Broken collarbone from tennis.
Sort of.
More like jumping over the tennis net after I won.
Well, sorta jumping.
Let’s call it ‘hovering’.
Lesson learned: if you’re gonna jump, don’t change your mind halfway through. :smack:
:p:p You sound like a friend of mine, who
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Gets cold headaches so fast that the first sip from a marguarita makes him fall off his stool; repeat until marguarita is gone and he’s bruised from head to toe.
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Cut the roof of his mouth on a piece of chocolate. (!)
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Cut his lip with a fricking spoon, of all things.
All within the same month.
I think he cut his mouth again on a Dorito, but who hasn’t?
Edit…Oooh, the pencil thing: I had a piece of lead pencil stuck in my stomach for decades, or at least a spot that looked like it. This was after holding a pencil between my desk and my stomach in school while rocking back on my chair…and then, of course, abruptly rocking forward.
I’ve also knocked myself flat in a perfectly cartoon-like way, and have no idea how I did it. I know what happened, but don’t remember anything except turning around, apparantly taking a step into a scale right at head level, going perfectly horizontal in the air and perfectly horizontally down to the ground. My co-workers clapped! I kept trying to do it again on purpose, with no success. I will never be a stuntwoman. 
I have also drawn blood with a pizza crust. These are not my proudest moments.
Three of mine involve spending summers at my grandparent’s farms…
#1 - my Pa and my Uncle were using a compressed air tank to blow traces of gasoline out of the fuel tank on an older model Ford pickup. It had a gas cap on both the passenger side and driver side, so the gas and residue would shoot out of the opposite side of wherever they fired the air into it. I had no idea why, I still have no idea why, and I certainly had no idea as a kid. So, naturally, they take the caps off, and as they are both working on one side of the truck, I think it’d be a good idea to peer into the other side of the tank just as they hit it with the air. Hilarity ensued.
#2 - spent the day riding with my Pa on his tractor as he’s plowing a field a few miles from home. He wraps up the day of work, pulls out onto the gravel road, and stops to knock the dirt off the plow blades before we head home. As he’s doing so, the tractor starts to very, very slowly roll, and he yells up to me to put it in park (?). I have not idea how, try to move the gear shift (not understanding manual transmissions at this point) to no avail. He yells again, I panic but remember something about putting a block under a tire to stop things from rolling. I dig around and find no blocks, but I do find a hoe-head (why? no idea, it was just in there) with no handle attached. “Ah ha!” I think, “I’ll wedge this under the front tire, and the right angle will act as a block and stop the tractor!” Proud of myself for my quick thinking, I jump from the cab and do exactly that - getting my thumb caught in the hole where the handle should go and promptly having my thumbnail ripped off as the tractor drives over it. Hilarity ensued.
#3 - riding a bike at top speed, chasing my one year younger female cousin who delighted in tormenting me, trying my damndest to catch her and teach her a lesson. This was around the time the Highway Department was paving the rural roads in the area with grey gravel and tar, and my Pa had agreed to let the store some large piles of gravel on his property at a crossroads while they were working. So she’s biking for all she’s worth, a good bit ahead of me, then slide-ditches her bike to take off running into the piles of gravel. Me, thinking I’ll make up a couple of seconds, rams into a pile of gravel at top speed, sliding forward off the seat…well, hilarity ensued.
Good times on the farm. I’ve got dozens more.
Oh, as an side, I did eventually get even with the cousin via use of a pair of ViseGrips.
And I’ll call with my “bending over to get a blanket.” Not actually picking up the blanket, mind you, but merely bending over to reach it. I was in so much pain, I was begging my (then) wife to shoot me and put me out of my misery.
The entire toe? Wow.
About the worst things I ever did to myself through stupidity are:
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Changed brake pads on pickup. Decided to spin the rotors with my fingers to make sure they were spinning freely. Somehow managed to catch a fingertip in the brake mechanism. It somehow skinned the end of my finger completely- it took off all but the deepest layers of skin without touching my fingernail- it looked like a bloody glistening meat version of my fingertip, down to the fingerprints. Surprisingly, it healed up with no scars or anything. Hurt like a motherf**ker though.
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Earlier in the tenure of that particular pickup, I’d locked my keys inside. Got a slim-jim from the building maintenance guys and proceeded to start working on getting it open. It wasn’t that hard, but it took a fair amount of force pulling in just the right place. Well, I got the tool hooked, and pulled for all I was worth, and it slipped- I managed to effectively punch myself in the eye as hard as I was pulling up on the thing.
