I was making spaghetti once and wasn’t paying attention where my hands were when I went to drain it into the collander. Emptied almost an entire pot of boiling water and pasta over my right hand before the tiny little messengers ran up my neural pathways to my brain to tell me a) I’m a dumbass, b) I should probably stop and apply first aid, c) curling into a fetal position and gibbering would probably be a good idea.
Not really stupid, and I’m not REALLY hurt, but this is too similar to the topic of this thread to be worth starting a separate thread for.
I have a tenderspot on the side of my left index finger–next to my left middle finger.
Why? Because I was playing handbells “four-in-hand” last night. Which means that I had two bells in my left hand, separated by my index finger. But evidently I wasn’t holding them correctly, because I ended up feeling slightly bruised. (I also wasn’t sure I was actually ringing both lefthand bells consistently last night–further evidence of incorrect posture).
But I’m surprisingly tender there today.
Are you really a man?
Or just a caffeine addict?
Wait, is that “Are you really a man? Because that’s hardcore!” or “Are you really a man? Because that was exceptionally stupid?” (Pick your poison! 
)
Either way, I’m really a caffeine addict, with a very high pain threshold.
I have to reference a “Child Cem” moment, because it’s prety stupid.
1979, and I’m 9 y.o., with some friends in a wooded vacant lot on our street. One of my friends had found a 10’x10’ piece of egg-foam (the stuff that’s about 1/2" thick, with the nipples of foam that look great for storing eggs…I’m guessing that’s the derivation of the name…not sure).
Because the foam was so soft, we decided to put it on the floor of the woods under a mulberry tree. We then decided to play “ninja”, and wrestled/karate-chopped/threw one another all over that piece of foam.
The mulberry tree beckoned.
We decided that we would start doing flips from the tree’s lowest weight-supporting branch, about 8-10’ up on the trunk. We started by jumping straight down, yelling “HAI” or something. The foam was purple now from the berries. We were getting purple from the foam. After a certain point, jumping wasn’t enough…I decided to try a flip.
I landed on my left wrist, making a snapping sound. It hurt, but not that badly. I did another flip…and landed on the wrist again. I believe I screamed. What shocked all of us was that the 1/2" of foam didn’t protect us from gravity.
When I ran home, my mom looked at her purple son clutching his purple wrist (turning purpler!) and said that "well…you’re a boy. Get in the car, we’re going to Condell (a local hospital)). Deadpan.
So stupid.
-Cem
The former.
As for the pain threshold, maybe it’s the caffeine. Don’t they put that stuff in aspirin? Or is that just to get it pumped into the blood faster?
My stupid thing: Unhooked the neckstrap from a saxophone I was auditioning in a music store, then let go of the sax. For a brief instant I had ±6 lbs of King Super 20 tenor balanced precariously on a needle spring impaled on the web of my right thumb. Had the left hand not sprung quickly back onto the horn in a viselike grip, the pristine virginity of my thumb web would have been grossly violated.
It seemed simple enough. I needed a new jack directly off the telephone punch down panel to ensure a clean connection for our VOIP Gateway.
My office sits over the telephone punch down panel. I drilled the hole through the floor into the basement. I then drilled small holes through two rafters for a better wire run. I measured the wire leaving about 9” extra and wired it into the new jack. I fed all the wire into the hole and attached the jack to the wall with double-faced tape. So far so good, everything is going smoothly.
I then head down to my basements. I already have a nearby light to aim right onto the panel. I have a sturdy wooden chair I use continually to work on stuff in the basement. This could not be easier. I prep the 4 wires. Determine where they will punch down. I have a nice clean unused row to hook into. I do not have a punch down tool, but wire strippers and a thin flat head screwdriver always works fine. I just need to be extra cautious.
I get all four wires punched down and stop for a second to check my work. (Okay, I am admiring the goodness that is my awesome skill at tackling DIY projects and have them work perfectly 
). At this point the chair tips, I am simultaneously trying to rebalance, grab hold of something, but not a pipe or a wire and trying to figure out how the Coyote always pulls those wonderful signs out of nowhere. As I go crashing down, I wipeout two screwdriver racks*. I end up on the ground with a lot of pain in my shoulder and left leg and a little on my butt. I have managed to get 5 scrapes on my left shoulder; one is a big enough gouge to look like a panther got me. At least that is what my daughter said. I have nice abrasion on my shin and several other scratches. The chair is fine, in case anyone was worried for it.
