Super Dave? Is that you? :eek: 
OK, I’ve got two.
Under the “seemed like a good idea at the time” heading, we have:
me at 12 years old, deciding to take my sweet Labrador retriever for a walk. She was around a year old, and the two of us had already taken many a walk together, so I’m feeling pretty ok with this, even though she outweighed me by a few pounds. So okay, in fact, that I decide to give her a really good workout on this outing. So I lace up my roller skates and away we go. We hadn’t made it a block before she saw a squirrel and discovered her life’s ambition. As it turned out, her life’s ambition was to “GET THAT SQUIRREL!!!”
Now, ordinarily I would have been able to have a pretty reasonable discussion with her about squirrels and ambitions and whatnot. We’d been to training together, and she knew the concept of ‘heel.’ And she had always seemed like a dog who was amenable to reason. What I had not taken into account, however, was that in our previous discussions on related topics, I had had not only reason but gravity and friction on my side. Reason still availed. Gravity was still extant. Friction, on the other hand, was noticeably unavailable.
She took off after the squirrel and I had no recourse but to hold on to the leash and hope for the best. Actually, gravity kicked in pretty noticeably when I hit the ground belly-flop style. At which point friction joined back in to the equation.
There were some pretty impressive scrapes from that little imbroglio. Once I was able to sit up and take notice again, I unlaced the roller skates, slung them over my shoulder, and hobbled the fifty yards back to the house. Our walk was over for that day.
Anecdote two features friction even more prominently. But I’m gonna have to save it for another time – this post is already TLDR.
Here’s one about my dad.
He worked as an offset printer. Mostly smaller single-colour models-- AB Dick 360s and 9810s with the T-Heads. (I’ve done my own share of offset.) He worked two jobs quite a lot, and this particular time he was working late at one job he did at night. A simple 360 with a gripper delivery system; for those that don’t know, the delivery system is a chain-drive conveyor with metal grippers spaced at even intervals to grab the sheets as they come off the press and carry them down to the delivery bed. They are used when the ink needs extra drying time before it’s laid on the pile so the ink doesn’t stick to the back of the page below it. You can mix a quick-dry solution into the ink sometimes, but if the weather is humid, even this doesn’t quite cut it. It’s also necessary when you’ve got the speed cranked up because the ink has less time to dry before it hits the pile.
At any rate, he was letting the press run as normal, and all was going fine. He was pulling proofs (snatching one “hot off the press” before it’s laid on the pile) just to make sure the ink was fine and there were no hickeys (blemishes) or faded areas that would require cleaning the rubber blanket or adjusting the flow in certain areas at the well. Pretty well every pressman does this. Technically, it goes against safety procedure, but it’s of the sort no one ever pays attention to. That night however, as he went to grab a proof as he had done thousands of times before (he had 20+ years of experience), he apparently made a slight miscalculation. In this case, “slight” translated into getting his thumb caught between the gripper and the safety cage as it rolled up to return whence it came. There’s very little clearance there – a few millimeters at best, and as a result, it ripped the top of his thumb almost completely off – almost down to the first knuckle; it was hanging by a thin flap. Bone was exposed. There was a lot of blood.
At first he was in shock so he didn’t feel anything. He called 911 and they picked him up. While in the ambulance however, the shock wore off, and he described the pain at that point as being startlingly spectacular. They couldn’t even shoot him up with opiates until they got to the hospital for one reason or another (presumably so they could ascertain if he had any allergies or was taking any medications that might conflict or cause complications.) He did eventually get his relief though.
They ended up having to graft his thumb into his chest so it could grow new skin around the bone. He spent several months with his arm in a sling and his thumb welded to his chest. To this day his thumb is little more than a featureless knob, save for the fact that it grows a few chest hairs.
I rode my horse, Mickey, outside for the first time a few weeks after I got him.
Without a helmet.
Mickey hates ATMs with a passion and a couple of the neighborhood kids came roaring up the trail near the barn. Mick flipped out, reared up and I wasn’t able to stay in the saddle (it was an English saddle). And of course stupid me thought “Oh, I’ll be out for a minute, I don’t need a helmet…”
I think I laid on the ground for 15 min before I came to. I don’t remember how I got home but the next clear thing I remember was realizing I was in the ER and was getting ready to go thru a CAT scan. I had the headache from hell for several days and a pretty good concussion too.
I was about nine years old when this happened.
