Self-inflicted injuries you just missed?

In My Humble Opinion
1

What injuries should you have gotten through your own stupidity but were fortunate enough to have avoided? For example:

As a teenager, I worked as a handyman/gardener for an office building. One day, I had to haul out 20 - 30 flourescent light bulb tubes and put them out for trash pickup. Since they were 5 - 6 feet long, they didn’t fit in the garbage can - so I took a hammer and rapped a bunch in the middle, to break 'em in half. Of course, having a vacuum inside, they imploded right in my face. I was completely freaked out, but when I opened my eyes (I didn’t remember closing them), nothing had happened - I had bits of glass in my hair and eyebrows, but nothing in my eyes.

To this day, I shudder when I think about how close I came to blinding myself.

2

I almost got bitten by a snake. Jumped out of the way as soon as I saw it and ran blubbering like an idiot.

I also almost ran into a spiderweb with an enormous resident. I don’t know how much injury I’d have sustained from the bite, but I’d probably have died of a heart attack - I really am afraid of spiders.

3

I ended up getting injured, but the injury could be MUCH MUCH worse than it was.

We were getting rid of some excess timber in our back yard and were felling trees. One dead, rotten tree was in danger of falling in an undesirable direction, and was too large to be dropped whole (I had a 1 1/2 foot electric chainsaw), so I took our ladder… the aluminum telescoping kind roofers use…and went up to pare the top and major branches.

All of a sudden, I hear a loud crack from below, and the scenery up there starts changing…I am thirty feet up in a falling tree!

I drop the chainsaw and jump to another tree as the rotten trunk just misses our toolshed.

Shimmy-ing down, I wiped the sawdust from my face, and noticed the gash on my forearm…when I had dropped the saw, the running blade had nicked me.

I only needed 7 stitches…wow.

4

Holy crap, Enola. I hope you changed your underwear before you went in for those stitches.

I’ve pulled a couple of boneheaded stunts in my day. The closest to death I’ve come was probably rock-climbing in Mexico. I went up a chimney, thinking I was about to crest the edge, grabbed the rim, and hoisted myself up to look over–

–and found that I was lying on a refrigerator-sized boulder that was lodged in the chimney, with a hundred-foot drop straight down on the other side. If the rock I was on had been dislodged, I would have had a short but exhilarating sled ride down a sheer cliff face, and the authorities would have had to collect my corpse with sponges.

There’s an even closer brush with severe injury, though, further back in my childhood. I was playing hide-and-seek with my brother and father on the construction site of our future house. The foundation was poured, and the framing and siding was mostly up, but it was definitely incomplete.

I was hiding behind a stump about fifty feet in front of the house. My dad found my brother pretty quickly, and then started looking for me. I managed to whisper my brother over to where I was, and gave him my distinctive brown hooded sweatshirt to act as a decoy. (Pretty clever for a nine-year-old.) When he got my dad to follow him to the other end of the house, I took off running for home base, which was the sill of the front door, at a height of about two feet off the ground (the soil around the foundation hadn’t yet been filled in).

My dad saw me and raced back, so now we were in a dead sprint for the base. Right before I got to it, though, I tripped on something and went flying headlong. Through sheer luck, I didn’t crush my head on the side of the foundation; instead, my outstretched hand slapped down on the sill, and I whumped face-first into the dirt and rolled over, crowing, “Safe!”

But my dad had skidded to a stop behind me and was staring down at my leg in shock and horror. I follow his gaze, and I see that while I was in midflight a protruding bit of rebar has sliced open my pants on the outside hem from mid-thigh to ankle. An eighth of an inch closer to the foundation on that side, and I would have had a nasty scratch. Another quarter inch and I probably would have bled to death before I got to the hospital.

That’s the last time I’ve played stupid games on a construction site.

5

Real injury. scott evil and a block of real Parmesan. My bf at the time would bring back food from his Italian grandmother. Lovely frittatas, canneloni… and huge blocks of Parmesan.

