I forget what I was pulling on, but I remember loosing my grip on something and then wacking MYSELF in the mouth because of it. After the initial “Owie!,” I started laughing - too silly!
Patty
Okay, this isn’t phyysical harm but uber embarrassing…
I’m at a party with 25-30 friends and we’re crammed into a basement. I’m sitting on the floor next to an end table where the snack chips were laid out. My burly husband, George, was also at the party and was sitting on the other side of the end table. After some converstation with friends to my right, I look to my left and up a little - not up all the way, mind you - to see a burly male in black jeans and a white t-shirt leaning over the snack covered end table I was leaning against. THinking I’d show Hubby some affection, I reached up and patted his bottom.
I heard a voice say “thank you.”
It wasn’t my husband’s. 
I now look ALL the way up and realized I’ve just patted the bottom of Paul Bort, one of George’s closest friends! :eek:
Everyone seated on the right side of the room busted up laughing while I curled up into a ball and said, “Oh, sh*t! I’m sorry Paul” I don’t know how many times. THe people on the right side of the room - including my husband, who was chatting with some other friends - had no idea what folks were cracking up about.
In my defense, George and Paul are built that same (some people have thought they were brothers, they looked so much alike) and they were both wearing black pants with a white t-shirt. Paul gave my butt a squeeze on the way out latter so we’re even.
Dunno which was worse, the patting or the amount of witnesses who know me.
Patty:smack:
I find fire cracker that hasn’t detonated. So I decide to create a “fizzer”. I break the 'cracker in half and light off the the exposed end to watch it shoot out sparks. I sit down in the driver’s seat of the station wagon, press the cigarette lighter button. The button pops out and I press the hot end onto the gunpowder. I note subconciously that there is a remnent of a fuse in the fizzer, but no matter. . .
KA-POW!
A very Three Stooges moment. Even had a little carbon black on the face. . .
Much earlier then the above-- Taking a baseball bat and slamming it into a basketball. Think of the basketball/bat as an elastic collision and the bat/skull as inelelastic. . . .
Sorry - the folks on the LEFT side of the room had no idea what had just happened.
So I guess lighting a rocket indoors would qualify…
Okay, little backstory to this, I was the grandmaster of bed jumpers in my time, I was a bed jumping gymnast, I ruled.
Well, jumping on my moms bed, I attempt to do this weird little trick, you know the one where you jump up andtry to land sitting indian style, I had done that a million times before. This timemy knees were facing down insted of in the actually sityting position when I hit the bed, and I tripped and rolled right into the corner of the nightstand. My eye looked pretty weird.
My eighteenth birthday…I had a curling iron plugged into a very old extension cord in my bedroom. While trying to unplug the curling iron, this part ( | | ) of the extension cord pulled away from the casing. Not wanting to break the extension cord (Mom might get mad) I grabbed my Swiss Army Knife and wedged it inbetween the plug and the ( | | ). I saw flames, my hand was black and my blade had a chunk the size of my pinkie nail burned out of it.
I was shaving my armpits when the razor slipped. I ended up with a big gash going across my lips:eek:
Once I was using one of those grinding stones chucked into an electric drill. I had the thing going full speed, with the trigger locked on.
Those who have met me know that I am a man with hair that reaches below my elbows. Said hair was not tied back.
A few hairs were hanging down. They got caught in the wildly spinning shaft. I guess I have strong hair, because it didn’t pull out or break off. Instead, the drill reeled itself up the hair very quickly, pulling out of my hand, and slamming into my forehead with considerable force.
My hair was actually tough enough to stop the drill once it reached my skull. Once I’d pulled the plug out of the wall and unwound myself from it, I found a big wound on my head, which I felt the need to explain to everyone I met for weeks afterward.
They were rebuilding the road near my apartments when I was younger. Part of the construction included placing a rather large drainage pipe along the road, large enough for my friend and I to walk down and explore.
I had the great idea of bringing fireworks down with us, to shoot at each other, in the manner of roman candle wars.
What didn’t occur to me was the massive amount of foul smoke that immediately filled the tunnels. Probably why I cough so much today. q;}
I don’t feel so all-alone anymore!
