When I was 12, or thereabouts, my brother and I were playing with firecrackers - since banned in NZ, for reasons which escape me - I was sudenly seized with the bright idea that if I lit a firecracker, dropped it into a glass medicine bottle and then screwed the metal cap on very quickly, the results might be instructive and amusing.
23 years on, amusing is not the first adjective that springs to mind, although Ill still go with instructive. Bang goes the cracker, while Im still trying to screw the cap on - me leaning straight over the bloody thing, said metal cap is propelled into my right eye at a a rate of knots. Fortunately I wore glasses at the time, which did much to slow the hurtling projectile, but I was damned lucky not to lose an eye: as it was they were washing glass shards out of my eye for 3 hours, I scratched my cornea quite badly, and I sustained a massive black eye. Ah, happy days.
Most people, when they hear things like “broken arm, needed surgery under general anaesthetic, six weeks in plaster with wires through the elbow, still has the scars after twenty-five years”, don’t immediately associate them with “piggy-back racing”. I feel proud to have bridged this conceptual divide.
(Just tripped and landed badly… no conspicuous stupidity involved, unless you count failing to forge a sick-note from my mother in the first place.)
Our neighbors (“Grandma” and “Grandpa”; they often babysat us) had a stairwell in their garage that went down to their basement. The top of the stairwell wall was next to where they parked the car, and the door at the bottom had a light over it. When Grandpa was at work and the car was gone, Grandma would often sit in her lawn chair in the garage to watch the world go by, and I had my own kid-sized chair. At age 4 I was already a voracious reader, and I decided that the light in the darkened garage was better over by that light over the door . . . right next to the edge of the stairwell . . . the rounded asphalt edge . . . I and my chair made a quick descent six feet to the bottom.
Lucky I didn’t break my neck. There is a picture of me and my fat lip in the bathtub that night.
In a moment of disgust at my PITA brother, I left the house via the back door. Tried to slam the storm door on my way out but put my arm through the glass instead.
Take one split rail fence, mix with one 12 year old with a desire to walk along the top of it while having a poor sense of balance and you have one of the most interesting spots that requires stitches.
Most kids liked their local playgrounds. Most kids had lots of fun hours on them, playing imagination games and just goofing off with their friends. Not me. Early on, I learned to recognize my playground as a battlefield, and each trip down to it as a new opportunity for pain and anguish.
The first one. When I was 6, I failed to notice the giant, 15-foot tall steel jungle gym. Until I walked directly into it, that is. Shattered my glasses across the bridge of my nose, had an eyepatch An EYEPATCH! One thing that should never happen to a 6-year old! And since my dad was in the army and I went to a military hospital, the eye patch was camouflage patterned. Oh. My. God. Only thing worse than a normal eyepatch is an eyepatch that would disappear into the foliage if you happened to find yourself in a jungle.
When I was 6, I foolishly accepted a dare to jump off a very high swing. Broke my right elbow. My cast was camouflaged patterned. It was also the middle of summer, and chickenpox was making the rounds among my friends. Let me tell you, having a cast o an arm that is hot and itchy is pure and utter hell.
Just a month after I got my cast off from the first break, I fell off a playground bridge and broke my other arm. Mind you, the playground bridge was only 3-feet off the ground and hanging over cushioning sand, so I proved myself to be very ingenious as a child when it came to hurting myself. But at least this cast wasn’t camouflaged. It was bright, neon pink. Stupid late-80s. Stupid playgrounds.
This isn’t my own, personal story, but…
You know how, when you’re little, people say to you “If your ball goes into the road, DON’T CHASE IT”? Yeah.
My father and his brother were playing catch. They must have been about 10 and 6 at the time. My uncle threw the ball to my father, who failed to catch it. It rolled down an embankment and into the road. As the Failed Catcher, it’s my father’s responsiblity to get the ball. He does so, and is immediately hit by a car and knocked unconcious. My uncle, seeing his brother lying in the road, runs back to the house. Instead of, say, going in, he rings the doorbell. When my grandmother answers, he says, “Mom, Mom, Sandy got hit by a car and I think he’s dead!” Chaos ensues. Meanwhile, the woman who hit my father has stopped and taken care of him. My grandmother was pleasantly surprised to find him alive, but with a broken arm.
She still tells this story to embarass him at all family gatherings.
I have a similar story. My sister once locked me out of the house when I was about 13 or so. I proceeded to hammer on the storm door with my fist until it shattered. Cut myself pretty badly; my sister got in a lot of trouble.
Sliding on a hardwood floor is fun!
Sliding on your knees on a hardwood floor is fun!
Sliding on your knees on a hardwood floor and taking a major chunk of wood in one knee is not fun.
There was pain and blood.
There was an upset mother.
There was an “I told you so!”
There was probably also a grounding. I think my folks carpeted the bedrooms shortly after that.
This isn’t my injury, but I was right there and didn’t stop it, so of course I feel responsible. But you can’t tell teenage boys anything.