I’m in the midst of making chicken cacciatore, and started slicing up some Parmesan from the block. Upward. Stupid. Slice, slice, slice, OW!! I sliced my finger up. A big flap of skin just hanging there.

There was blood everywhere, on my (then) new cutting board, so I managed to clean it up. I then somehow put on my sneakers and tied them up, left my bf a message, and made my way up to the hospital, which was up the street. “I’m sorry, dinner will be late tonight, because I sliced up my finger.”

They used superglue instead of stitches, and I got into at least one argument with the asshole attending physician.

I still have the scar.

6

What awful coincidence. Mine happened today. Just a few hours ago, I started on my first quilt ever. I’ve done a lot of sewing and embroidery and such, but I’d never tried my hand at quilting before.

The modern quilter has a nifty tool at his or her disposal - these neat rotary cutters. They’re lethally sharp. Deadly weapons. If the safety isn’t on, you could seriously kill yourself with one.

Now, I’ve never really injured myself in the fabric arts, even though they’re full of sharp, dangerous, pointy objects. I have, for instance, an extremely good pair of dressmaker’s shears that I’ll undoubtedly be wielding in hand to hand combat in the streets come the revolution. I’ve never sewed my fingers, for example, although my aunt has. I’ve never cut myself, although my friends have. I’ve never been trying anything on and gotten blood all over it because I forgot to take important pins out, although I know people who have. The worst to happen to me is that I’ve every so often dropped pins and found them with my feet, which is painful but not crippling, especially since I never really drove one in with my full weight or anything.

So I’ve got this new sharp awful thing. Not an hour into owning it, I managed to carelessly brush my left thumb against the blade and cut myself - not too badly, and it didn’t look deep, but I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding for ages. Need I reiterate, this is one sharp nasty Wheel of Death. So I’d been trying to be extra careful, trying to train myself to put the safety on whenever I set it down, no matter for how long. And I was doing well.

Except this one time.

That time I knocked it off the table with my elbow and came this close to mostly severing half my foot with it. I found reflexes I had no idea I had to jump out of the way, and I don’t even know where I jumped to. Thing cut a hole in the rug and embedded itself sticking straight out of the wood floor.

:eek:

But, once I pulled it out of the floor I got a lot of good work done and have almost finished my quilt top. :slight_smile:

7

One day I had just started work, and was making my merry way to the espresso machine, when my foot caught the edge of the thick rubber non-slip mat.

I still don’t know how I moved fast enough to catch myself, but the next thing I knew I was staring at the long metal edge of the machine, a concussion that might have knocked me unconscious, about a half inch away. “Wow,” I remarked, “that could have sucked.”

There’s also the time I was cutting string (string!) with my beautiful new work-knife, and managed somehow to bury it in my big toe. Took three unanaesthetized stitches. How is that a missed injury you say? Well, by my calculation, considering the angle and the sharpness of the knife, if I’d hit a half inch or so lower there’s a good possibility I would have disjointed the toe like a butcher, or taken it off entirely … I would never have lived that down.

8

Well…last week I was cutting a watermelon and it slipped. I sliced right through a fingernail. It bled and hurt but if it had been about a quarter of an inch higher I probably would have had to visit the hospital for stitches. Just to make things even more painful, the watermelon dropped on my foot. Owie.

But my daughter…she’s the real talent in the family. At six she lost the end of her finger in a car door and had to have reconstructive surgery. After several near misses and bumps n bruises, last year she sat on a double eyed needle. After much painful tugging we were off to the hospital. The EYE was lodged in her thigh bone.

And my ex-husband takes the cake. He was backing up a forklift at work and rolled right out of the bay when the guy driving the truck started backing up. Luckily his chubby body just rolled right out the side and he only had a few bruises.

9

I had two fun ones in my boneheaded pre-teenage years. One happened when I was, for some reason, trying to cut a golf ball in two. The knife I was using slipped and rammed right into the flap of skin between my thumb and index finger, puncturing right through in a single clean cut. Hurt like hell, but idiot that I was, I just slapped a band-aid on it and hoped no one would notice. I’m amazed I didn’t get an infection.