I hobble upstairs after repairing the two screwdriver racks. I am silly this way. I get my wife to clean up the shoulder wounds with witch hazel**, wincing heavily the whole time. I am a bit of a big baby when it comes to pain. She also uses Bactine[sup]TM[/sup] on them. I clean up my accessible wounds.
Jim {BTW: the phone jack works great, we no longer have static on the VOIP that we had from the old jack.}
- Did I mention that the punch down panel is over the area, I keep the bulk of my tools?
** not Witch Hazel but the astringent.
The dumbest thing I did in recent years was about three and a half years ago. I was working for a large tool company’s factory outlet/service center, filling in for someone in the back booking in tools for repair. Often, tools would come in from customers and other repair shops in their own plastic carrying case, held shut both by their clasps and by zip ties around the handle. So there I was with one such case, and I needed to cut through the zip tie to open the case. Not having any side cutters (because the company never seemed to think we’d need any) I had to resort to a box cutter. Right hand on right corner of case to stabilize it, I used my left hand (for I am a southpaw) to slice through the tie by rocking it back and forth against the left edge of the tie – the easiest way to get through these things when they’re on so tight you can’t slip it under the loop.
If you’ve mentally diagrammed this, you will understand where this is going. The knife made it through the tie rather suddenly. Ordinarily I would have eased off the pressure when I saw I was reaching the other side of the tie, but since it suddenly sliced through earlier than expected, my muscles didn’t have time to react. The knife went through the zip tie, and continued to sail to the right with alarming speed. My right hand experienced a thump. Just that – a thump. No pain, but I knew there was no way the knife could have hit my hand, blade fully extended (though being a box cutter that means only a triangular portion about an inch long) without the blade going somewhere I didn’t want it to go.
End result: Blade went right through my right index finger. Amazingly, it only went through the fat pad between the first and second knuckle just above the palm. It bled a lot, but didn’t sever any nerves or anything. As a providential bonus, there was a team of suited-up fire fighters shopping at the store when it happened (their engine was parked in the rear lot where I could see it from the loading dock), so they used their emergency first aid kit to gauze and bandage it up.
Heh. Chicks can be hardcore! Hey, I cracked jokes through labor. And I don’t mean the “every few minutes I get an ouchie!” part of labor, I mean the pushing, screaming, “ohmygodit’sjustlikeinalienGETITOUT!!!” part of labor.
And sadly, the caffeine only came *after * the pain. But dammit, after all that, no way was I not having some coffee.
I’ve got tons of stories. I am a walking disaster area because I have a tendency to do things without really thinking about the consequences.
We were trying to get my riding lawnmower on to the back of my friends pickup truck. My genius mind thought I could just drive it up the 60 degree ramp made out of old 2x6 lumber. Oh, did I mention also that the pickup had a jacked up suspension?
I drove out on to the street so I could get a head start and headed for the ramp. As I started up the slope, my friend began pushing on the back of the seat. When I reached the top of the ramp, the bottom of the mower stuck and I couldn’t go any further. My friend assumed that I had put the brakes on and stopped pushing.
It was at this moment that gravity suddenly noticed that I was in full dumbass mode and was going to teach me a lesson. Without my friend bracing the mower, it began to slide back down the ramp at an amazing speed, despite the fact that I was now standing on the brakes. When the rear tires hit the driveway, the front of the mower decided that it wanted to get involved and so it began to lift up and over, performing a beautiful backwards flip.
From my vantage point in the driver’s seat, I watched the bed of the truck receding and then the sky appearing as I rolled over backwards, then my imminent crushing by a 600 pound riding lawn mower. I swear I actually got an image of my skull being crushed by this John Deere.
As my back hit the ground and the mower was just about to land on me, I managed to shove the falling machine with my left hand and shift my head to the left. The mower fell to my right, landing on its side with the running board laying across my shin. Several thoughts ran concurrently through my mind; “You fucking idiot!”, “I think that thing just cut off my foot” and, “Holy shit, I’m alive!” My friend, in a moment of sheer brilliance, asked, “Are you OK?” I told him, “Yeah I’m great. Now get the fucking mower off my leg, asshole!”
I was lucky. The running board didn’t even break the skin and I didn’t break any bones. The doctor said that I was lucky that the muscle wasn’t severed or crushed.
The next time we loaded it onto a van: lower to the ground and I did not ride it.