The twin boys across the street had a built a fort on stilts, probably 15 feet high. You had to climb up the supports to get in…there was no ladder. And of course, when it was hot, we all climbed out onto the roof. There was a tree right next to the fort, about the same height. So the twins and the boy up the street and my girlfriend Kelly and I are all in the fort, and the boys decide that instead of climbing down, it would be more sensible to just jump out into the tree from the roof and let the tree bend down and deposit them on the ground. Whether this idea was inspired by the presence of us girls is debatable, but at the time we did tell them not to be so stupid. Twin One makes the leap and is deposited on the ground. Boy up the Street leaps, grabs tree and instead of tree bending over, he ends up sliding down the trunk (and yes, there were lots of branches in the way) and breaking only his arm.
Needless to say, I learned how to make a splint out of magazines that day, and the fort was off-limits to the whole neighborhood for a good long while.
Oh, god, I have a ton of dumb ones. The weirdest was when my family was stationed in Arizona, when I was three. A neighbor child shoved me into a cactus plant, and I spent a couple hours at the doctor having cactus needles pulled out of my back and my ass.
But the dumbest? Undoubtedly, it was in the fourth grade, when my friend Jimmy and I were horsing around on the school bus after school. We decided to play tug-of-war. With an umbrella. I had the pointy end.
One tug-of-war match later, I had a great, big hole in my forehead, right between the eyes. It wasn’t actually very deep, but it bled copiously. Luckily it didn’t require stitching, just a bandage. The school nurse called my father, and told him that I had had an injury, to the head, and that there was a lot of blood. :rolleyes: My father came to pick me up in a panic. Later on, at home, he took pictures of me, with my mother standing next to me holding my hair out of the way so the wound and bandage were visible, and sent them home to my grandparents. I still have copies of the pictures.
Heh, it’s amazing that any of us made it to adulthood.
Mine wasn’t very catastrophic, but it was bestowed by my sister, kiffa and my brother. I must have been about 6 or 7, they older. My sibs decided to play me like a top. Each grabbed one of my arms, lifted me off the ground, and then ran around in a circle. I’m laughing, having a great time…until kiffa fell. My elbow was dislocated.
For some weird reason, I had a tendency not to say anything about injuries beyond the typical scratch. I said nothing although I was certain that my arm would have to come off. Scared, I went to bed that night. When Mom woke me up the following morning, she realized I was in the same position, cradling my arm. She took me to the doctor’s and I got to wear a cool sling for the rest of the summer.
When I was about 12 I rode a small motorcycle (a Yamaha 80 if I remember right) to a friends house, he lived about a half mile up the road. When I returned home a few hours later, I decided to ride the motorcycle into the back field behind the house.
While I was visiting my friend, my father brought home a recently acquired horse for my sisters. He figured the easiest way to keep the horse in the back yard was to string a fence from the neighbors barbed wire fence to the garage. My father used barbed wire to cover the 30 or so feet.
That 30 or so feet between the garage and the neighbors fence was also the way to the field behind the house. I was doing about 30 mph when I came off the road and through the driveway. I had done this dozens of times. At a point about 5 feet from the new barbed wire fence, I had a sudden thought. “Where did that fence come from???” The motorcycle took out the two lower strands. The third strand hit my arms and the upper strand caught me right in the forhead. I went from about 30 to 2 mph in less than a second. The motorcycle continued on. I then slid along the two upper strands for about 5 feet, going from 2 to 0 mph. I suffered a number of puncture wounds from the barbs and a couple nasty cuts from sliding along the barbed wire. That is also when I discovered the neat foaming action of peroxide on wounds. Still stings thinking about it.
When I was about 4 my best friend, the girl next door and I decided to go dig in the sandbox outside my house. We decided to dig with a claw hammer of all things. Of course you dig with the claw end of the hammer. Well we took turns digging and I decided I wanted to see how deep the hole was and bent over and looked. Well my digging mate decided that was a good time to dig with the hammer and hit me in the back of the head. Six stitches later I got a lollipop. Of course being the nice kid I am I gave it to my friend…
I also had a accident involving an Ironing board at about the same age. We all know how kids love buttons. Well I really did too. My mother had finished ironing and hadn’t taken down the board yet. Well, underneath the board was a little lever. While standing under the board I decided to push it. The ironing board of course collapsed. I bit my tongue in half just about. I had a bunch of stitches, I don’t know how many… According to my mother, I don’t remember this, it was a pretty painful injury and I ate alot of ice cream.
Thhis injury isnt as bad as the other ones but i will never forget it.not really a kid but 12 yo , and a hot glue gun. well i was changing the stick and in my idiocy i pulled the little hot glue trigger thinking that there was no glue left, this caused burning GLUE to be spewed on both hands and inbetween my legs if you get the area im talking about. then in the caveman way of thinking “hot stuff bad” i ripped the glue off of mt hand , taking half of the skin on my hand with it . i was pretty burned and still have a huge scar on my hand and my …er… you know
I was a bit of an injury prone kid. Our doctor used to comment that the only time my brother and I ever turned up to visit him was if it was serious enough to get stitches or land us in hospital. Needless to say I managed that a few times over the years.