The other happened around the same time. We had these cheap plastic chairs with metal legs in grade school. Some of the kids did this dangerous game where they’d stand on the chair, lean it forward, and “walk” off as they fell. Being an awkward, non-athletic adolescent, I thought I’d try it. Didn’t happen; I fell off, landed under another chair, and sliced right under my thumb on a loose piece of metal. I ended up with a big flap of skin hanging off, and my hand was slowly turning blue. (And to prove that I’m not the only idiot in the world: the school nurse just slapped a big band-aid on it.)

Still have the scars from both.

10

I’ve hurt myself so many times, and I suppose most of them could have been much worse, but three really stick out in my mind.

The first one happened on my friend’s trampoline. I wasn’t jumping and my friend wasn’t jumping, so I was just standing there on an unmoving trampoline. For some reason I decided to take a step backwards, and I got my foot all tangled in the padded area and began to fall. The way I started falling I would have landed on my back, at a slightly downward angle, most likely injuring my neck. Somehow I had the reflexes to turn myself around just in time to sprain my elbow and nothing else.

Another time I was at a friend’s house and we decided to jump out of this approximately 20 ft tree into a 2 1/2 ft deep canal. Stupid I know, but that’s not where the problem came in. The problem is that this canal was in Florida where there are hungry alligators swimming around that would enjoy injured morons like myself. So the last time I jumped I sort of hurt my foot anddecided it wouldn’t be wise to jump anymore. Later, I was just sitting in the tree and saw a couple baby gators where a short while earlier I had been. The way I figure, if there were baby gators, mama gator was not too far away (the water was so murky that even though it was shallow I couldn’t see the bottom).

The third one also involved jumping into water from high places. Luckily, this time my friend’s dad and uncle had checked the water before I jumped in to make sure there were no jagged rocks and such. We all decided to climb this cliff that was about 25 ft up. The only problem was that on the middle of this cliff face there was a rock that stuck out about 5 or so feet, so I would have to get a running start to clear it. I had been hesitant about it the whole time, so as I was running and about to jump, I slowed just a little. I cleared that rock by mere inches. The dumbest thing was that I went back up to do it again, but had enough sense to realize that it probably was not the best idea, so I climbed back down.

11

I was once using a chainsaw to clear brush on a piece of property I had bought. While cutting saplings at ground level I had badly over-reached on one. When I finished the cut the saw swung around from the force I was exerting and hit my leg just above the ankle. I looked down fully expecting to see gushing blood and waited for the onrush of the pain.

Fortunately, neither happened. I had shredded the leg of my blue jeans, left a nasty mark on the upper portion of my leather boots, and had even nicked one of the eyelets for the laces but had not hit skin.

I did take a break after that to let the adrenalin rush die down somewhat (and change my underwear) before continuing the brush cutting with a much greater regard for personal safety.

12

Well, I once fell down a well, when I was 14.

I know, it’s a bit hard to believe, but it happened. I was visiting my father in the cold wilderness of New Hampshire – in the winter, it gets so cold up there that vinegar freezes. It’s a drafty house, which would be an issue if it were heated. Or if you had hot water.

Hot water, it turns out, can be made by use of the wood stove, or she-who-is-all-that-is-warm. I believe the mice stage pagan rituals around the cast-iron glow in veneration, either that or they are unhappy with the frozen crackers and vinegar supply and have been attempting to destroy us all.

The problem with gaining hot-water for cooking and defrosting oneself is exacerbated by access to water itself – the pipes being long since frozen by the chill N.H. air, water access is obtained by the well. Made of stone. With no pump. And covered with feet of snow. And a well cover – ok, an old heavy door, if you must know.

So one must dig out the house, obtain the bucket, dig out the well and get water, dig out the woodshed, and gain wood (A cardinal rule of wood heating is you never have enough wood.) and start the fire to heat the water.

That’s a job well done. But wait? Where’d you put the car?

Right.

You have to dig a parking space.

Did I mention the snow drift by the dirt road hits 7 feet by 4 feet?