As a kid, did the same over the handlebars trick while riding without the aid of hands. Only, this trick was induced by a well concealed parking lot tire stopper at the edge of a grassy field.
As a teenager, managed to shoot myself in the leg with a blank .22 cartrige. Yep, you guessed it! Had to try the old hammer trick.
Early 20s, shattered several facial bones while cranking on a gas powered welder. (The crank was similar to an old style car with a hand crank on the front). I just HAD to have the handle slip loose from the machine while the stroke was headed upwards. Later in that same decade, I found out the conductive power of a gold ring and a car battery. If you’ve never seen a blister all the way around your finger, it’s pretty cool looking.
Early 30s, Landed squarely on the right butt cheek while rollerblading for the second or third time. I have never in my life seen a bruise so big. And, I had to show it off as, I didn’t think anyone else would believe how much flesh could be discolored at one time. Never had the courage to lace those up again either.
Now in my 40s, I slashed a section of my left hand while working on a truck. As a tech, I am used to small cuts and impacts so, the pain was not any real issue. I knew I needed stitches and told the doc to just do it without a local. That got me my first drug test ever and, got a whole new drug testing policy enforced at work. Almost forgot the equation of color vs. temperature while working with exhaust pipes. Seems they still retain a lot of heat even after the red glow goes away. I managed to sear the entire palm area, (Fingers too) on that day.
And in school, they always told me that my worst enemy was my own mouth. Guess I proved them wrong.
Ok, I’ve got 2 martial arts stories, one mine and one someone elses.
I had been training pretty regularly for a while again, and we were doing jump side kicks… you know, flying side kicks?
A row of us, in our uniforms, running at one of the instructors and leaping into the air, over the shinai (a sort of practice sword). After a little while, it was only me, and my friend left. The sword was at mid chest level. We both cleared it.
Bored with doing this, I figured I would jump an amazing height, and intimidate him into calling it off. I raise the sword up to just a hair over shoulder height.
I take a run, and leap. I clear the sword.
I slam into the wall, and spike into the ground, all of my weight coming to rest on the knife edge of my foot first.
I tore ligaments in the ankle. Only luck and a good fall kept me from snapping it.
2nd incident.
We were doing a demo at a gymnastics tournament. You know those floors they use for the floor routines? They bounce. They have a spring to them.
2nd degree instructor is doing Inverted Sword form, rolling along and doing a good job… until the “jump up and slash down”.
He landed, bounced, and cut his own foot deeeeeep. Sharp sword.
Working as I do with knives and swords, I have plenty of oppourtunity for horror. Oh, there’s the standard little cuts that happen every day, and the customers accidentally stab you all the time, but you get used to that.
Of course, having a samurai sword fall out of its scabbard, and having the reflexes to grab the bloody thing to keep it from getting damaged, add up to an interesting loss of flesh from the fingers. Coworkers laughed.
There’s always the scissor sharpener, too. It’s a seemingly innocent device, consisting of two grinding wheels which spin at an impressive rate. Having just finished with a pair of scissors, one must turn the thing off. I now know that looking at it while reaching for it is a good idea; the little bastard rips through metal with great ferocity, and my thumb provided little challenge for it. On the other hand, having a slice of finger missing which was at a perfect right angle in the bottom of the depression made for some interesting, dinner-ruining stories.
Boss got stabbed by a customer with an axe once. He was pissed at first, but forgave the guy because he turned around and bought something expensive. Goes to show just how much we value our skin around this place.
The moral of the story, of course, is don’t try to mug a House of Knives employee as he gets off work. He will (this was the same manager, mind) simply pull out a blade like something you’ve never imagined whilst laughing in your face. We’re an interesting group, we are. This doesn’t even get into the electrical accidents or the playing we do with lighter fluid, butane, and the lighters.
I love my job.
The stupidest thing I’ve ever done to myself? Boy, that’s tough competition.