In a local park, a tree grew out of a hill. Somebody hung a rope from the tree, and we all took turns swinging on the rope. You’d grab the rope, run down the hill, and let the rope swing you up. Given the slope of the hill and the direction of the swing, you’d probably be fifteen feet off the ground at the top of your swing, and horizontal. It looked like plenty of fun for our group of nine- and ten-year-olds, and it was–I can still remember swinging out, with the ground far below.
But on one of my swings, my hands slipped when the rope hit the top of its arc. I fell from the height, in a horizontal position. I couldn’t get my feet under me and landed face-first. On a big rock.
I think we can all agree that a broken nose would hurt. But trust me on this one–a smashed nose goes beyond the simple meaning of “hurt.” It was the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life, before or since.
While nursing a broken ankle and broken wrist one summer from a nasty uneven bars fall, my brother felt sorry for me and offered to give me a ride on his new bike. So, I hop out to the patio to get on the bike, but it becomes obvious that he can’t get the bike to the gravel roadway with me on it (did I mention we lived in BFE?). So, off I hop. He drags the bike to the roadway, comes back, gives me my crutches, and I do the hobble to the road.
He straddles his bike to make it steady. I get on the bike, set free the crutches, and we take off. I remember how great it felt to feel the wind in my hair. Then we hit that first curve. Something went horribly wrong and the bike goes down. I land about 5 feet away and my brother is tangled in the bike. So there we are lying in the road wailing when our neighbor (a NY State Trooper) shows up. After he pulls the pedal from my brother’s knee (it had been imbedded), he loads us into his cruiser and takes us back home to my mother, who takes us to the ER. Oh yeah, my brother was a thrasher…blood was flying every where (mom ended up cleaning the cruiser!). Brother gets 10 stitches and a scar that looks like Yoda near his knee. I get another cast. On my good ankle.
The rest of the summer was spent inside.
My ankles haven’t been the same since. I broke the left again in gymnastics before I decided to drop that entirely. Then again, while delivering a pizza during a rain storm, I fell and broke it. I had to drive back to the store to check out before I could go to the ER (of course being the single college gal, I went to my apt first to shave my leg (note singular) in case my doctor was cute). I broke the left ankle again a couple of years ago while standing in the kitchen opening the fridge and grabbing a sippy cup. That event is still a mystery.
In 5th grade, my neighbors got 3 wheel ATMs for Christmas. This was back when we actually got a decent amount of snow all winter, so we took turns dragging each other behind an ATM on a plastic toboggan. I was lying on the toboggan on my stomach and my neighbor took me down in front of my house before turning around. Unfortunately, the toboggan made a wider turn than the ATM, and our mailbox was there on that side of the road.
The plastic of the toboggan gave a bit, and I slid forward about a foot. It has been 35 years, and I still have a very vivid memory of the ground, with the post from the mailbox just to the right of my head. While my body slid forward, I was holding on tight to the toboggan, and my hands stayed where they were. After I ran screaming into the house and they god my heavy coat off, it was very easy to see the place where the bone was displaced about and inch in my left forearm. The other bone was also broken, as was the ulna in my right arm, but those didn’t show until they developed the X-rays. Casts on both arms is not a fun experience.
I was not the injured party, but I was there. It’s worth repeating because it’s so ghastly.
We were six, and we were Cub Scouts, waiting for the Scout hall to open. We’d all been told “never play in building sites”. One of the problems I recall at that age was I was frequently not told why one shouldn’t do one thing or another. I’m sure there was a generic “they’re dangerous” admonition, but no specifics. (Like “don’t cross the street beteen parked cars” - I puzzled for years why this should be a rule; it seemed arbitrary to me.) My friends seemed to think the same way. So we thought it a fine way to spend the time before Cubs, playing on the building site next door.
All went well for about two minutes, until Simon jumped off a pile of timber. There was a stray piece of timber on the ground at the bottom of the pile. It had a 6" nail sticking out of the end, and Simon’s foot found it. He landed square on it, and it impaled him, right through the middle of the foot, from the sole and out the top of his shoe.
It gets worse.
The piece of timber was lying on another piece of timber, which acted as a fulcrum. As Simon was impaling his foot, he flipped the wood up in the air, and the other end of it smacked him hard in the face. And knocked out all his front teeth.
He was a bit of a mess when the ambulance came and rushed him to hospital with the wood still stuck to his foot. They called his parents, removed the nail, gave him a tetanus shot, made sure of no permanent damage, then sent him to a dentist for emergency reconstruction treatment (someone had helpfully picked up all the bits of tooth, so they glued them back together in a glue mold).
These days there’d have been lawsuits and the troop would have been shut down. Back then, he returned to cubs three weeks later, limping a little but proudly showing off his cool Frankenstein teeth.