Yep. You’ve got to move a roughly car sized pile of snow weighing a metric ton in weight – then dig the path to the house (only 30 feet), then the house, the path to the woodshed, the well cover, get the water…

Hey, did I mention it’s getting dark now? Have you eaten yet? Nah.

Dad sends you back outside to finish the job. Overtired and hungry, and now in darkness, I lifted up the heavy well cover, and took a step forward to gain purchase with both hands. Woosh – into the well! Bang! Well cover comes back over you!

Fortunately the well was about 4 feet in diameter, and I somehow braced myself on both sides of the rough-hewn stone. Of course, I was cold, and wet, and in a relatively quiet and dark place. OK, not so quiet for long, as I began shouting – fortunately my father came running, and yanked me out. I was a little scraped up, and only my feet were wet.

But, whew! Could’ve been a lot worse.

13

Scuba Diving, James River, 1978.
We were doing this STUPID game called “bow jumping” on this big dive-boat owned by a friend of mine.
We’d finished our dives for the day and were heading back to port. The tide was heading out and we were heading upriver, making our ride choppy and bouncy.
We don their rubber-soled boots, stand on the bow while the boat’s in motion, and JUMP into the air when the bow reaches it highest point while going over the waves. While said idiot is in the air, the boat falls down from under him and, with any luck, the diver lands back on the deck as the deck is still in downward motion.
The hazards?.. one could twist or break an ankle; or a breaking a leg if the boat is now on the way back UP when one lands; landing on a cleat (ow, Ow, OW!)
Me? I must’ve jumped a bit forward as I jumped up because
I MISSED THE BOW OF THE BOAT ENTIRELYON MY WAY BACK DOWN!
I had the presence of mind to stay underwater for a few seconds because I felt the prop-wash from the motor jostle me as the boat sped over my head. The spinning prop may have missed me by only inches. But I heard them kill the motor and that’s when I surfaced…well behind the boat.

14

Ooo, I remembered another one. This wasn’t entirely my fault, but my dumb choice at the beginning certainly didn’t help.

Years and years ago, I’m with several fellow highschoolers getting ready to leave for a drama conference. We’re meeting at the school early in the morning. I’m with a small group, and we’re wondering where the others are; then we remember we’re supposed to be in the other parking lot. Everybody piles into one car, but there isn’t room, so I climb on the guy’s hood, expecting him to just drive slowly over to the other side of the school.

Nope. He floors it and starts weaving back and forth, cackling. I hang on tight; I want to pound on the windshield to tell him to stop screwing around, but I don’t have a free hand, as I’m doing everything I can to stay on the hood. With him gunning the engine and laughing, he can’t hear me yelling at him.

Then I start to slip off the hood, and I realize I’m about three seconds from going over the side and probably falling under the tires. As I slide, I somehow manage to get a foot up partly against the side of the car and shove, launching myself away.

I plow into the pavement, taking most of the blow first on my shoulder and then on my opposite hand as I roll over. No broken bones, but deeply gouged flesh. Considering the alternative of crushed legs, I count myself lucky.

The driver feels like an idiot, of course, and being the passive-aggressive teenager I was I decide I’d rather play the martyr and eschew the hospital in favor of going along to the conference and making him feel miserable the whole time by my incapacity. I didn’t actually need medical attention; after I pick the gravel out of my palm, I’ve basically just left with really bad road rash. Even so, I punished the guy pretty severely, playing up my injuries like a typically melodramatic adolescent. It worked, too; he felt like a total schmuck. Not undeservedly, of course, but then it was my own stupid idea to get on the hood in the first place.

15

When I was young and stupid, I made NitroGlycerin. I got a rush of blood to the brain, and quietly disposed of it by pouring it onto sand and burning it off. I count myself very fortunate to still be here.

16

Whilst ironing, I bumped the board with my hip. For one second I stuck my hand out to catch the hot iron, which was falling hot side down. The stupid factor occurred to me in time and I pulled my hand back.

17

One time when I was a kid, I was splitting some logs with an axe. I missed a log and the blade of the axe slapped off of my shin. If it hit straight on, I would’ve split the bone.

