Reading mega the roo’s thread on bruises, and feeling sorry for myself for being a total non-bruiser, I thought of the collection of scars I do have. And in particular my stupidity scars. I’m not talking about scars I got when falling off my bike, or being hit by a car/train/tactical warhead or anything. No, I’m talking about doing something stupid, being aware that it is stupid, being perfectly able to stop doing such a stupid thing (and not stopping anyway), and ending up with a scar to prove what a dumb asshole I really am.
Here’s my I’m Stupid And I Got The Scars To Prove It list (in order of occurence):
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[li]Soldering with no hands (1987)[/li]Back in the good old days of the C64 I was doing some soldering on a disk drive (remember that big-ass 1541?), and at one point needed both my hands to do something. In stead of putting the soldering iron in the holder I have for it, I put it in my mouth. (I bit down on the handle - I’m not that dumb.) The business end of the iron, a very thin, sharp end, was pointing left. I had to pick up something located to my right with my left hand, and moved my hand very rapidly from left to right. Knocked the iron out of my mouth, and it stuck in the back of my hand. That hurt. Which I expressed verbally. At length.
It got me two weeks’ worth of infection and a nice round scar on the back of my left hand, between thumb and index finger.
[li]Juggling bottles of Coke (1987)[/li]I had to get some Coke from a very hot storage room. It was way back when, when the 1.5 litre plastic bottles weren’t around yet; Coke only came in 1.0 litre glass bottles. I got two bottles, one in each hand, but my grip on the right one wasn’t to my satisfaction. So, in stead of setting it down and picking it up again, I thought it would be a good idea to toss this overheated, overpressurized, GLASS bottle in the air, and pluck it out of that air just so. Yeah, right. The bottles collided, and exploded. Not one drop of that two litres of Coke ended up on me. But a shard of glass grazed the top of my left arm.
Three stitches and a weird-looking squiggly scar, no doubt depicting the Chinese character for “klutz”.
[li]Cutting a piece of rope (1988)[/li]Have to cut a piece of rope, way down near the ground. So, I kneel down, with the left foot flat on the ground. I’m right-handed and start sawing away at the rope. You’re supposed to do that (the sawing) away from your body. Hah! The moment the rope snapped my arm shot out to the left, knife point first. You know that knobbly piece of bone way down on the inside of your leg, the point your foot rotates on? That’s what stopped the knife. (Guess I can call myself lucky on this one. Only one inch up and I’d have plunged that knife in my leg.)
An almost negligible scar, but the shame! Oh, the shame!
[li]Making cucumber slices (1991)[/li]Was going to have my co-workers over for a house-warming party. Decided to make a big thing out the food to serve them. It included a salad which needed (I thought) cucumber slices. I have this thingy over which you slide whatever fruit or vegetable you have to create slices. It even has an extra thingy to impale the fruit or vegetable upon, so as to protect your precious hands. Nope, got hold of that cucumber and started sliding and slicing away. When the cucumber was nearly sliced up I suddenly noticed a strange resistance on a slide. The top of my middle finger (an oval of 5 by 10 millimetres, and about 3 millimetres thick) was dangling along happily, connected by the merest scrap of skin. The initial wonder of seeing all those little blood vessels as a cut-through was replaced by a sudden onslaught of pain. Later, when my slipshod bandage had to be replaced by one of my co-workers, I faced considerable embarrassment by having to give her the finger. :eek:
Amazingly enough, the top of my finger reconnected itself, and after six months I even got back the sense of touch in that part. Nice scar though.
[li]Walking in the dark (1991)[/li]I had to work late and needed to walk through an L-shaped hallway. At either end were light switches. Naw, worked there for three years already, could find my way around blindfolded. Now, you have to know that I have only one way of walking: full throttle. So I start out, and make a perfect left, only four feet too early. I actually heard the echo of my head connecting with the wall. Instant headache. So I start rubbing my head while making my way (still in the dark) to the john to see if I have a black eye. No, but the left side of my face was completely red with some sticky substance, and I had a second (well, third really) eye lid.
Three stitches. Without anaesthetic. Man that hurt. But not as much as it hurt when some nurse rammed a band-air over the fresh stitches, pushing the knots in the suture right into my skull. One plus though. They gave me a tetanus shot with some pep in it. Slept four hours in as many days.
[li]Cleaning the folds in the couch (1995)[/li]Have this leather couch. Where the back connects with the seat there is this folded-over area which is tough to keep clean. So I got the vacuum cleaner, stretched that leather for all I was worth and did the best job possible. But afterward I wanted to make sure there was nothing left in those folds. I actually remember having thought this over for about a minute or so. The best I came up with? I stuck my left index finger into that fold, and moved my finger from left to right. Fast. Really fast. Let’s say about four feet in about a tenth of a second. That’s when I met considerable resistance, and felt a sharp pain in my finger. Got my finger out, saw this tiny pin prick of blood, and felt rising pain. Felt around at the offending spot with my right hand and found a sewing needle. HALF a sewing needle. Now, I’m thinking: was this half a needle all along and did I just stab myself, or was this a whole needle and is the still mounting pain in my left index finger casued by the missing part? How to test? Flexing the finger hurt, but that didn’t prove anything. So I put a small magnet on a table and moved my finger down to it. The magnet jumped up to meet it. Fuck. Called a doctor, went there, showed him the magnet trick. He laughed, the asshole. He then anaesthetized my finger. Which is done by STICKING A NEEDLE IN THE TIP OF YOUR FINGER. Double fuck. Then he got a scalpel, cut open my finger tip, couldn’t find the damned thing, sent me to the hospital for X-rays. Now, that X-ray came out beatiful. About an inch of needle was lodged dead-centre in my finger tip. So they cut up my finger some more. That thing was stuck in such a way, the doctor had to get a pair of pliers and pull with both hands while a nurse held down the finger.
Two stitches. Itty bitty scar. I still have both halves of that needle. Too bad I forgot to ask for a copy of the X-ray. It was really nice.
(Free tip. If you - when you still have your finger bandaged like this - meet some nice girl in a book store, and she has her hand bandaged, and you get this “common ground” thing, and get a good conversation going, do NOT tell her you stuck a needle in your finger. :rolleyes: The junkie connection will freak her out and she’ll split. 
)
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So, how stupid have you been? Think you can beat this? Go ahead, make my day… 
