Amen.
I once burned my inner thigh on a hot iron. I live in a little apartment, and I don’t have an ironing board. I needed a pair of pants ironed for something or other rather quickly, so I laid a towel down on the floor and the pants on top of that to iron them. Going about my business rather quickly, I grazed my inner thigh with the iron. It hurt, but I wasn’t about to go to the doctor and try to explain that one.
You should also never fry anything in oil while naked.
I’ve walked into sliding glass doors. It doesn’t just happen in sitcoms.
I’ve also veered off and run into the wall when walking down the hall…while totally sober…several times.
One time I was out with friends at a donut shop and someone lit a cigarette and threw their match at the ashtray, which it missed and landed on the table. Since I often put out candles with my fingers, I didn’t think twice, I just reacted by swatting my hand down on it. Well that little sulphur tip isn’t all soft and wick-like. Nor does it cool down instantly. Actually it broke off and embedded itself in my palm. I got it out, but had a little hole in my palm for weeks. I was 17 at the time, I’m 31 now, and I still have the scar.
Well, it wasn’t a door but I did run into a door frame. Actually I sort of fell into it. With my face. Sixty stitches and the amusement of seeing my own skull.
Also I learned to not pick up a y-shaped vegetable peeler out of the dishwasher by the blade. It peels mammal skin really well too.
I once thought that I had extinguished a cigarette before going into a store. While browsing around I held the cigarette in my hand and apparently quite near to my coat, which I noticed when I had flames up my arm. Luckely I got it off and the little fire extinguished before anything else than the coat was hurt.
Argh, I did that, except I got distracted by a noise and looked away while getting into a car. Turned my head back and smacked myself right under my eye on the corner of the car door that I’d just opened. All I could think after the initial twinge of pain was, “I hope this doesn’t turn black, because I’ll have to explain it by saying ‘I ran into a door’, and that’s the classic abused wife excuse.” Fortunately, it didn’t discolor at all.
not going to give any dope on me 
but my brother on the other hand …
he was ironing a shirt (is it my imagination or does the seem to be a high risk area near irons?) and the phone rang… so he did the most obvious thing in the world, he answered it, forgetting that in fact he was holding the iron, and not the fone… hehehehe - dumass. :smack:
another time he was driving, smoking and on the cellphone (don’t ask, i wasn’t in the car so i don’t how he managed). Ciggarette finshed so he throught the phone out… yet again - dumass
last one… he got shot in the ankle chasing a mugger… the medic asked him what had happened, his reply… “was playing soccer with a bullet” :dubious:
I was doing some blacksmithing with a friend, and had gotten kind of casual about wearing the gloves, because I was working on pieces that were four feet long. The cool end was actually cool.
I went to pick up a piece I had taken out of the fire about five minutes earlier, and my last thoughts were, “How hot could it be? It’s not like it’s glowing or anything.”
Answer: Real hot. Frying pan hot, baby. Yow.
Well, a waitress I know well came to work with two black eyes. Of course, I suspected the obvious and gently suggested that she leave the bum and seek help. But the truth was, while her boyfriend was responsible, it wasn’t in the way we all would have guessed. (I went to some lengths to verify the veracity of the story, it turned out to happen this way.)
She and her boyfriend were out drinking with friends. They drank quite a bit. For reasons she cannot recall, she stopped outside of the bar and insisted that her boyfriend carry her to the car. He didn’t hesitate, but instead grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. However, in his inebriated state, he lost his balance and they both went toppling to the ground. She ended up with a broken nose and two black eyes and he was knocked unconsious. Both spent the night in the emergency room.
My dad once accidentally kicked my mom in the face. She tried to tickle his feet, and like me, my father’s reflex when tickled is to kick uncontrollably. He couldn’t help it. I think he just knocked her glasses off.
You would be shocked and amazed. I have personally repaired (or condemned) dozens of microwave ovens that people have done this to. It takes a while, but eventually the potato will get hot enough for the dried-out parts to ignite, and the resulting flames have been known to melt holes in the cavity. For really spectacular results, wrap the potato in foil first. :rolleyes:
For my own egg-on-my-face injury…well, I grew up in a TV repair shop. Summer afternoons often found me sitting behind a disassembled TV (that being the only place to sit in such a shop) drawing, writing, or somesuch activity. One such afternoon I straightened up from my labors and stretched. My pencil chanced to pass too close to the TV’s tripler (no relation to the poster–a tripler was the widget in older TVs that provided the 40-50,000 volts needed to run the CRT). Today’s electronics lesson, boys and girls, is that graphite is indeed conductive.
The next thing I remember is lying on the floor with a goose egg on the back of my head, multiple lacerations from the coke bottle I dropped on the way down, a badly twisted ankle that had been stuck under my stool, and a burned hand clutching the remnants of a pencil. One of the cuts required stitches. The doctor asked me what I had been doing to inflict so many different injuries on myself.
I looked at him for a moment, and said, “A crossword puzzle.”
My history of doing stupid things started when I was four:
My Mom had a “gymnastics roller” (thingie that looks like a wheel with handles attached) and I thought it was a really good idea to attempt a handstand on it. Still have the scar on my chin.
