I was doing some chainsawing this weekend, and no, the chainsawing itself was not the cause of the ironic injury. I was putting on safety glasses, one of the arms was bent inward, and I poked myself pretty hard in the face, just missing my eye. I thought, injuring my eye while putting on safety glasses— that would sure be an ironic injury.
Anybody else got any ironic injury stories— either one that happened to you or you heard of? Hopefully they’re of minor injuries that the sufferer was able to make a complete recovery from, and not something like “I lost a leg in a three-legged race”.
There are LOTS of reports found in police blotters everywhere of traffic accidents caused by people fumbling around trying to put on a seat belt after the vehicle is already in motion.
Once I broke my toe. That wasn’t the ironic part though. It was pretty painful and I was having trouble walking around the house. I remembered that I had an old walker in a closet that my late wife had used when she was ill. I got it out to see if it would help me to get around the house. I didn’t find it very helpful, and just left it in a corner of the living room until I felt motivated to put it away. Later I was talking to someone on the phone, and was pacing around as I tend to do while I’m on the phone. Not paying sufficient attention to where I was going, I slammed my broken toe into the walker. That was even more painful than when I initially broke it.
I was sliding a sharp knife into its sheath - yanno, the item that covers the sharp blade? - while I talking to my husband’s aunt. The blade missed the sheath and sliced into my thumb. Lucky for me, auntie is a retired nurse and spousal unit isn’t bothered by blood. I was all bandaged up with minimal gore, but to this day, that thumb is numb along its inner edge (the side by the index finger.) I still have all the range of motion, but the numbness/lack of tactile feedback does affect the use of that hand.
I’d say that’s pretty ironic. You were trying to sheath the knife to make it safe, and injured yourself in the process. I mean, clumsy as well, probably
I can relate. I had an injury maybe 4 years ago where I was cutting up pieces of an apple tree branch on a miter saw for BBQing. It was only a 3-4” diameter piece of branch. But the blade caught a knot or something and violently whipped the branch out of my hand and smashed the tip of my left hand middle finger. Spurting blood and broken distal phalange bone. It’s still a little numb on the side next to my index finger.
I have a magnetic knife rack on the side of my fridge. In a basket on top of the fridge are my oven mitts. I kept putting an oven mitt away and missing the basket, and it would fall over the side and get impaled on one of the knives. I also came close to hitting one of the knife tips a few times while reaching for an oven mitt.
One day I came across a magnetic bin for pencils that was supposed to go on the side of a filing cabinet (or steel desk, or whatever). Aha! I can put that upside down over the knives, and make the knives safe!
You’ve already guessed where this is going: in placing the bin, I cut myself on the tip of one of the knives.
This is from desperation: I was fixing something at my wife’s place of employment (church, she’s a music minister) and I put a nail through my hand. Alright, it was a screw. What came out of my mouth was not “Hey, Peter, I can see your house from up here.”
It always seemed ironic to me that daredevil Bobby Leach, the first man to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive, died years later from complications after slipping on an orange peel.
I had something similar last month. Our fiscal year ended in April and one goal everyone had for the year was to submit one safety observation. I, like most, procrastinated and ventured out into the building to find one. Was passing someone in a narrow hall and as I brushed up against the wall my hand slid over a drywall corner guard made of sheet metal that was improperly installed. Sliced my hand right open. So I got to fill out a safety observation and an accident report.