There was the time I picked up a firecracker I’d lit and thrown just a minute before. I guess I was about 10. Having waited longer than the usual time for it to go off, and not having gotten the expected bang, I assumed it was a dud. It wasn’t. :eek:
There was the time, in high school, when I ran across the gym and threw a flying dragon stamp kick on the swinging door. Perfectly executed, too, if I do say so, myself. And, no, the door swinging back wasn’t the problem. It was that pesky low metal doorframe. Head hits frame, ass hits floor, friends have no idea why head is suddenly gushing blood. Apparently, it happened too fast for them to follow or they weren’t paying attention. Result? Six stitches, one really odd haircut, an hysterical mother, and half a dozen traumatized (I looked like something out of a slasher movie) cheerleaders. I can still hear the cheerleaders yelling, “Oh, my god! That’s disgusting! Get out of here!”. Just warms your heart, doesn’t it? :dubious:
Another contender would have to be the time I used a 10 inch chef’s knife to (attempt to) pry apart some frozen hamburger patties. Didn’t work, but I got seven stitches out of that one, and an intermitent odd tingling in the tip of my left index finger. Not to mention my first (and, with any luck, last) direct view of one of my own bones. :eek:
The most recent would the time I was standing on a low wall, about 10 inches high, and turned and hopped off it, without looking. I landed on top of a peach-size rock, which was balanced on top of a drainage pipe, which was in the bottom of the hole I’d just hopped into. I was told I tore three of the four tendons in my ankle. That was about 3 1/2 years ago, and my ankle still aches most of the time and makes funny/icky popping/crunching/grinding noises. :smack:
The guy who powernailed his foot to the roof is better than the story about me stapling my thumb to the boat seat I was upholstering.
However, this is the tale of my current affection for surgical gloves.
I am a gardener, and I love to grow peppers. I had this excellent crop of super cayennes that I picked and was busily cleaning to make VunderBob’s KickAss Hot Sauce. I had to stop to take a whiz, and that’s when the trouble started.
I zipped up and was walking back to the kitchen to finish my chore when the tingle started. When I got to the dining room, my weiner was on fire. For 20 minutes, I couldn’t sit, stand or lay down, and my wife was laughing at the show the whole time.
I now handle ALL peppers with gloved hands.
I did that once. It freakin’ hurts.
Mnementh- I thought you had vanished! Glad to see you!
[end hijack]
Unfortunately, this is one that I keep repeating and repeating and repeating every few years…
It’s kind of a cross between nogginhead and tanstaafl & gypsygirl31 - I have this bad habit of either dropping a soldering iron and catching the hot end instead of letting it hit the floor, OR reaching for the soldering iron without looking and grabbing the hot end fully and completely, if briefly.
Yeah, I know. I’m pathetic sometimes.
but I’m cute, so that makes up for a lot.
My boyfriend always catches his face on the corner of my car door (Intrepid) when he opens it. Once I was opening the door and turned to talk to a friend beside me. I kept swinging the door open and it caught me right in my hip bone, which doesn’t have a lot of padding over it! Had a large bruise there for a while.
But my really stupid story is this. This is a totally “Well where the heck did my brain go?” moment.
I was sitting on my couch with a friend and my then-boyfriend. We were just casually chatting, ya know. I had a can of pop in my hand. Well for some strange reason, I just decided to tip the can upside down and pour its entire contents into my lap. I’d probably still be getting crap about t hat one if I was still friends with either of those two people! :rolleyes:
My story is a variation of some of the stories before (nogginhead, tanstaafl, gypsygirl31 & TVGuy) except mine includes thongs…I was working in a fastfood joint in the Netherlands. One day I picked the thongs we use to pick food out of the ‘fryers’ which happened to be quite hot. I dropped the thongs in the fryers and instinctively grabbed for them, plunging my hand into the hot grease…my second story involves a colander with a broken handle - I was cooking some pasta for friends, using the before-mentioned broken colander. Having no adequate way of holding the colander, I (without thinking) hold the colander by putting my thumb over the top and the rest of my fingers underneath the colander. Needless to say that I dropped the whole thing once I poured out the pasta and pastawater, giving myself 2nd degree burns on my hand…