I pulled a muscle in my back this morning while rinsing shaving cream out of my armpit in the shower. Ow.
Anybody want to tell some stories of stupid or ludicrous ways you (or somebody you know) have injured yourself, to make me feel better?
I broke my foot in a couple places last year, had to use crutches and wear a cast for months - 8 months into it, and I’m still recovering. How did I do this? I accidentally kicked my teak coffee table while in bare feet.
I also aggravated the issue by thinking there was no way I did any serious damage doing something so mundane and stupid so I continued to walk on the foot for months.
(I did find out however, that the extensive breakage was because of weak bones due to a vitamin D deficiency - but strangely, [and it continues to bug my podiatrist to this day] the weak bones were only in that foot.)
I ripped my palm open a couple weeks ago while trying to open a new bottle of salad dressing. Then, a couple hours later, I tore a chunk out of the thumb on the same hand when I was trying to remove a piece of frozen tomato from a pizza I was about to bake, and the fork I was using slipped.
When I was a teenager I was trying to open a window which was painted shut - by banging on one of the panes of glass with my palm.
The scar still shows how many stitches it took to close my wrist up.
I got some really bad bruises on my stomach from eating pizza.
After a long bike ride, I threw frozen pizza into the oven as I ravenously watched the timer countdown its readiness. When it reached zero, I grabbed oven mitts, put the baked goodness on the counter, sliced it up and stuck a large piece in my gob. The pizza was pipin’ hot and instead of risking a burnt tongue, I swallowed without chewing. My throat was of different size and the pizza got lodged and my breathing ability was impeded. I was home alone at the time and I grabbed the kitchen counter and started ramming my stomach into it like a makeshift Heimlich maneuver. The pizza dislodged and I was thankful to not only have lived through it, but to not have a witness my stupidity.
I’ve already posted a few times about how my basic inability to navigate two stairs resulted in my breaking both feet. So instead I give you…
…this. I didn’t bang on the pane, but I did use a bit of force to open it. My elbow went right through the pane, and opened a gash almost down to the bone. Profuse bleeding ensued. That was 13 years ago, and I still have the scar.
I dislocated my shoulder by tripping over train tracks when I was drunk. I was so embarassed about it that I never went to see the doctor.
The OP reminds me of my mom, who put her back out recently when leaning over to wrap her hair in a towel.
There was the time when I was cooking dinner and I decided to test the sharpness of my chef’s knife by running my finger along the blade. The verdict? Very, very sharp.
When I told the ER doctor what had happened, he shook his head and gave me a look that said “When will people ever learn? Cooking KILLS.”
My two brushes with calamity physics happened during the same summer of 1980. Exhibit the first… I was trying to get a nail hammered out of a board, (my dad was paying a penny a nail that we could re-use that summer. Times were tight.)but wasn’t getting enough of a swing with one hand to do it. I actually took my hand off the end of the board I was holding to swing the hammer with both hands.
I hit the nail, the end of the board flew up into the side of my head, and my grandfather did himself a mischief trying not to laugh and get my inside befre I bled to death in the field.
About three weeks later I was 3/4ths of the way up a thirty foot ladder, and need some more nails to repair the shake shingles on the side of the house. The nails were about four feet to my immediate right, and eight feet down on the roof of the Porch. In my head, I saw myself gracefully jumping from the ladder to the porch below and scooping up some nails. In my head.
In reality, as I pushed off for the jump. the ladder went in an equal and opposite direction, which left me dangling and flailing like Wile E. Coyote about 25 feet in the air. I hit the side of the roof with a thud and slid off the remaing ten feet or so onto the soft Washington grass. And slugs. Luckily all I ended up with was a few cracked ribs, my Gradnfather on the other hand ended up with two stories he would tell and laugh at until the day he died. I was a big hit at the Eagles lodge.
The business end of a garden hoe was face up in the yard. Working near it, I stepped back onto it and the handle rose up and whacked me in the head.
Oh, let me count the ways…
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Age 2, put a hole in the back of my pharynx by tripping while toddling along with a chopstick in my mouth.