Another time, I was trying to light a propane (taste the meat not the heat) barbecue that had one of those clicking, push-button spark lighters. Well, I turned on the gas and was clicking the button, but it wasn’t lighting. So I decide to figure out why by sticking my head in there while trying to light it. I clicked it a few more times, and WHOOSH! It lit with a big blue fireball. I know it was blue because my eyes were wide open. The flames were momentarily surrounding my head. Luckily the fireball was too short to do any damage.

It turns out the insulation on the wire leading to the ignitor had melted, and the spark was jumping across the hole the wire came up through in the bottom of the barbecue instead of up at the spark plug. Eventually, when enough gas had built up inside the BBQ, it reached the spark.

18

So I’m in the supermarket today looking for instant potatoes when I hear over the loudspeaker, “Will the owner of a gray car come outside? Your car is smoking.”

Wow, sucks to be that guy, I thought with Homer Simpson-like blissful ignorance. Good thing I own a light blue car.

I’m still looking and again I hear, “Will the owner of a gray Volkswagon come outside? Your car appears to be… on fire?”

Good thing I own a light blue Horizon.

I go to the checkout line and I look out the window and see my car ablaze.

Long story, short: My car dripped oil onto faulty wiring K-19 style with silimar results. I’m just happy I wasn’t in it.

19

I did get injured, but it was nowhere nearly as bad as it was.

I was 14, a freshman in high school, it was early fall, and I was angry. I went out to swing on my front porch swing to calm down.

My house is built on a slope, so that one end of my porch is about 18 inches off the ground, and the other is about 8-9 feet or so. The porch swing is on the latter end.

I must’ve been swinging pretty hard (since I was angry), and one of the porch swing chains broke, sending me plummeting off the back onto the ground several feet below. I landed on my side, breaking a few ribs.

I was very lucky I did not hit my head on the edge of the porch going over, or land on my back on the ground, both of which would’ve been very. very. bad. :eek:

20

One Summer I worked as a clean up boy in a laboratory. They used a lot of glassware, which I sterilized by baking in a regular kitchen oven. Sometimes, if all the chemicals hadn’t been cleaned off, they’d bake onto the glass. Then the only way to clean the glassware was to soak it in a vat of acid.

The acid vat was in a fume hood, behind a plexiglass window. You had to use tongs to put the glassware in and take it out, and wear huge rubber gloves. These gloves were so old and acid-soaked that your fingers would tingle if you kept them on for more than a couple minutes.

When I started the job, the supervisor told me the regular duties, then rattled off 5 or 10 extra jobs for when I had spare time. One of these jobs was to clean the acid vat.

Well, one day I decided to be an eager beaver and do it. I put on the big rubber gloves, got the acid disposal canister, and put it in the fume hood. All I had to do was pour the acid into the canister, then seal the canister. Seemed simple.

The canister was a bit tall, so I had to lift the acid vat to about face level to position it so the acid would pore in. The vat was pretty slippery, and with the big gloves, and the tingling fingers, it was hard to hold onto. To make it easier for myself, I rested one end of the vat against the plexiglass, on the inside of the fume hood. I had to lean backwards a little, to balance against the weight of the acid vat. This worked pretty well, and I started to pour.

The glue in the frame of the plexiglass door must’ve been eaten away by the years of exposure to the acid fumes, or at least that’s what I figured later. But what happened was the bottom of the door frame broke loose and the plexiglass popped out. I fell backwards as the frame gave way, still holding the vat of acid.

I landed on my back, and the acid spewed out of the vat. Luckily, I was still clutching the plexiglass door in my arms, like you’d carry a load of wood. The plexiglass was between my face and the acid, so the acid ran off over the plexiglass, which shielded me.

I got up as quick as I could and didn’t get any acid in my hair. A little bit ran down the inside of my shirtsleeve, but I washed it off before it burned my arm.

If it hadn’t been for the plexiglass, the whole thing never would have happened. But given it did happen, if it hadn’t been for the plexiglass, I wouldn’t still be the fine looking specimen of human being you see before you. :smiley: