I was about 6. I’d found a hunk of concrete that weighed a 2 or 3 pounds. I wanted to see how high I could throw it. I made several attempts while standing under a tree. I threw it up into the tree for what would be my last attempt. I don’t remember whether I lost site of it in the tree, or if I just forgot that I had thrown it. I found it again when it hit me right square on the top of my head. I failed to split my head completely open, as I only required two stitches.
Let’s see.When I was about 7 I excelled myself.First was on the roundabout in the playground when I failed to hold on sufficiently tightly and as we hit high speed catapulted off,sliding to a halt along the concrete.Ironically,all underneath the play facilities were large rubber mats to stop you getting hurt.They hadn’t planned on someone flying over the top of them.
I also managed to brake very suddenly on my bike and go over the handlebars.Landed hands-first on a rock.The cool part was the whole of the skin of my palm had come off and was just sort of hanging there flapping…hey mom my hand’s split in two 
Managed to twist my ankle gokarting when I was 8 when I got stuck between the car and the wall…that was a cool birthday especially when we got home and the lasagne had exploded and blown the oven door off.
And lastly we have the simultaneous injury.I managed to slip on some bubblewrap I was taking up to father in the attic(we have VERY steep stairs) and landed in a heap at the bottom.As an encore,my sister then dropped the bathroom scales on her toe… :wally
When I was like 19, I zipped up a jacket with a high collar really hard and fast.
Hard and fast enough to completely zip my bottom lip into it. If you saw “There’s Something About Mary”, you’ll have an idea of what I’m talking about.
I had to YANK on the zipper with all my might to get my lip unstuck. It swelled up in the middle like a big purple pea.
Teeny tiny shards of glass on my hand. Ten-year-old Emony is having a sleep-over and in the wee hours of the night we’re both pretty goofy and giggly. We decide it would be a good idea to pour a glass of water over the light bulb in my bedroom lamp. While the lamp is ON. Gah, I was such a nitwit. :smack:
(For those of you intelligent enough never to have tried this, the light bulb promptly explodes, creating an impressive shower of glass shards.)
When I was knee high, I went sledding. At a neighbor’s. The hill ended on the street.
I didn’t think about that, really, as everyone was stopping before the end of the hill naturally. So, I go down in my sled. I have to admit, I waxed the heck out of it, and everything. It’s one of those long plastic sleds. Bellyflop down the hill type.
Face first into a farmer’s rock wall, at about 20 MPH. Took 80+ stitches to sew my lower lip back on.
This, I feel, explains much about my later life.
In high school, I was on the bike path on the side of the road. Right where it went from being the side of the road to an independent bike path. (The far end is where I used to have nighttime encounters with drunken drivers) Guy passes me, heading in the other direction. In the first recumbent I’ve ever seen in person. I coast and gawk. Wouldn’t you?
Unfortunately, the guardrail kinda makes a J shaped curve as it goes into the ground. Hit it right on the neck of the bike. Bent it like a paperclip. I went flying… embedded a inch-long rock in my knee, bunch of other minor damage.
Also, there was the time I was shot by what I hope was a hunter while I was on a cycle tour, but that wasn’t anything I did. Just winged me, memorable only for being shot.
Oooh. One of my earliest memories. There I am in the basement, watching my dad messing around at the workbench, doing wood stuff. I’ve found a paperclip. I’ve found an electrical socket. Carefully, I unbend it. Then I stick one end in the socket. Hm. Nothing happens.
I stick the other end in the… why am I across the room?
I feel this also explains much about my life.
When I was little, my parents took me to the Great Escape amusement park (long since gone out of business, I believe…) in upstate New York. It was a typical amusement park, and on subsequent occasions in subsequent years I went back; it was there I rode my first looping rollercoaster, the Steamin’ Demon. The very first time I was there, however, I was much too short for such thrills, so I rode the log flume instead. I sat in the front of the log, getting so wet that by the end of the ride, I was cold. So, not wanting to get further soaked and chilled by the Big Splash at the end of the final drop, I ducked and tucked my head under the “dashboard” of the log as we came to that conclusive, jarring halt. BAM! As the log stopped, I was thrown downward and forward, my forehead hit an exposed steel bolt in the floor, and it was lights-out.