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Age 6, gave myself a concussion by trying to hang from the top of a jungle gym by my legs.
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Age 16, got another concussion by allowing someone to grab my leading foot while I was showing off a flying side kick.
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Age 37, got severe tendonitis in both hands from bottle-feeding our premature twins.
I’m sure there are more that I’ve forgotten…
When I was 13, I pulled an ab muscle trying to beat my friend’s unbroken burp-the-alphabet record. I figured with a deep breath and an extra push, I might be able to squeeze out a few more letters. I did not, but I did pull the muscle, and if IIRC, nearly shat my pants.
(Never could burp right.)
I’ve posted about this before, but this thread brings it up yet again:
I was approx. 16YO (IOW, intensely stupid, no offense to any 16 year old’s on the board. . .) and for some reason, I had a craving for toasted marshmallows. Luckily, we were in possession of marshmallows. And a gas stove. So I turned on a flame, stuck a marshmallow on a fork, and toasted it to perfectly burnt-on-the-outside-gooey-on-the-inside goodness. When I went to put it in my mouth, I closed my mouth around the fork.
I’m telling you all, you haven’t really lived until you have literally heard your lips sizzling. :eek:
This is minor but makes up for that in ludicrousness and immediacy: this afternoon, I was cooking chicken tenders and mini pizzas for the kids’ lunch. The pizzas didn’t need to be in the oven as long, so I had just left room for them on the baking sheet, then put them on in the last few minutes. A sensible person would have removed the baking sheet from the oven to do this, but who has that kind of time? No, I put them in by hand one by one, and on the last, my hand brushed against the baking sheet, which was hot, see, so my hand automatically jerked up and away … right against the top of the oven, which, you may be interested to know, was also hot.
It’s not the worst burn ever, but I have the spot covered with two wide bandaids now for my own protection, because when I carried up the laundry some time later, I managed to scratch the end of one hanger across it.
What a moron.
When I was a kid I fell down a manhole. As in, ‘hmmm, that manhole cover is cracked, I wonder what will happen if I walk over it…’ I wasn’t seriously hurt aside from some scrapes on my legs, but I had to dangle there holding myself up by my elbows until someone came looking for me. I thought I was being abducted when a big hairy pair of man hands went around my waist to haul me out, but thankfully it turned out to be a cousin sneaking up on me.
Not me, but my husband Darkhold once cut himself on chewing gum. He had a pack in his car during a hot summer, and apparently it had dried out so much it shattered when he bit it and split open his gums.
There is a much funnier, and stupider way he managed to injure himself as a teenager, but sadly I have just been forbidden from sharing that story… ever.
IMHO, winner.
A handful spring to mind:
When I was 16, I was trying to remove splintered wood from the metal end of a broken pitchfork. For some reason, I decided the best way to do this was to jab a knife into the wood repeatedly while I held the pitchfork’s metal tines. After about five jabs, I missed, and stabbed the forefinger on my left hand. Still have the scar.
When I was 20, I kicked a couch while walking past it barefooted. Broke the little toe on my left foot.
When I was 24, I leaned over to cut off the television and suffered a muscle spasm in my back. I fell on the floor, and couldn’t stand up for 10 hours.
Eeuughghhhhughghhhh…
A couple years ago my aunt bought me a cute necklace from Kohl’s for Christmas. But she had to give it away as an emergency gift for her son’s girlfriend, and presented me with a necklace and a gift receipt because the necklace she ended up giving me, in her words, was ugly, and that I should return it and get something else. So I decide to go look for a new dressy top for New Years. Pull my neck in the dressing room while trying on tops. Hurt like a son of a bitch.
Sometime in the past year I again end up at Kohl’s trying to find a good deal. Find some shirts to try on. End up pulling my neck AGAIN and this time it’s so bad I am practically crying to myself in the dressing room and cursing as quietly as I can. I was standing there, with my top halfway off, my boobs hanging out, crying in a dressing room, in severe pain, can’t move. I had to stand there rubbing my neck for like five minutes until I could move again.
Moral: fuck Kohls that store is evil and it’s trying to kill me. Or I’m an idiot who can’t dress herself?