If we’re doing second person I’d like to present my dad;
- there was the time he tried to stop one car in our gently sloped driveway from rolling into the other car, but sadly left his hand between said cars resulting in a crushed wrist.
- and the time he left his thumb on the piece of wood running through the table saw until the blade was up to his knuckle, split that thumb right down the middle.
- but the best story was when he showed up at Christmas with what looked to be a rope burn running halfway around the front of his neck, right below the adam’s apple. When asked about this (visions of hanging himself dancing through my head) he said it wasn’t a big deal, just that the chainsaw had kicked back while he was cutting wood on the back forty.
I was 19 in the Army Reserve Artillery. My section’s M-110 had broken down in the rain and the mud. It was miserable. I was a fresh young private and was sent to get additional tools from the back of the ammunition vehicle. I stood up from where I was kneeling on the gun. Walked quickly along the deck and stepped down on to one of the empty projectile trays on the spade of the gun. Being muddy and rainy I slipped, falling forward very quickly. The top of the spade struck me mid thighs and pitched me head first to the ground. I don’t remember the impact but I came to a few seconds later screaming in pain. My neck was on fire and my right arm felt like it had been ripped off. Then it got sort of numb and tingly and I couldn’t move it. Fearing the worst the medic attached to the unit put me in a hard C collar and then had me very carefully but firmly duct tapped a large piece of plywood (we didn’t have a back board) and transported me to the hospital. Sprained neck, Sprained shoulder and a pinched nerve. My right little and ring fingers still tingle on occasion.
snerk
If he starts to complain about vision problems, you’re going to need to have a talk with him.
I was eleven, I’d just finished my paper route so the bags were stilled hangning from my handlebars. I was pedalling for home as fast as I could, probably doing upwards of 20 mph, the bags started swinging and suddenly lodged in the spokes of the front tire, turning the bicycle into a catapault and launching my face into the gravel street. Took a week for my swollen and broken nose to go down enough I could put my glasses on again.
Little gigi, playing in the lot at recess. Seems not dangerous at all, even for gigi who is somewhat clumsy and fell gently on her hand while playing around near a little tree. Too bad for that broken bottle under the tree. Big gigi sports a nice smiley scar on her palm.
You know, all the big kids threw glass bottles, smashing them. So I thought it was fun. So when I found one, I threw it.
I still have an inch-long scar on my upper arm.
If I didn’t already know you weren’t born when I was seven, I would ask whether you were playing with them near St. Peter’s in Kingston
I’ve probably told this story before, but what the hell. Growing up, my grandfather had this HUGE garden out behind the garage, and it was right next to the woods. He had problems with groundhogs, deer, rabbits, etc. So, eventually, he got one of those little wire fences, that gave a little “zap” if they tried to get in. I was told it just gives off this little sting, that really wouldn’t hurt said animals.
So, as soon as my cousins and I heard, our reaction was “WHOA! Pappap has an electric fence!” I was maybe about, oh, ten or eleven at the time.
So we’re there, the adults are out on the back patio talking, and my cousins, Tina, Craig Blair and Josh and I are all clustered in the weeds right in front of the garden, poking around with a big stick. (At the time, we didn’t know that wood doesn’t conduct electricity). But we just can’t find it, and so we get bored and go off to do other things.
A little while later, I decide to try again. I bend over the weeds, and jackpot! There’s this little wire running along the edge. I reached out and touched it.
OOOOOWWWW!!! Dammit, did that HURT! Now, I don’t know if that counts as “dangerous”, per se, since it wasn’t one of those barbed wire security fences. But holy shit, that was painful.
bottle wars? check.
stick fights? check, with broken fingers
playing on the abandoned bridge and falling off? check, with broken wrist
jumping off the lifeguard chair into 2 feet of water? check, with broken foot
that about covers up to age 12 or so. It didn’t get any better in the next 12 years!
It’s a lot more painful when it’s your foot that you have stuck in the spokes, jammed against the forks, rotated the bike 90 degrees vertical, and then fallen sideways flat bang onto the ground.
However, it was trying to take up skateboarding at 38 that really hurt. I walked out the back of the house. Our back garden is cobbled, and my sons skateboard was out. I thought - I used to be pretty good at that. :smack:
I got on the board, and had my feet shoot out from under me. I went down flat backwards, just getting my left arm down and my head up in time. I had slapped the cobbles really hard, and my hand tingled for the rest of the afternoon. My one relief was that no-one saw my stupidity, but eventually I had to ask the wife to take me to A&E - I had broken my elbow.
Si