When I was about 10, my parents went out to dinner leaving my older sister in charge. I thought it would be fun to scare her while she was talking on the phone by banging on the outside of the kitchen window. I tripped while walking through the garden and ended up putting both arms through the window. I got 13 stiches on my right arm and 4 on my left. I did however, succeed at scaring the crap out of my sister.
Back in the day when the London Underground staff were forever going on strike, they were going to call one. When this happened I was unable to get to work with no alternative available, so I got a day off.
Late on evening the TV news announced that the strike for the following day was going ahead. I leaped up out of my chair and jumped up and down for joy … and came down awkwardly against the leg of the table. Broke my little toe.
:mad:
16 years old. Lived in an area that received a yuge snowfall one year, and a neighbor decided to have a sledding/bonfire/cook-out/drinking party. Probably about 100 people there, yuge party. The sledding hill was about 100 yards top to bottom, and we had sleds, snow discs, pretty much anything that would slide down the snow covered hill.
Including a car hood.
Smooth side (outer painted part) would slide really nicely on the snow, and it would fly. Only the bravest (or stupidest) of us were willing to do the hood slide. Then, in a moment of “hey, watch this” my buddy Tony and decided to “surf” down the hill on the car hood. Yep, standing up the whole way was our goal.
Needless to say, we managed to stay standing only part of the way down the hill. A big bump knocked both of us off our feet and I landed on my stomach, still on the hood. No injury yet!!
The injury came when the sharp corner of the hood dug into the snow and stopped IMMEDIATELY. Being face down on the hood meant that I slid forward off the hood at a high rate of speed.
Now, this gets ugly. Men, this is your warning, not for the squeamish. As I slid off the hood, one of the raised reinforcements on the side of the hood I was face down on “caught” my groin area.:(:eek: As in, ohmyfuckinglord, that felt like it ripped my balls off. Turns out, it only ripped one off. Okay, technically, not off, but it did shatter. Surgery the next day removed what was left on my left testicle, and replaced it with a prosthetic.
That wraps up my overshare for the day.
We were playing Frisbee with a pane of glass, and I caught it.
I’m another “stabbed myself with a pencil” idiot. In high school I had a summer job working in a warehouse. We had a big counter top where we used to do receiving, and would sit on it during breaks. Imagine standing with your back to the counter, you put a hand down on either side of yourself and push yourself up to get your butt up on the counter. I did that one day with a #2 pencil sticking point-first out of my jeans pocket, and jabbed it right into my forearm as I was hoisting my ass up onto the counter top.
I once told a girl that I wasn’t going stay up all night and baby sit a drunk and then proceeded to go to bed. Pretty stupid of me. :smack:
I stood up from my desk chair, as I had done literally thousands of times before, and thought I had broken a rib. Instant, excruciating pain in my side that nearly made me pass out. It was 3AM and I decided I wasn’t going to wake my wife to drive me to the ER until morning, and trying to sit down or lie down was impossible, so I spent several hours mostly standing braced against the kitchen counter.
No broken ribs on the X-ray and the ER doctor decided I must have torn a muscle. I spent about a month wearing a back support, taking painkillers, and moving very carefully. I still have no idea what I did to cause it.
Did the classic “stepping on a rake head and having the handle hit you in the face” cartoon trope. Was about 10 years old. Heavy wooden rake.
Not as funny as in the cartoons. I woke up on the ground and am pretty sure I was concussed. I still remember the sound it made when it clocked me straight in the forehead.
You win the thread. And perhaps the Internet. I’m still shuddering.
Mine are relatively mundane in retrospect. I remember playing football in the backyard (about 13-14 yo), looking back to see if anyone was close and running head-on into a (big) tree limb. Still have the scar from that.
Also stepped in a small hole in ground on a soccer field and broke my big toe. And then in 2000 I was coming out of a small amusement park in Dubai and tripped over a parking block, didn’t bother to let go of the Coke cup in my hand, and fractured my elbow (still have the scar for that one too).
When I was 10 or 11 I started jumping down the basement stairs. From the bottom up, first two stairs from the bottom, then 4…eventually I jumped from the top step to the bottom landing.
