Most Memorable Childhood Dumb Injury

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I had many, many, many such injuries growing up. The one that stands out in my memory is remarkable not for damage inflicted, but for the embarassment it caused.
I think I was 7 or 8 and having seen a cartoon where someone (probably Daffy Duck) is carrying the cliched “leaky barrel of gunpowder” I decided that I would make my own gunpowder.

I knew that there was a lot of black dust in the bottom of an empty charcoal bag that was in the garbage and I figured that would be a good start. So I got the bag of charcoal dust and proceeded to soak the dust with most of a can of lighter fluid.

Now to see if it worked! I light a match, drop it in the bag and bend over to look inside the bag…
WHHHOOOOOOOOSSSHHHHHH! A huge plume of flame erupts outward and immediately singes off my eyebrows and my bangs. I looked like a 7 year old with a receding hairline. I don’t remember how long it all took to grow back, but I obviously didn’t learn my lesson because I burned my eyebrows off again (via a different method) when I was 15.

42

Actually, I just asked my cousin about this. She said that part of the park is still the Great Escape and part is now Six Flags.

Anyway, for my own dumb injuries. What am I saying? All my injuries were dumb.

Age 5: I had a stuffed pink rocking horse. For some reason I thought it would be cool to rock on my horsie while on my bed. Please note that I slept on the top bunk of a bunk bed. I somehow managed to get the horse up there, started rocking, and promptly fell head-first off the bed. I fractured my skull and there’s at least half an hour that I still don’t remember. I’m also still afraid to get on a bunkbed.

Age 8: Not only got a pencil point in my eye after sharpening it too much and then breaking it, I also got stabbed in the same eye with a fork (compliments of my sister). My eye doctor said I still have 2 tine marks on my eyeball. I did get back at my sister though. Later that same year, I chased her into a pillar in a mall and she broke her glasses - also needed stiches over her eye. What vicious little bastards we were :smiley:

Age 10: While running from one room to another in our house, I (for some unknown reason) slammed the door behind me - and caught my middle finger in it. I didn’t break anything but I did destroy the fingernail and mangle the end of my finger. It took a long time to heal and the fingernail is still slightly deformed.

Also age 10: While washing dishes, I started to wash a glass. Stuck my hand in the glass, not realizing it was broken. Ended up slicing my wrist, bleeding all over the place.

Also age 10, I drove the antique needle of an antique sewing machine right through one of my fingernails.

Of course we can’t forget all the times I’ve managed to sprain my ankles by sitting on my feet so long that I lost all feeling from the shin down. It’s a miracle that I never broke them. One of the sprained ankles happened because I lept over a dog gate, not quote clearing it.

I seem to recall my mother once telling me that she worried she’d be charged with abuse the next time she took me to the hospital. I didn’t have normal childhood injuries.

I’m sure there were more dumb injuries but I don’t remember them at the moment.

43

Reminds me of the day I was strolling along the sidewalk beside our house when I was about 12 or 13. I was somewhat surprised to see a lone bicycle tire go rolling past me. I continued on to find its origin and soon spied our old bike, front fork stuck in the dirt bank next to our driveway, my brother’s black hi-tops visible over the handlebars. I believe he was trying some sort of jump too. Makes you wonder just how bike wheels were supposed to be attached to the frame.

44

Me and my step brother, both 10 years old, in our pajamas, wrestling. I have him pinned, straddling his chest, knees on arms. He has to give up, right? That’s the way it’s always gone before. Not this time. He thrusts his head up and bites me right in my prepubescent nut-sack.

Mad, bloody rush to the emergency room, and several stitches later I learned that the proper term is ‘scrotum’.

There were of course many others, but somehow they all paled in significance after that. Go figger.

45

This one was dumb on several counts…

     Back when I was a kid, you used to be able to buy smoke bombs -- little cylindrical fireworks that jetted clouds of colored smoke.    What fun!    I threw one into my brother's room and managed to burn a hole in the rug.     So I figured that the only way to avoid a deserved parental rebuke was to cut out the damaged section of rug and replace it with an unburned bit.    I started cutting with my pocketknife and, while holding it, turned, caught the back of the blade on a bed and it closed on my finger.     I had a  chance to examine the inside of my finger at length -- as I recall, it took three stitches and I got one of those "you should have known better" looks from the emergency room doc.
46

Playing Tarzan on top of a rock, grabbing a “vine” off of a nearby tree, jumping up only to have the vine run through my hands, stripping all the leaves off as I fell. Onto the rock.

Cracked my head open. Don’t know how many stitches I had. I was about 6.

47

I have a few…

We had this really cool made-up game that we played in the pool called ‘Sharky’ or some such name. It was a version of tag where the ‘shark’ would have to stay in the pool and catch the other players. The steps were home and the other kids were allowed to get out of the pool, and run around it, but they had to get in the pool at least once per side. My strategy was to run the length of the pool and jump in at the corner. See biddee misjudge the corner. See biddee hit her chin on the edge of the pool as she jumps in. See biddee with her first stitches.

