This was brought on by events last weekend. On Saturday, I was finishing off on the toilet (FYI fuly clothed and folding the paper, as was discussed extensively here a short while ago) and my back started to hurt. By the time I had flushed, I could barely stand up straight. Eventually, I left the room. Unfortunately, Mrs Alien & I were in a hotel in Brighton. Even more unfortunately, I had to drive us back to London. Geting in the car was fine, getting out a nightmare. I had to straighten up by leaning on the car and pushing, I couldn’t use my back muscles because of the pain. I spent the rest of Saturday on the floor, dosed up with paracetamol and ibuprofen.
My back has got progressively better, so today I am at work, felling discomfort rather than pain (mind you, with the amount of ibuprofen I’ve consumed, I’d probabaly consider amputation of a leg as a mere fleshwound ).
I think I was thirteen. I wanted a can of spaghetti o’s and I wasn’t sure which bowl was microwave safe. I opened the can, stuck in a metal spoon, and cooked it in the microwave for a minute and a half. I opened the microwave, grabbed the can with a pot holder, and grabbed the spoon with my bare hand (sort of like you’d hold a pencil). It took a moment to register the pain. I flung the spoon back over my head, and it nearly hit one of my friends in the forehead. My mom took me to the hospital after she got home from work. I think the doctors said something about third degree burns.
Good enough. In the UK there have been a couple of famous footballers who injured their backs in pathetic ways. One (David Seaman) put hos back out bending down to pick up the TV remote. For a highly paid, extremely fit athlete, that is an even more pathetic injury than for us lesser mortals.
A few years ago I broke my foot by simply walking along on a carpeted floor.
It just kind of twisted as I put it down one step and I got my full weight on a sideways up foot. A week later, half my foot had gone black and I decided to swallow my pride and visit the doc. He told me something about a strong tendon in the foot that cracked the bone when forced into the wrong direction by my treading on the twist.
I’m not ashamed to admit I considered making up a suitably macho sports injury to blame it on, but too many people saw me do it.
Speaking of soccer, I injured myself badly during a game.
Now, that’s sounds normal, but it was in fact quite pathetic. It wasn’t on a collision or a diving header or something cool like that. I was running and decided to change the direction of my running. Suddenly, my cleat snags the ground and twists my leg, and I hear the POP of my hip breaking into two pieces. Now that’s all well and good if I was a bit older, but this was a 15-year-old boy breaking his hip. Two years later, and the laughter of my teammates has yet to subside.
I stubbed my bare toe really hard on the skinny side of a door. I was so mad at myself and at the pain, I punched the door and almost broke my knuckle. When I hurt myself, I can be a real dim bulb.
I sliiped and fell on my aunt’s front sidewalk (no snow, mind you; bright sunny day, new gym shoes, no alcohol or other mind-altering substances involved). By the time I hit the ground, my left foot was pointing backwards; it looked like I had an extra ankle.
Result: four surgeries involving installing a plate, screws, external fixator (you know, the thingie that makes your leg look like a shish kebab), hundreds of hours of physical therapy over 3 years, and the darn thing still doesn’t work right. Someday I’ll get an ankle replacement (once they figure out how to make them properly).
Once I was playing a friend in racketball. I didn’t bring my racket, so I had to borrow the school’s—this big clunky heavy thing. My friend was beating me bad, and I kept getting madder and more frustrated. Eventually I lunged for the ball, missed, and hit myself right in the middle of the forehead with the edge of the racket.
It hurt like blazes, and I got so mad I started pounding myself in the same spot with my fists…and my friend started yelling at me to stop. I looked at my hands and they were coated with blood.
I feel your pain. The difference was that I broke my big toe and simultaneously ripped away the cuticle causing much blood to go everywhere. Whenever I hurt myself I’m not quite rational, so for a few seconds I really thought I had severed my toe. That was the most pathetic.
As far as the most stupid, it’s the most brainless injury I’ve ever seen. I was pressure cleaning my grandma’s driveway and thought it would be a good idea to pressure clean my shoes, with them on. Well it didn’t dawn on me that the water pressure would push the tongue of my shoe out of the way, exposing it to my tender foot flesh. I didn’t feel any pain at first, only the water on my foot, but when I looked down there was a fairly big gash on the top of my foot. The pain started a little while later, but it was not as bad as I thout it’d be.:smack:
I regularly break one of my toes by kicking it into my bureau in the middle of the night when I get up to go to the bathroom. I stumble back into bed and deal with it in the morning. This last time I broke my toe, in the morning I notice two distinct rings of purple around my toe. That, and the pain convinced me to turn on the light the next time I have to get up in the middle of the night for anything. But at least, I’ve gotten to be pretty good at taping my afflicted toe to its neighbor to straighten it out.
Jogging on a very dark, but relatively warm, winter evening, I had my earphones on and I was listening to a jazz station and suddenly a tango came on. Well, of course I had to do a couple of tango steps (I’ve never tangoed in my life) in the middle of the rural road in the dark while running.
You guessed it. I stepped into a pothole, broke my ankle and had to hobble a quarter of a mile to the nearest house where I called my wife to come, pick me up and take me to the nearest emergency room.
When I get a bit uppity, all my wife has to do to put me in my place is say, “tango”. It works every time.
I was 17 years old. I was standing by the side of the road with a few friends. A man on a 10-speed bike hit me. Head on, front tire right between my legs. His helmet hit my face, breaking my jaw, my cheekbone, and the orbit of my left eye. I spent 1 week in the hospital. I can remember my mom in the ER repeatedly telling the doctors; “This is not child abuse, this is not child abuse”.
The EMT who arrived at the scene was my science teacher. I had a science final the next day and I kept saying that I would miss the final. He said over and over to shut up “You have a broken jaw”.
The asshat cops gave me a ticket for “standing on the wrong side of the road”. The idiot that hit me never called to see if I was OK.
I have had severe TMJ problems since then and daily headaches, despite wearing a bite plate every night for 2 years.
Well there was the time I knee’d my neighbor’s chain link fence. Long story short I was on my neighbor’s side of the fence cutting her lawn and ran out of gasoline. Instead of walking around the fence to get the gas I thought I’d take the quick route and just vault over the thing.(Which I had done before) Unforunately when I jumped my left knee was too close to the fence and I rammed it wicked hard into the 1 1/2" steel pipe that made the top piece of the fence. To give you an idea how forcefully I jumped I still cleared the fence and landed rather uncomfortably on the other side. I was limping from that one for over a week.(And my knee still give me trouble even after 5 years.)
Of course then there’s the time I knee’d myself in the face and shattered a tooth.(Damn, why does it seem I’m always getting hurt when knees are involved.)
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