About the first major injury was when my older brother and I decided to play “magicians” which consisted of us wearing a cool cape and then hiding in the cupboard and once the door was closed by the “assistant” the person would scramble down under the cape and therefore “disappear” (seemed like a good idea at the time). Until it was my turn and my assistant brother closed the door while I was still getting ready and closed my finger in the hinge. I managed to chop off the top of my index finger so that it was hanging by a strip of skin. I had a great time at the hospital watching them stitch it back on.
Then there are a multitude of horse riding tales to tell that are far too gory and painful to share…
I don’t have a scar on my “you know,” but only because blunt objects don’t cut skin.
I guess I was about eleven when this happened. My skate board was standing on the driveway, and I decided to run up and hop on it and roll away with the momentum from the hop. Did I mention that the driveway had a slight slope? I start running. Up to the skateboard and hop. I get airborn and notice that the skateboard has started rolling without me. “Hmm,” I think, “looks like I missed.” Well, not quite. The toes of one foot hit the kicktail on the skateboard. The skateboard is made of some flexible fiberglass stuff and doesn’t just pop up, it springs up and the tip whipped over and backwards and whacked me with incredible force right between the nuts. Oh, God how that hurt. And kept on hurting. You’ve heard of “blue balls?” I had “black balls” that faded to green before returning to a normal, healthy shade of pink several weeks later.
My older brother challenged me to play leapfrog. Problem: he was 14 and I was 4. So he could leapfrog over me with no problem, but when the time came to switch places, I realized I’d been tricked. Not one to admit defeat, I went back to get a running start. I ran, I jumped over my brother like a gymnast doing a vault…
…and I fell face first into the gravel.
You know, if you cut your upper lip badly enough, it looks like a little red geyser. I think my mother pulled enough gravel out of my face - no, out of my nose alone - to pave our backyard.
Most people have a little indentation in their upper lips where the ridges from the nose come down. Not me. Ever since that day, my upper lip has been shaped like an arch.
When I was about four, I was doing what I usually did, that is to say, jumping around like a frickin’ idiot on top of ridiculously overstuffed 70’s (well, 60’s, accurately,) furniture.
I did a nose dive off of a chair and took it on the chin, which wouldn’t have been that bad, except that my tongue was sticking out a full two inches. At four, that meant that I bit approximately half of my tongue completely off. Oh yeah, it was sittin’ there on the carpet. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that us kids were alone in the house, and we lived in a rural area. My oldest sister was about 12, and she called an ambulance, so that was cool.
Now, you might think that my folks were irresponsible for leaving four kids alone. Not so… You see, a few hours before my mum had rolled her shitty little Cortina several times, and one of her legs went out the window and got completlely crushed, and of course she sustained numerous other injuries. (Us kids didn’t know that at the time.) So my stepfather was at the hospital seeing if she was going to be okay, when he got paged with the message that I was in another hospital.
What I remember is this-- my tongue was black for quite a while, and I think that I ate nothing but “Mr. Freeze” – but that can’t be right.
I had a lithp as a result for a few years, and used to be a hit with the kids, showing off my freakish tongue, which, apart from being (congenitally) really freakin’ long (which is why I bit it in the first place, no doubt,) had a thickish ring of scar-tissue around it, making it look, well, kind of obscene.
The scar-tissue faded away as I grew, so now it’s just a faint line, but sometimes… sometimes I think I would’t have minded keeping the lisp if I got to keep that bumpy ridge, too.
That was a long one, but I do have one more, which is really stupid. I’ll try to be brief:
Remember how in the 70’s, Potato-chip bags (The Twin-Pak’s, that came in the box) were made out of industrial strength vinyl, or something? It wasn’t just because I was a 7yr old weakling… You’d try to pull those things open, and the plastic would just… turn mockingly opaque, and stretch a bit.
Well, one time, I was trying to open one of those with a meat fork– in such a way that when the plastic finally gave, (and it put up a good fight,) I drove the fork directly into my forehead. Where it stuck. In my skull. Oh, I love it when people ask me about those scars.
The funny part was when I went into the livingroom where my sister was gossiping on the phone. I’d been calling for her, at first asking for help opening the chips, and then later when I got the fork stuck in there. I was too shocked to scream or anything, so I just walked in there with the damn thing sticking out of my head, and blood oozing around my fingers.
Well we took turns digging and I decided I wanted to see how deep the hole was and bent over and looked. Well my digging mate decided that was a good time to dig with the hammer and hit me in the back of the head. Six stitches later I got a lollipop. Of course being the nice kid I am I gave it to my friend…
