Where I live, there are huge piles of overburden (the waste rock from open-pit mining iron ore). I’m talking man-made mountains (okay, really just foothills). A the age of ten, some friends and I were building a fort in the small forests that had sprung up on the piles over the years (life finds a way). Because ten-year-old boys are flippin’ stupid, we neglected to bring enough nails. I was elected to go get more. So, I leaped on the four-wheeler, threw it in reverse, and proceeded to back up. This is when I felt the rear tires drop. I had backed over the edge of the hill. My initial thought was, “Oh, shit! The four-wheeler!”, not , “Oh, shit! My health and safety!”, because, as I previously mentioned, ten-year-old boys are flippin’ stupid.
I leaped off the back of the wheeler to push it back up the hill. Now … the surface of overburden (or, as we colloquially call them, “the dumps”) is primarily very fine sand-like powdered waste rock. My feet instantly went out from under me and I slid down the hill until I came to rest with my back up against a tree. This was when I looked up and saw the four-wheeler beginning to roll end-over-end towards me.
Accepting my inevitable death, I went limp and wound up with the four-wheeler forming a right triangle against the tree with me underneath. Got out of it with a 2 inch cut on the top of my head (required 10 stiches) and a great story. All because ten-year-old boys are flippin’ stupid.
I went to a friend’s house to help him pack before moving. I packed one box and needed to tape it shut. I started the tape at one side of the box, pulled it across the box with my left hand, and then grabbed a small knife with my right hand to cut the tape. Instead of cutting the tape, I jammed the knife into my left forearm. (I guess I have poor depth perception. I was sober, too.) It cut several of my tendons and my left hand basically fell limp. The worst part was, I had to drive myself to the emergency room because his phone was disconnected and it was the pre-cell era. He couldn’t drive my stick shift. It was only a small wound, but the surgeons had to open my forearm from my wrist to nearly my elbow in order to fish out the ends of the tendons and stitch them together. Even now the scar is over 10 inches long and retains the marks of all 22 stitches.
It makes a cool story for when I wear short-sleeved shirts.
10s: Rode in a car with a sharpened pencil lengthwise between my knees, yada yada yada, free tattoo (I had jeans on, but that didn’t help)
30s: Played Wii Sports Tennis one night, repeatedly tried to hit a backhand with topspin, tore my rotator cuff
Woke up while sleeping at a friend’s house one night and realized I needed to see a man about a horse. Went to the bathroom and took a seat as I was still half-asleep and didn’t feel like standing. Didn’t even turn on the lights. When I finished, I leaned down to grab my waistband and hike up my shorts. I had forgotten, in my stupor, how narrow his bathroom was and where all the amenities were located. I felt a sharp pain as my eye socket connected with the corner of his sink. Lovely shiner for a week afterward.
“What happened to you?”
“I, uh … I got in a fight.”
Once while still a kid, I was leading a shetland pony on a walk up the street. I was wearing flip flops. The pony stepped on the back of one of the flip flops causing me to trip and fall forward. The pony then stepped on my hand.
As an adult I took a hang gliding lesson. I nailed the first lesson: “The Take Off” but crashed before the second lesson: “The Landing”. Resulted in a broken wrist. But on the bright side, I didn’t die.
When I was a teen, I looked out the window and saw a kid crying out on our walk. I went out and saw that the chain on his bike had come off the sprocket, so I flipped his bike over to put it back on. After it was on, I started rotating the sprocket rapidly with the pedal to make sure it would stay on. Then for some reason still unknown to me, I stuck my thumb up near the chain, where it was promptly sucked into the spinning sprocket, nearly tearing off the tip of my thumb.
Another bicycle incident when I was a young teen: riding with a friend of mine, coasting down a hill. I could hear something rattling on the front fender, so stuck my foot up there to see if I could make it stop. My foot got sucked in between the rotating tire and the front fork, causing the wheel to come to a sudden stop and catapulting the rear of the bike over the front of the bike. When I came to my senses, the guy in the car behind us and a woman in a nearby house were both standing over me. Got pretty scraped up, and my ankle was a bit sprained, and my ego took a huge hit. I had to limp home about two miles, as the front rim was bent.
I did something similar as a teenager only I didn’t purposely stick my foot in there. And I went flying over the front of the bike onto the asphalt. Tore out the knees of my jeans and the skin underneath and chipped one of my front teeth. Fortunately my overbite saved the rest of my face. (I wrecked that a few years later…60 stitches worth of stupid) Bent the fork on my bike but I was closer to home.
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 cleaner 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 basement. 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 re-balance, 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 wipe out 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™ on them. I clean up my accessible wounds.
Of course the next day I had to leave in the morning for a 6 hour drive to Massachusetts.
Did I mention that the punch down panel is over the area, I keep the bulk of my tools?
Stupid motorbike accident: The day before leaving for my first year of college, we rented dirt bikes and took them up into the hills outside of Anchorage. Road back on an unmaintained road to a tarn at the end of the valley.
We started back, feeling our oats. I was in the lead and was going way too fast for the potholed road. I saw a hump ahead and thought I’d be clever and try get a little airborne. So I hit the throttle and as I flew over the hump I saw the mud and water on the road. Unable to stop, I hit it, lost control and slammed into a rather large boulder. Went flying over the handlebars, bunging my knee in mid-flight, then did a four point landing on elbows, face and the other knee.
Luckily, the bike wasn’t really damaged much. I thought my mother was going to stroke out when I walked in the house later on, all bloody and muddy.
My grandmother once did the same move in the dark so as not to wake the old man. She hiked up her nightdress and was about to take a seat when a voice behind her said “Geraldine, what the hell do you think you’re doing!?!” Seems grandad also got up without turning on the lights. But she was so startled that she lost her balance and fell into the bathtub.
Once, I was baking something or another, and when it came time to take it out, I didn’t feel like grabbing a potholder if I didn’t need it, so I just tapped the oven rack to see how hot it was. It was hot enough to burn the print off of that finger.
At least I was somehow smart enough to only use one finger.
In his '20s my brother was a rodeo-circuit bullrider. He was always getting banged-up, so when he got tossed and a bull horn run through his butt that broke his pelvis, no one was surprised.
Fast forward 20 years at a family party and brother confesses that it wasn’t a bullriding injury. He and a friend were driving while shitfaced and decided it would be fun to run over metal mile marker posts at the side of the road. It was fun until one of the posts broke through his truck’s rusty floor and into his butt/pelvis.
Bro had already been dinged for two DUIs and lied to the ER staff so cops wouldn’t be called (he was the driver).
Oh good, I’m not the only one who hurt myself playing with the Wii. Bowling, in my case. I was mid-roll when the cat ran right in front of me. I thought I was going to hit him with my follow-through so I wrenched myself around to avoid him. Smacked myself in the side of the knee with the Wii-mote and fell down. Not only did I pull muscles in both my arm and my back but I also had a bruise approximately the same size and shape of the Wii-mote on my leg.
). At this point the chair tips, I am simultaneously trying to re-balance, grab hold of something, but not a pipe or a wire and trying to figure out how the 