Somehow I hit myself square in the eyeball, not in the eyesocket. No black eye, but for the next day or two, I had one dilated eye, and one normal eye until it recovered.
I certainly can’t compete for level of injury. But I have some fun ones that show a certain lack of intelligence.
Let’s see, when I was a kid, say around 5, I was playing around with our fireplace. I found some styrofoam, and was throwing tiny pieces in and watching them melt and pop. WHEE! And then one of them popped, and shot a bead of melted plastic right onto my left ring finger at the first knuckle joint. Burned a hole down to the bone, it seemed. I screamed and ran to the sink and washed it for a while. That scar is still with me.
Once in high school, I tried a move that would now be considered pretty simple for some of the parkour enthusiasts, but this was before I had ever heard of the sport or the concept. There was a slight slope that met a round cross rail. Standing on top of the hill, I walked down the slope, had to step slightly upwards to the rail, and then over. Well, I kinda got hung up and couldn’t make it over - I needed more momentum. Nevermind. Later, I was nearby at another spot with a longer hill at a steeper slope, and I thought I would try again, and this time have more momentum. So I jog down the slope, extend my right leg for the rail, and watch as my foot slips over the rail and I soar right over it and go knee first into the pavement. OUCH. Scraped up, nothing broken, but did I mention this was in front of ~100 teenagers?
In college, I was riding around on my bicycle. I was playing around with balance and leaning and trying to see how far I could lean the bike while still moving forward. The tires slipped out and I ate pavement. No permanent injuries, but did get observed in this stupidity.
One time in college, I was in a metallurgy class. We were taking steel samples, heat treating them, then etching and polishing them to look at them under a microscope and observe the different grain patterns. These were small half-inch cubes of steel. The process involved grinding and polishing them on a small belt sander. Trying to hold a tiny cube of metal and rub it on the sander, I managed to sand off part of my fingertip. It didn’t really hurt, and the flesh grew back, but for a while my fingertip was a bit flat.
One time I was working on my car. There was some problem or other, I don’t remember what, but I needed to reach down into my car engine area. I think I was inspecting a belt that was thrown. Anyway, I brushed my hand against part of the engine, and seared the flesh. Yep, that left a scar I still bear. It has faded a bit with time.
One time at a Mexican restaurant I ordered fajitas (okay, I order fajitas a lot, but this happened one time). You know how they have those cast-iron skillet trays for sizzling the meat as they bring it to your table? Two things to remember: (1) skillets sizzle meat; (2) fingers are made of meat. I meant to shift the skillet tray over a bit, but pushed on the metal skillet instead of the wooden tray that it sits on. Burned my finger tips.
Also, one time in a restaurant I was laughing so hard I leaned sideways and smacked my forehead into the wooden chair next to me and nearly gave myself a concussion.
And yet, still not as stupid as sticking my hand in a blender. Hey Biggirl, you’re right, reading some of these stories does make me feel better!
(Immersion blenders seem to be several people’s nemesis. I almost did something equally stupid, trying to clean the blades with it still plugged in. The idea was I would run it under water, and spin the blades. Then I needed to rub/wipe at the surfaces. It took me once almost triggering with my fingers on the blades to rectify that approach. Now I unplug before I go near the blades with my fingers.)
I’ve stepped off a sidewalk to cross a street and sprained an ankle by stepping into the gutter.
A passing cop called an ambulance for me, which went to the wrong side of the street. Fortuantely, a friend happened to be on that side of the street and directed the paramedics my way.
Did something like that while at work. Dropped something that bounced to just the other side of my cubicle wall so I went there and bent over to pick it up. When I stood up, I whacked my head on a corner of my overhead cabinet hard enough to leave a dent in my skull.
:eek: 
WTF is that Devil’s instrument used for?
Remember those cannons made from a stack of cans taped together? Hold that thought.
My aunt was having problems with the pilot light on her gas furnace going out, and I was trying to troubleshoot it. You lit the pilot with a match on an extension handle reaching through a hole with a spring loaded cover.
There is an interlock that won’t let the main valve open before the pilot heats up a sensor. During one attempt, it seemed that the pilot went out before the gas came on. What I didn’t realize was that the sensor stayed hot for long enough to run gas into the chamber with no ignition source; which I then provided with the match entering the port.
Remember the spring loaded cover? Back blast got the backs of all four fingers on the hand holding it open, second degree worth (Seared but not charred). Just lucky I hadn’t lined up to aim the match flame at the pilot tube or my eye might have been there.
Now imagine the sound of a home-made cannon six inches in diameter and twelve or so feet long. :eek:
The weather baffle was found far enough downrange that it had to have reached an impressive altitude, but no witnesses.