I came to a few seconds later, but my eyes, face and chest were covered in blood, there was a pool of blood at the bottom of the log, my parents were screaming, and the ride operator was staring at me with a look of pale terror. Naturally, I started to cry and scream. My father went into “save my son” mode, threw me over his shoulder and took off in a sprint toward the first aid office. What happened next was surreal, and I remember it vividly to this day: as my father strode toward the medical building, I flailed, face-down, over his shoulder. As my flailing threw a trail of blood all over the pavement, oversized cartoon characters dropped what they were doing and stood frozen and transfixed, staring at me in disbelief. A teenage female employee in a Cinderella costume put her hands over her mouth and burst into tears as the sight of my blood-drenched face and clothes undoubtedly shattered her daily workplace fantasy. Children screamed and clutched their parents’ legs.
Eight stitches dead center on my forehead proved the solution to my medical problems, but my humiliation became a much more difficult condition to treat as cartoon character after cartoon character gathered outside the doctor’s office and filed into the treatment room one at a time to see how I was doing…
I had a few dumb injuries as a kid, but I could never hold a candle to a certain cousin of mine.
He had to have some surgery to prevent his cornea from detaching (if memory serves) because he and one of his friends were playing at fighting in his room - by throwing steel-tipped darts at one another.
Well, let’s see …
This one isn’t really my fault, but when I was about two, my parents left me and my 7-year-old brother in the car for a few minutes (which would get them thrown in jail, these days). When they came back, I was crying and holding my finger, and Danny was promising me all sorts of treats if I wouldn’t tell. Eventually, they managed to piece together that my brother had stuck my finger into the car cigarette lighter. The conversation that followed:
Dad: Why did you stick your sister’s finger in the lighter?
Danny: I wanted to see if it was hot.
Mom: Why didn’t you use your own finger?
Danny: Because I thought it might hurt.
People wonder why I hate my brother. About two weeks later, I hit him over the head with a putter.
Fast forward another two years–little four-year-old me goes sledding with Big Brother Danny and a bunch of neighborhood kids at a hill just up the street from our house. We start at the top of the hill, ten kids on about seven sleds. As we near the bottom of the hill (and its protective chain link fence), I fail to notice that all the other kids have bailed. I end up with a diamond-shaped pattern on my face for the better part of a week.
The coup de grace … Ten years old. We had a fireplace that was a raised brick hearth with a concrete slab for a mantelpiece. I used to use the hearth as a little stage for my own private productions. One day, I decided it would be great to hang from that six-foot-long, foot-wide, four-inch-thick slab o’ concrete. And discovered it wasn’t in any way secured to anything. Landed right on my head.
Strangely enough, I had nothing more than a bump, and promptly went off to gymnastics class.
Fences, I was maybe 7 or 8 and was climbing over a chain link fence. I slipped and impaled my armpit on the little V bitrs of wire that stick out. Took four stitches to close up.
Around 15 or 16 we tied an inner-tube behind a ATV and were having a great time slinding around in the snow. My friend driving misjudged a turn and the length of the roap. When the tube hit the fence it popped like a balloon, I went tumbling along; Ground-sky-fence, ground-sky-fence, ground-sky-fence Stars! Lucky I had 101 layers of clothing as padding. A helmet would have been nice.
Fast forward almost 20 years (about a month ago) and I’m driving the ATC with the neighbor kids on a plastic sled in the snow. They were wearing helmets when I accidentally smashed them into the SAME fence :smack:
Guy, the Great Escape is still open. (in the summer)
Another bike story but this happend to my brother. He took my sisters bike and tried to jump off a retaining wall after gaining a great deal of speed. He pulled up on the handle bars and they came out the bike frame. I still remember the look of suprise on his face as he looked at the now useless steering device. Of course, when the bike landed the front wheel went sideways and the bike and my brother tumbled end over end.