I think I was 16 or so when I decided to do it again.
I don’t know what the correct name is for the drywall covered board that defines the beginning of the basement ceiling. I do know it can knock you out if you’re 6 foot tall & jump down the basement stairs.
Oh. My. God. I’m a woman and my nonexistent testicles just retracted.
Should’ve mentioned that I caught my testicles on the hand rail and ripped both of them off. A few staples & dental floss I was as good as new.
Dropped a pen at work and it rolled under the cubicle wall, far enough that I had to step outside my cubicle to retrieve it. Then I stood up and wham!
Was still close enough to my desk that I hit my head on the outside corner of the overhead cabinet and probably got a concussion. Still have a dent in my skull.
I once fractured an ankle jumping from one sand bar to another, a distance of a couple of inches
I was loading something into the trunk of my car once, stood up too fast, and caught a corner with my face. Still have a lovely scar between my eyebrow and the bridge of my nose. (My husband was standing right there, and just started laughing while I stood there with blood streaming down my face. I think that was the moment when I knew for sure that he would be my first husband.)
More recently, I was getting in my minivan and my foot slipped off the running board. I smashed my head between the door and the A post. Nice concussion, and the next day, the bruising and swelling began to ooze from my hairline (the injury location,) all the way down my face. Two black eyes, my forehead looked like a blue Romulan, etc. My husband did the grocery shopping for a couple of weeks, to avoid nasty rumors, and several clients at work offered me phone numbers for domestic crisis hotlines. Epic.
The best/stupidest, though, was the night that I tripped over a grout line and had a grade 3 sprained ankle and broken cuboid. Really. A grout line.
Summer of my senior year in high school, broke my collarbone playing touch football. Cost me a trip to Germany.
Leaned over dog to pick up something. Dog stood up and the back of his very hard skull hit my eye. I went over backwards and hit the back of my head on the floor and blacked out for a brief period. Had a concussion and a lovely shiner, plus the back of my head was quite sore. The more interesting part was quite a few people, including the doctor consulted about the injury, accused my then-boyfriend of hitting me which led to much drama.
We had a meat slicer that you had turn by hand and I was cutting some meat and talking at the same time. I have to read lips and wasn’t watching my hands and almost slice my thumb in half ! My left thumb has a dent in it now it should had been sewed up.
4-5 years old: The rake thing. Only it was a shovel. What I don’t get is how it sailed end-over-end enough to send the tip of the blade into my knee. Scar still there. The scar is shovel-tip shaped.
6 years old: Tobogganing at a friend’s house. Decided to take a run with my head under the curl of the toboggan just to “see what happens”. Tree happened. Plaster cast on left arm. Dunce cap on head.
**11 years old: **The pencil thing. In someone else’s shirt pocket. So I’m not really sure what kind of flapping and flailing I might have been doing. Still have the “lead” mark in my finger.
12 years old: On a Boy Scout camping trip. Each patrol (of 3) go on separate hikes. I was in Panther Patrol. Wolf patrol got back to camp 30 minutes before Panther Patrol. Eric (of Wolf Patrol) heats iron rod in campfire til it glows. Eric takes iron rod out of fire long enough for glow to disappear. Panther Patrol returns from hike and approaches campfire. Eric greets Simmerdown and says: “Here, hold this,” as he casually hands me said iron rod. Simmerdown holds this. Simmerdown is injured. Stupid, stupid Simmerdown.
47 years old: Did not have the wisdom to realize that I was dehydrated from a bad cold and cough. Woke up to get ready for work. Stood at the kitchen sink for a few seconds. I frequently get a bloody nose in the winter, so as I was lamenting the onset of another one, I slowly began to realize that my lip was split open, I was missing the ends of my two front teeth (oh that Christmas song!), and, as if that wasn’t enough, I really did have the nosebleed, too. I had passed out and fallen face-first on the kitchen floor. Could have been alot worse, I guess.
As for the gap between 12 and 47 (and onward to 52), I’m sure I’ve injured myself in numerous ways which noone would mistake for “not stupid”.
Falling down the stairs and reaching for a banister that wasn’t there, thereby hitting the wall and popping off my left wrist bone.
Almost impossible to do.