far away from it as possible. I use the food processor when possible, as it’s less dangerous. I won’t have a toaster oven in my kitchen that isn’t one of the ones where the outside doesn’t get hot- I learned via a large blister on my thumb that I can’t be trusted not to touch the outside of a toaster oven.