When I was six the lightbulb of my nightlight burnt out. So I unscrewed the bulb and stuck my finger way into the lamp. That taught me not to mess with electricity.
Never let me into the vicinity of a rocking chair because on numerous occasions I have managed to fall over backwards on one.
Walking along the street seems to be a difficult feat, too. Here I have a history of walking into lampposts, falling over objects and sometimes just falling for no apparent reason.
And I am probably the only person in the world with a branding on my shoulder shaped like a star from the hot metal end of a blowdryer.
Of course I am typing this on my laptop using an external keyboard as yesterday I thought it was a really good idea to have a beer while working. Guess what happened? Posts without half the keys working (I am especially sad about the letter “t”) just are not the same.
Are you saying I’m not electrifying in person?
Vanity searches, yer honor? Guilty as charged.
Tripler
Pun intended.
I’d framed out a wall of basement storage closets, which were drywalled and awaiting paint. I was setting threaded studs for vertical shelf standards into the concrete basement wall with my Hilti Gun, and angled my arm improperly. The recoil drove my elbow into the framing with a force equivalent to 100 ‘funny bone’ hits. It was all I could do to NOT drop the $2000 tool.
A Hilti, or other powder actuated tool uses gunpowder to drive a nail or threaded stud through wood, or steel into concrete.
Having heardBANG OWW FK** I was assisted by other guys on the crew, who promptly ragged on me, and am still reminded of my faux pas.
See, he is hurting America!
My contribution-
You know the meat slicers at the deli? You know they’re good at slicing dead cow, right? Well, they’re just as good at slicing living human. I still remember it. “Hmm, something doesn’t feel quite right…”
Picture this: I’m chatting with online!friends. One of the people is drunk, and I mention that I have tequila in my room. Am told that tequila shots with lemon are very good. Well, I have a couple lemons, and I just have to see this for myself.
Several drinks (I didn’t have a shot glass, so who knows how much I had) later, I’m chugging water to avoid hangover. Only have one bottle of water left, and it’s frozen. This is not good. So, I take the knife that I was cutting the lemons up with, and try to break up the ice in the water bottle with it. I’m holding the bottle in my left hand, and stabbing the ice with the knife in the other… and I miss the neck of the bottle and get my finger instead.
I vaugely notice that my left index finger kind of hurts, and seems to be bleeding rather a lot. Elevate and put pressure on it for a few minutes, take the paper towel off my finger, and notice that the cut gapes open when I bend my finger. Decide I should go to the ER - however, I’m not about to drive when I’m mostly drunk and I can’t use one hand, so I wander around to the room of a few guy friends (after scaring the shit outta the friend I was kinda drinking with the night before over AIM - “Hee, I’m drunk. Oops, I cut my finger. Wow, my finger is bleeding a lot. BRB”), and get the only one of them who hadn’t been also indulging, to drive me to the ER.
Once at the ER, they hardly batted an eye - I suppose they’ve seen stranger (and drunker) things than me come through the door in the middle of the night. They glued up my finger, didn’t give me a tetnus shot although they threatened to, and sent me on my merry way without even making me pay up front. And now I have a nice scar on my finger to remind me that alcohol and shart objects don’t mix.
Yeah, they don’t.
There’s a Hemmingway journal entry that goes something like “Last night, got tight on absinthe and did knife tricks”.
It wasn’t absinthe, it didn’t (quite) require stitches, and I can do it when I’m sober, really.
There are things you just shouldn’t remember reading at certain times.
The scar’s nice, though, and matches the axe scar on my other foot.
When I was young, many, many…years ago, I went with a friend and his mom on an errand. When we arrived at our destination, I got out of the car and locked the door, like a good little girl. As I walked away from the car, I felt a tug on my hand and looked down. I had closed my thumb in the (LOCKED) car door! I felt no pain until I looked down and saw my thumb in the door, but when I saw what had happened, the pain was white-hot! My friend’s poor mom was hysterical, fumbling with the keys, taking much longer than usual to get the car door open to free me, because she was so upset.
And then for a couple in which I was the victim but it wasn’t my fault (these could explain a few things):
~monica
I used to run a show about the wonders of static electricity at the old COSI in Columbus, OH. The chief exhibit was a Van der Graaf generator–you know, the thing that makes your hair stand on end. IIRC, the one we had put out about 300,000 volts, although that might be a little high. Anyway, if you’re wearing rubber-soled shoes, or standing on a rubber-topped stool (we had one about a foot high), you don’t feel a thing, although you do get the Einstein look.
Anyway, part of the show was that I would put my hand on the generator to demonstrate its safety. This wasn’t any big deal, as it would just cause my hair to stand up. As we usually had a decent crowd and wanted to attract a lot of people, I was talking through a microphone.
Well, one day, I’m running through my show, same as always, and I put my hand on the generator. And all of the sudden, I became very aware of the fact that the microphone cord was under my left foot. It and the sole of my shoe were both rubber, and the damn current went right through. Fortunately I was touching the generator with my right hand (it was on my right side, probably for a reason), so I only got hurt.
I don’t remember exactly how I reacted, although I did carry on the show, and even got a few people to try it out. But I was really careful about the microphone cord from that day on.
You experienced what I believe is a high impedance ground path, and they can be lethal, based upon potential as voltage.