Yes, you do.
[googles “Baker’s Lame”]It’s for slashing the tops of unbaked loaves, partly so they will bake better and partly so they will look pretty[/gBL].
I have a few stupid ones myself.
Leaving the library at college, I took the down escalator. Realized I left something in the library about 3/4 of the way down the escalator so I thought I’d just turn around and run back up. I slipped (or tripped) and fell gouging my knee on the edge of one of the escalator step edges. My knee still has a funny intention in it (25 years ago?) and two little scars that look like someone carved 11 into my knee.
I used to maintain rent houses as a part time job. On job was to replace a hollow core bedroom door because the previous tenants had kicked a hole in the current one. Those of you in construction/remodeling know that rehanging a door into an existing frame is huge pain in the ass getting it squared up just right. I almost had it perfect but it was sticking in one little part. I didn’t have a plane with me, so I took out my razor knife to shave just a tiny bit off the door. The knife slipped and I ended up slicing down to the bone in the fat pad near the palm of my hand, just below my index finger. I have a nice curved scar for that one.
Back in the olden days beer cans had pull off tabson them, it was not unusual to bend them around the previous beer’s tab until you had a chain. Kind of a poor man’s way to count beers. Well, the edges of some of those bastards are sharp as hell, and one sliced my thumb really deep. Again, nice curvy scar on that one too.
I have a few more but I just came to the sudden realization that all of them are variations of the same theme. Me cutting myself somehow! i.e. I was whittling when I hit a knot hole and my pocked knife slammed shut on my index finger knuckle.
One that isn’t knife or cutting related… see above for pull tab info. It was also common to drop your tab into your beer can before drinking it so you didn’t litter with your beer tab. This is not a good idea though if you get into a chugging contest. Only by the grace of God, was I able to will myself into not swallowing that last gush of beer and reach into my own throat and pull the tab out of my mouth. I wasn’t injured but it gets honorable mention because it was such a stupid thing to do.
I’ve never heard of a bakers lame. I saw it in the post, but my brain just skipped over it thinking that Johnny Bravo was saying something was lame.
THIS needs an explanation!
I can’t match any of these for stupidity, but one time I was petting my dog. Her head was right below my chin and for some reason she decided to lift up her head. She did it with enough force to drive my bottom teeth into my upper lip, making some pretty impressive, and painful, gouges.
This one was just odd – I split open a little cut on my hand closing my trunk. I believe it was one of the raised letters in CIVIC that jumped out and bit me 
(I blame the V – it’s always looked at me funny but really it could have been any of them.) It wasn’t a big cut but I could see inside my hand so I got it stitched up.
I was exploring the workshop my brother was building. I was about ten (my brother is a lot older than me). I climbed up into a window opening and leaped inside. Right onto a board with a 16-penny nail sticking up out of it. The nail went through the sole of the shoe, between two of the bones in my foot, and out the top of the shoe. I hated the tetanus shots worse than the nail.
Back when I was in high school and we had our first car with electric windows, the rear driver’s side window stopped working. My mother asked me to try and get it to roll up, since it was threatening to rain. I tried all kinds of tricks, culminating with me in the driver’s seat (perhaps that control will work better). I decided to slam the door to see if that would help knock something into position. While still sitting in front, I reached back, opened the door, and slammed my finger in it. Thanks to the steering wheel and the way I had twisted around, I was effectively trapped, sitting in the driveway and yelling until someone came to rescue me.
I don’t know if this counts as stupid, but I did manage to slice the palm of my hand open taking the top off of a can of braunschweiger (spreadable meat) in a hotel room in Germany.
Much more recently, I was replacing blades on a lawnmower after sharpening them. The wrench slipped. The very sharp blade went flying. I grabbed it. Really bad idea.
I had my lip slammed in a door
I was four and my little brother was two. We were playing a game where we would slip bits of paper through the hinge side of a door, kind of a post office thing. He was in the room with the door opening inward, so I put my face close, really close to the gap on the hinge side and was making silly noises. He spazzed out and slammed the door catching my bottom lip and ripping it open. Apparently I had a little button nose as a child because I once tried to demonstrate how this happened and my nose kept getting in the way!
I ended getting about five stitches and a HUGE fat lip although I do give credit to the emergency room doctor because you can’t tell unless I put my tongue in front of my teeth and shove my lip out which shows the faint scar.
I love telling the story when people are comparing childhood scars because I always get two kinds of looks, either “yeah right” or “does this story end with child protective services visiting?”