My dumbest injury was stabbing myself in the eye with a screwdriver. We has seen The Magnificent 7 so of course we had to play Magnificent 7 and of course we all wanted to be ‘the knife guy’. So we had a contest to see who could be the knife guy. Not being allowed to play with knives we used a screwdriver. We set up targets in the lawn and were trying to see who could throw the knife and make it stick in or near the target. We somehow had the hard plastic tag from a pair of Wranglers jeans. Of course my brother was mocking all my efforts and teasing me to rattle me and at one point kicked the target so that it was down between my feet. I threw the screwdriver hard. Oh, did I mention that I was standing on the sidewalk? So the base of the screwdriver hits the target and since it is now on concrete it bounces straight back at me. I must have closed my eyes at the last millisecond. I had to get two stitches on my eyelid.
When we got home we also had to fess up to putting a hole in the garden hose.
You’re kidding! I haven’t been up near Lake George in quite a few years, but now I’m soooo going back. Is the Steamin’ Demon still there?
Anyway, great story about the screwdriver in the eye. Reminds me of when I once had to go to the emergency room for a scratched cornea - I was trying to get a soccer ball down from a tree by throwing a garden rake at it.
Oh, let’s see: When I was about 5, I decided to see if I could jump off the top step of our front porch without hurting myself; I couldn’t. Lost my two front teeth (fortunately, these were baby teeth).
Got hit by a car while riding my bike and not paying attention. Twice.
Accidentally squirted myself in the eye with some sort of chemical in a junior high science class. No lasting damage, but as it happened after Getting Hit By Car Incident #2 it was significant because, when the ER doctor asked me when I’d last had a tetanus shot, I answered “yesterday.”
The incidents where I was doing something stupid and didn’t get hurt are even more numerous: jumping from garage roof to garage roof and missing, walnut fights (like a snowball fight, but with black walnuts), being thrown through a plate glass door by my brother…
<sigh> good times…
I have had many, many stupid injuris in the past, ranging from my earliest memorys of my head and the cement stairs (which I’ll recount), and the slightly later “Hill and Car” story (which I’ll also recount), to my most recent “Accidentally kick the living crap out of the wall” episode. It’s not that I’m clumsy, I’m just miscoordinated.
Take the way-ish back machine to when I was 3 or 4. We were living in Peekskill, NY at the time. I was playing in the back yard. I was specifically playing “Football Guy”. I thought it would be cool to run and make a diving tackle like I had seen on the TV. I failed to take into account the cement steps on the side of the house. Apparently, physics weren’t my strong point at 4 years old. I was carried head first into the edge of one of the steps. I’m not sure if I knocked my self out or not, but I know I didn’t end up in the hospital. I did end up with a nice 2 inch scar, just behind my hair line. I use it to impress the ladies these days.
Fast forward a bit. For those of you that don’t know Peekskill, it overlooks the Hudson river (for the most part). So, there are parts of it that are built on very steep hills. Our house was located near the top of one of these inclines (around the corner from where the founder of the Black Panthers lived apparently). My mother drove an old Toyota Cressida, ir Corona, or something. My mother was going to take myself and my brother (who was about 1 at the time) to grandma’s house. So she deposited me in the car while she ran back inside to retreive my brother. She walks back outside, and much to her surprise, the car is nowhere to be seen. At the time, I likes pretending to drive. Having been left alone in the car, I decided to indulge my fantisy. While climbing from the passenger seat, to the driver’s seat I managed to knock the car out of gear. Remember the hill I mentioned earlier? Well, gravity took over (that lack of physics again), and I began what would be a rather short trip down the hill. Oblivious, I sat there merily “steering” the car until it came to an abrupt stop, lodged into a fence. I managed to escape with only a bump on the head, and some stern reprimands from my mother, but the poor car had the big dent in the hood till the day we got rid of it.