A few weeks later, my sister and I decided to see if we could touch the top of the doorframe if I stood on her back. See biddee promptly fall off and bang her chin again. See biddee with her second stitches under her chin. I have a cool little scar now.

I also once decided to run and slide down the corridor in my new slippery sandals. I broke my wrist when I inevitably fell on my ass.

When I was 17 I went bridge jumping with a bunch of drunk guys. Now the water in the river was only high enough to jump off this bridge at high tide. I knew this. The guys offered to jump first to see how deep the water was. They were drunk and limp, they said it was fine. I was sober and jumped about 30ft into chest deep water. Managed to severly sprain my ankle as a result.

My sister once decided to see what would happen if I wore my armbands on my ankles in the pool. I have a very vivid memory of her and her friend standing on the side of the pool watching me while my head was under water and my feet were floating on the top. That wasnt’ the only time she tried to drown me. I must have been about 3 when she decided that it would be fun to play ‘wheelbarrow’ in the bath holding my head under the water while I flailed about. I don’t think she liked me much :D.

She once tried to stop her bicycle with an umbrella through the spokes of the front wheel. Her front tooth is still darker than the other one from the dead nerve.

She got her comeuppance though. Her son, when he was 3 or 4, threw himself off a first floor balcony and hit his head on the concrete step below. They were about 200 miles from civilization and a doctor. Needless to say she was a little worried.

48

In my case, the front forks actually imbeded themselves into the asphalt deeply enough to be bent. The bike stopped abruptly but the tire and I didn’t. I had a few gashes, a lot of scrapes and some nice bruises a few days later. I was trying to pull a wheelie when all this happened.

49

I’m laughing so hard I’m almost sick! My partner shares the following:

When I was seven years old I peddled my blue Schwinn Stingray bicycle (with the banana seat) frantically down the big hill by our house. The idea was to pick up momentum then stand up on the peddles with hands above head.

Curiously, there happened to be a banana in the street and me and my hands-free bicycle hit it. My bike threw me off and I hit the street face-first, sliding about three house lots. The final indiginity was that my bicycle also returned to run over me.

I looked like a Silence of the Lambs victim for three weeks and have a bridge to replace the five permanent teeth I lost. I did gain a more than fleeting fame amongst the daredevil contingency of the neighborhood, however.

50

So do you ever mention to your brother or his SO about that time he had your scrotum in his mouth?

51

Out in the shed one summer morning (I’m ~9), I spotted a wasp on the window pane. OG SMASH with hand=terrible plan. :rolleyes: Window is broken, wasp is probably laughing in nearby tree, stupid me is leaking, badly. Enter house and bathroom where Mom is showering. Scrubbis interrupis. The doc fished out most of the glass, a few more pieces made their way out over the next year or so.

It took me another ten years or so before I learned how to do major self-damage.

52

My dumbest had to be at around age 6. I was upstairs with a friend while our mom’s were downstairs making bourbon balls and sipping sherry. In the play room was a small indoor wooden slide, right next to the cast iron radiator. I decided to walk up the slide part in my socks. My head met the radiator. Hard. I went downstairs to show my mom and she only wantedt o know why I had gotten the red fingerpaints out. It took her a minute to realize it was blood. My favorite part is that my father wasn’t there, he never was when anyone got hurt. So my friends mom has her husband meet us at the ER. We’re all class. I’m bleeding from the head, my mom smells of bourbon and sherry and there’s some guy there with us who isn’t my dad and isn’t her husband. The dr. thought we were wierd. It was just a sign of things to come.

53

I had two serious injuries before age 18, at least one of which was definitely attributable to my own dumbness:

1 - I don’t remember precisely how old I was (maybe 5 or 6?) or precisely what happened, but I somehow managed to ram my forehead into something hard. Result being major bleeding, being rushed to a doctor, getting many stiches put in and having to wear a huge bandage wrapped around my head until the stiches were removed.
That left me with a little permanent indentation in my skull at my forehead’s point of impact with whatever the hard thing was.

2 - I believe I was 17. While driving around for whatever purposes I made a stop at at a bicycle shop to look at tires. This shop was displaying its bike tires on wall hooks that were high enough that I had to jump to get one to look at. After I finished looking at one I of course had to jump again to put it back on the hook. This time when I landed I did so with one foot coming down toes first. CRUNCH! Result: one broken toe and several weeks on crutches.

54

was playing with a friend (squirtguns) and he went home. Turns out he left his squirtgun at my house. So I walked down the block barefoot (violation #1 of Mom’s rules) to his house (violation #2). I could hear him in the back yard, so I walked along the wall inbetween his house and the neighbors (violation #3) and found him in the backyard, which was about 10-15 feet below me. I went to give him back the squirtgun when I noticed it still had water in it…so I squirted him. I mean come on, you cant give a guy back a loaded gun like that. Well, he picked up the hose and started to spray me with it. I ran along the wall toward the front of the house (violation #4). As I neared the end of the wall I began to loose my balance, and it was apparent I was coming off the wall. To the right was only about 6" down, but there was a very large yucca cactus (large pointy spines), so I wasn’t about to go that way. I jumped to the left down 15 feet onto a driveway. Shattered my left heel and hairlined fractured the right. My friends parents had to pick me up and carry me home crying.

