For me - 15 minutes ago.
Some loose asphalt, a hole, a slope and my generalised clumsiness all came into play. A couple of people stopped to see if I was OK, fortunately I was only two houses away from home. One of the people who stopped went off to report the hole on the road to the council. I kinda wished I could have seen my fall - apparently I did a somersault before ending up on my knees (and then on my back going ow ow OW). I suspect that by tomorrow I will be finding all sorts of muscles I never knew existed.
So how about you (bonus points if you managed to do it in a public place)
At a homecoming pep rally in the late 90s when they wisely decided to loosely cover the thick cables for the speakers with black cloth which made them not stand out against the paving in the dark. I wasn’t the only sober person to trip over them. Ripped a hole in one knee of my jeans too.
I ride a mountain bike. I went over the handlebars 2 or 3 times last year and can remember one busted knee. I’m sure I’ll get both this year when it warms up.
In February 1998 I went to the island of Guadeloupe to see a total solar eclipse. The next day I drove to *La Grande Soufrière, *an active volcano, where you can drive half-way up, then climb a not-too-strenuous trail to the top. On this sort of trail coming down is always a lot harder than climbing up . . . you’re already tired, the air is thin, you’re probably dehydrated and hungry, etc. At one point I had to jump down from atop a boulder, and miscalculated the distance. I landed on both feet, then kept going, sliding onto my knees. Lacking a first-aid kit, I cleaned the wounds from a bottle of tap water, and put tissues on them to stop the bleeding. Yup, they got infected, and the experience exacerbated my knee problems, which I still have.
This summer. I was sailing a dinghy, and, it being a very hot day, opted out of the wetsuit in favor of swimming trunks. You know that non-slip sandpapery stuff you get on outdoor steps? Yeah, that’s all over the bottom of the boat, which is fantastic for standing on in shoes, and not so fantastic for kneeling on bare-legged.
I play wallyball once a week. Though I strive to use my kneepads correctly, invariably they will get out of place on a dig or something and I will end up scraping one or both of them during the course of a night (about 1.5 hours of wallyball).
In … 2003 maybe? … I was getting out of a hot tub, naked, in the snow. I tripped down the stairs and landed on all fours on the pavement. Cut up both my knees and hands, and somehow ended up taking a huge chunk of skin off the top of my foot. I have a large scar from it still.
I wish I had a better story about my big scar. I might take panache or FordTaurus’s stories. They are much more exciting!
In college. I bought a bicycle to ride around campus, after not having ridden for several years. Within the first few days I ran the bike off the edge of a sidewalk and fell and skinned both my knees.
Ten years ago. My wife and I were riding our tandem bicycle in the SF to LA AIDS ride, and on the last day the route went down the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu and Santa Monica. At one point all the riders had to dismount, go down some stairs, and use a pedestrian tunnel under PCH to get to the next part of the route. Being right at the beach, the concrete steps were very sandy, and I managed to slip on the step the third from the bottom while carrying the unwieldy tandem on my shoulder and came down hard on my knees. Fortunately, the next rest stop was only 5 or 6 miles away, where I was able to get them cleaned out and bandaged up.
In the 1980’s, at a theme park, when I thought it would be a good idea to go down a water slide feet first, on my stomach. The sudden stop at the bottom flipped my feet up, but my knees kept going and gouged into the cement floor of the fairly shallow landing pool.
I still have the scars, and it was in a public place. And yes, it hurt.
Not both my knees - that’d be when I was a kid - but Thanksgiving night I tripped in my own front yard, skinned one knee and sprained the foot on the other leg. Was on crutches for weeks.
Jogging, last summer. I tripped over a ridge in the sidewalk, and really went flying! It was early, so I don’t know if anyone saw me - I didn’t see anyone, anyway, but I was outside of apartment buildings.
Skinned both knees, and the palms of both of my hands. I still have a scar on one knee! I think it’ll completely fade eventually though.
I just skinned my left knew about 12 days ago, and banged it pretty good too. It still hurts a little to walk on. But both knees? I can’t recall when I last did that.