There are pleny more where those came from, and plent more that should have turned out badly (Lawn Darts anyone?).
Holy crap! Same thing happened to me as a kid but I didn’t have the luxury of beign on dirt. The most memorable part about it, besides smaking the asphalt at speed, was watching the front tire continue merrily on it’s way down the street while I sat bleeding on the ground.
Great minds think alike! I tried the same thing with an electric bar fire.
Yeah they still have the Steaming Demon but it’s The Comet that is the good coaster.
With all these bike stories, am I the only one thinking:
Did you take it off any sweet jumps?
I grew up on a dead-end street. One evening, I was out playing in the street with some local kids. We were running around playing some combination of “chicken” and “hide-and-seek.” I was running toward my front yard while looking behind me; when I turned my head around, I went face-first into the side of my dad’s pickup truck (parked under the tree in my yard). I chipped a good-sized chunk out of one tooth, chipped a small piece off the back of another, and got some serious bruises on my face. The impact left a dent in the side of the truck.
You know those rock tumblers that you can buy out of the Sears catalog? Gray with a red tumbling drum? No? Well, you used to be able to buy them years ago…I have no idea if they still sell them. I am sure you are all familiar with how a rock tumbler works…you place ordinary looking rocks in along with the polishing powder and water, and several weeks later you have shiny rocks that you can use to construct some of the most hideous looking jewelry that any mother will ever be forced to wear.
One day while the tumbler was doing its thing…tumbling, I suppose, my curiosity got the best of me. I picked it up and held it close to my head to listen for tumbling rocks. Somehow, and to this day I am still foggy on this, my lower lip got sucked into the gears that caused the drum to tumble. The drum came to a screeching hault, as my rather ample lower lip did its best job of impeding the motion of the rock tumbler. Finally I was able to free myself from the rock tumbler, with a wonderful gash in my lip, and a slightly hampered sense of curiosity. Within a few days the cut had healed, but sadly my passion for polishing rocks I found in my alley never returned. 
A couple of doozies.
Playing hide and go seek, I once ran smack into my best friend so hard that i bit entirely through my lower lip. When rinsing the blood out of my mouth I noticed water streaming through the hole. That was kind of cool.
Once, in a stroke of non-genius, I tied a string onto one of those firecrackers that spin around rapidly while throwing sparks (I forget what they are called). In my misguided logic I figured they would swing coolly in a large arc while I held on to the other end of the string, looking much like one of those Hawaiian fire dancers. it swung alright, in one big arc ending squarely onto my bicep, where it stuck like a piece of napalm, still burning, for a good 5 seconds before I managed to dig it out.
It was at least a 2nd degree burn, and it HURT. LIKE. A MOTHER–. So what did I do after that? Knowing I’d never hear the end of it from my folks, I decided to hide it from them and treat it myself. I somehow managed to keep it from getting infected and it healed OK, but I still have a rather noticeable scar.
Me, about 4, pleased with my new grown up shoes with LACES! I can’t tie them, but, really, what does that matter? I’m also wearing my bright neon yellow shirt with the great big smiley face on the front. I am running through the house when I trip and smash my face into the door jamb. My sister thought it was funny, because it looked like the smiley face on my shirt was bleeding. I still have a nice scar.
Of course, the better childhood injuries belong to my siblings. My sister: roller skating down our (somewhat steep) street. Realizing too late that roller skates really have no brakes, she valiantly flung herself down on someone’s lawn before she ran into the street at the bottom of the hill. One broken arm later . . .
And then, of course, is the infamous “make sure you know where your little brother is standing before you swing the baseball bat” incident. Followed soon thereafter by the also infamous “make sure you know where your little brother is standing before you swing the croquet mallet” incident. I wonder sometimes how our parents ever had the courage to leave us to our own devices.