Inspired by something I did yesterday which we’ll get to shortly: what’s are some dumb things you’ve done which resulted in you hurting yourself?
I’d prefer recent examples from adulthood in which you should’ve known better, since as kids we all probably did really stupid stuff all the time. (Like the time I threw a sharp rock up in the air, then decided to catch it. Stitches).
I’d also like to steer away from anything criminal like driving drunk or anything that resulted from being drunk / getting high / etc.
Just normal everyday things that in retrospect you can’t believe you did.
For example. After coming back from errands yesterday, I was unpacking groceries and household items, then decided to sit down on the couch to have some club soda I had just purchased.
So I opened the bottle, which was of course shaken up from the journey, and it sprayed all over me. I then proceeded to run into the kitchen while it was spraying everywhere to put it in the sink. In the process of dodging a cat I planted my foot squarely in the soda soaked tile floor and wiped out, hitting my head pretty good.
As I sat there staring at the ceiling while the rest of the dropped bottled spilled club soda onto the floor and my clothes, it occurred to me that I could have simply twisted the cap shut rather than run through the house with it spilling everywhere.
The laughing made my head hurt more. (Morbo was pleased, but sticky).
Once I went to unplug my PS2 and instead of grabbing the base of the plug as we’ve all been taught to do, I grabbed the cord and yanked. Hard. The plug flew out of the socket and struck me in the face. Four years later and I still have a little notch over my eyebrow from it.
Ah, yes, well what about the thing that I almost did. Does that count?
One day while holding a running hair dryer to the section of my hair that I had just colored, I decided to multi-task and brush my teeth at the same time. Thank God my sanity returned before I started. :smack:
Never done that, but when I’ve had blood blisters under my nails, I’ve had to heat a needle red-hot and burn through the nail to relieve the pressure. Also have had to do that for my son. The smell of burning nail isn’t exactly pleasant.
The time: 1994
The place: Church parking lot after Homecoming
The incident: My friend and I decide to sit on my other friend’s trunk as she does relatively slow circles in the parking lot. After a while, I get bored with it and jump off. While the car is still moving. A homecoming dress does very little to cushion your fall when your relatively skinny hip hits asphalt. I ended up with a bruise approximately the side of my head, and had trouble walking for days. Amazingly, it took a week for my mom to notice it. I told her “I fell.” Which was pretty much right.
Also, this one isn’t my story, but it was a former co-worker’s. He was a courtroom bailiff, and like the lawyers, was required to wear a suit to work. In the morning, he realized that his shirt needed some ironing, after he put it on. He ironed it WHILE HE WAS STILL WEARING IT. He ended up with a huge burn on his neck that looked like a hickey.
Nicest guy on earth, but definitely missing out on some common sense.
You know, whenever someone is collecting stupid product warning labels, sooner or later up comes the legendary “Do not iron clothes while on body” label on some brand of iron. This story just confirms, for me, that behind every stupid warning label is at least one incredibly stupid customer.
Open freezer door
Open fridge door without closing freezer door
Lean down to grab the thing I was actually looking for that wasn’t in the freezer after all
Stand up…
Awaken laying flat on the floor after having knocked myself unconscious by hitting head on unclosed freezer door
Maybe I should start wearing a helmet while in the kitchen!
Just thought of another one. I’ve owned a Subaru for many years - the doors don’t have a metal frame around the windows, so when I get in the car with the window down I barely have to open the door before getting in. Every time I’m using a rental car and I get in with the window down I stab myself in the shoulder on the metal window frame.
I’ve told this before, but pouring a half-gallon of boiling honey on my feet is still right near the top of my list.
Grabbing the metal screen covering a roaring fire is wasn’t my smoothest move, either.
Just last week I climbed on a shelf in the pantry to run a cable from the floor above, not remembering that thin and poorly supported plywood is generally unlikely to support nearly 200 pounds on its edge. Tumbling backwards, I managed to break my fall by cleverly catching the sheet metal corner of the furnace with my shoulder blade.
These things always come as a surprise to me. Apparently I’m not nearly as graceful as I think I am.
I’ve been sewing for more than forty years, so you’d think I’d know better by now. Still, I got my finger in the way of the presser foot and the next thing you know, clunk, needle through the finger and broken in three pieces. (the needle, not the finger) Ow, ow, ow. I pulled the third piece out with my teeth after I popped the finger into my mouth.
Last night I walked out on my friend’s porch to discover him trying to start his propane grill while smoking a cigarette. <click> <click> <click> “I think I’m out of propane…” <click> <click>
Place: Blacksmithing class
Incident: Set my hand down on a step vise while waiting for someone to finish putting his work back in the forge. Did I mention he’d just taken his work out of the vise?
(hot shoe + cold vise) -> (less hot metal + really hot vise + embarrassing conversation with instructor).
Tried to be a White Knight for the love of my life, my second ex-wife…her POS car had the alternator go out and she was broke. I found a semi cheap reconditioned one, drove 90 miles south after work, arriving at dusk. First part went well…installed alternator and new belt using makeshift lighting…checking my work, with the car running ( :smack: ) I decided I heard a rattle…went to check tightness of bracket and three of my fingers on my right hand brushed against the serpentine belt, and took a trip around the newly installed alternator pulley… :dubious: pardon me but FUCK that hurt. Two of the fingers still don’t have feeling above the second knuckle.
I was trying to poke a hole in 6 sheets of paper at once with a little awl, and it wasn’t working. So I sat down and tried it again. It worked this time, and put a good dent in my finger too, since I’d been using that as a brace. Clever. I’m amazed I didn’t bleed all over the place.
I was fiddling around with my new mp3 player and trying to disconnect it from my computer. I pulled the cord out and my hand whacked into the brand-new full glass of water I had in front of me on the computer desk. Water flooded everywhere all over my rather cluttered desk. As I look at my desk at this moment, there are two water glasses in front of me…
A few years ago, my electric can opener crapped out in the middle of trying to open a can of coffee. I couldn’t find another can opener, so I decided to pry it open with an enormous knife.
Several hours later, as the doctor stitched up the bone-deep gash in the heel of my palm, he asked what the hell I’d been doing in the time between the injury and my arrival at the ER. I told him “Well, first I rinsed it out, then I bandaged it up, and then… I made coffee.”
When one is cooking and, for reasons that have been blessedly lost to the ken of mankind (probably I tripped over one of the lines in the linoleum flooring), trips, while carrying a boiling hot pot, it’s really a better idea to let the pot fall to the ground rather than to try catching it. Even if one does connect with the pot, it’s unlikely that one will be able to prevent it from falling and spilling, and whether one catches it or not, one has just issued a hand-written invitation for a nice burn on the hand.
Similarly, it’s usually a much better idea to get out the blasted hot pads rather than trying to bare hand something. Even if it is only aluminium foil, and one is only going to hold it for a second or two. You’ll get away with that much of the time, but the times you don’t are far more annoying than the times you don’t.
I still have a scar about a half-inch long on my left thumb that I got from a butterknife. I was making dinner, and I was using a new jar of some spice. Since I needed a lot of it, I wanted to pull off the little plastic inner lid with the holes punched in it so I could spoon out the spice. I tried to pry it off with a butterknife, something I’d done dozens of times in my life. It slid off this time and took the one-in-a-million shot of burying itself right into the side of my left thumb, which had been wrapped around the spice jar.
I put a tourniquet and a bandage on the wound and finished dinner. When it was still oozing blood and not closing the next day, I figured I should go to the hospital. By then it was too late to do anything but use butterfly stitches and give me a tetanus shot. Everyone in the ER was laughing at me.