Mom yelled at me for 10 minutes about how I was not supposed to be doing what I was. Then she took me to the hospital.

55

When I was ten I decided to plink a large wasp nest with my trusty homemade slingshot. Not being completely dense, I did this from about 20 feet away.

Wasn’t far enough.

I guess it would’ve been, if I had immediately taken off running. But it never occurred to me that dumb insects could put two and two together so quickly. I swatted at them for a moment before running down the street shrieking like a gutshot parrot. I got about 7 or 8 well deserved stings out of the deal.

56

I was in the backyard, swinging from the clothesline T-bar, competing with my friend to see who could land the farthest away after letting go. I landed on my left wrist and broke it.

I don’t remember if I won the contest…

57

Here is the ultimate stupidity

When I was a kid I did the long-time test of manhood of seeing how high on the stairs I had the guts to jump off.

Now in our house the higest stair flight was 7 steps which I had long since mastered. But one time I was visiting a friend and noticed they had 9 steps on their basment stairs. My friend was off talking to his mom, and I decided to skip right past eight, and jump from the very top for a world-record nine steps. Screwing up the courage I jumped and maintained perfect form for about .2 seconds. Then it occured to me these steps where different. Instead of the nice vaulted ceiling staircase area, in this house the floor above pushed into the staircase area.

I smashed my face into the oncoming wall and did one quarter of a back flip landing with my back on the bottom step and my head on the second one. I was laying there stunned, having just traumatised my brain from the front and the back.
The mom heard the loud thump and ran down horrified. Noticing a large bllody dent in the wall and a kid she didn’t really know lying in a heap at the bottom of the steps with blood all over the place(smashed my nose pretty good, but she didn’t know thats where it was from. She called my parents terrified that she would have to explain how I ended up paralysed or dead in her house. She was ready to call the ambulance, but my dad showed up and just gave this look like “How can anyone related to me be so fucking stupid?” gave me a quick consussion test(dad was a doctor) Then took me home all the while sighing and looking at me incredulously.

I was perfectly okay but I still get to hear the story told every family gathering.

58

This story is my brother’s, I never did anything THAT stupid. That I remember anyway…
Anywho, my brother and his friend Kate just got new skateboards and wanted to try them out, but weren’t too confident riding them. So they got to the top of a rather steep driveway, got on their stomachs on the skateboards, and let 'er rip. Only this was a race, so my brother put his head over the end of the skateboard and towards the ground for less wind resistance. He mananged to get his chin all banged up by going down the steep driveway at full speed and it required several stiches. He did win the race though.

Oh, I remember one injury that he did to me the night before we left for DisneyWorld. We were playing on our parent’s bed and pushing eachother. He pushed me too far and managed to push me towards the sharp dresser corner. This tore my eyebrow clean open and required about five stiches. On the night before we left for DisneyWorld.
sigh He was mean to me.

59

Mine was when I was about 6. My parents and I were at a neighbor’s house, hanging out in their backyard. They had a contraption we called the “kiddie bowl”–picture a fairly shallow stainless-steel salad bowl about 3 feet across. The idea was that the kid got inside and sat down and then rocked around.

That was the idea, anyway.

I wanted to play in it, so I went over and stepped down–

–right on the near lip of the bowl.

The other side immediately flew up and clocked me a good one right in the mouth, knocking out one of my front teeth. So here’s this six-year-old kid screaming her head off, blood flying everywhere–what a fun evening!

They took me in the house and it took at least ten minutes (felt like a couple hours at the time) to rinse my mouth out enough that I wasn’t spitting blood.

That was it for me and the Kiddie Bowl. I think the neighbors put it away after that.

60

I am surprised I am not dead.

  1. At my friend’s house we were sledding one day, dragging our sheets of plastic around that they called sleds, when we went onto the roof of a building near his house. It was a small, 1 story building. Of course we were carrying our sleds with us. I accidentaly mouted the sled, and slid off the roof face first, busting up my lip, knocking a tooth out and fracturing my skull. not a good day.

  2. While i was younger i thought it would be a cool idea to ride down the large gravel road close to my house. This was a very steep incline, and it took all of my courage to do it. I took off and was zooming down the hill, i would guess at about 30 miles per hour, when the tires slipped on the gravel and i went head first sliding down the hill on my stomach. ouch. i walked home in tremendous pain. My stomach and face had cuts all over them. My friend and his dad were driving down the road later, and picked up my bike, and my…shoe. The friend still talks about it to this day, how he and his dad found a bent up bike and a shoe, and knew something bad had happened.