What's the Dumbest Injury You've Ever Had?

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, we’ve got a thread for the most pain you’ve ever been in . Iwas going to tell a story about mine, but it was so stupid I figured I would start a new thread about dumb injuries.
When I was 12, a friend got a new BB gun and brought it over to shoot some targets (no, nothing living). When my turn came, I figured it’d be cooler if I could make it look like a machine gun you see in the movies. You know how machine guns always have the 20 or 30 round banana clip that sticks down? Well, this BB gun had the lever action that surrounds the trigger. Well, that looked kind of like a machine gun clip if you left it sticking straight down now didn’t it? Unfortunately, when fired, this lever violently snapped back into place around the trigger.

Squarely on the tip of my right thumb.

At first was just a dull pinch, like getting your finger caught in a drawer. Oh but then comes the searing sharp pain that seemed to have a pulse of it’s own. I look down and my thumbnail is split clean in half with blood bubbling out. I them screamed and ran around desperately trying to grab my housekey from my pants pocket. Mistake #2. I jam my hand (the right, of course) into my pocket, catch one the nail halves and completely tear it out.
I get inside and mumble something to my mom about “BB gun” She, of course, thinks I’ve been shot and freaks out. Later, when she see its only my thumbnail, she gets pissed at me for playing with guns.

My Dad’s response when he finds out the whole “machine gun” angle? Fear? Concern? Anger at the Daisy Co. for making such an unsafe product? Nope

“That’s about the stupidest damn thing I’ve ever heard someone do”

Anyone else have stories of bodily injury caused by extreme stupidity?

2

I’ve had a whole heap of dumb-arse injuries.
[ul][li]Slipping in the bath and cutting my chin open. Three stitches.[/li][li]Kicking through a glass screen door with my bare foot, after my brother locked me outside. Four stitches and a month on crutches.[/li]Slashing my wrist open on an unseen sharp object, while taking a drunken short-cut through a building site. I didn’t realise until hour an hour later, when my friends noticed the blood running down my run. Three stitches and a tetanus shot.[/ul]In my defence, the first two happened when I was reasonably young. The latter, however, was unmitigated adult stupidity.

3

I sprained my snle falling off a high school track. Early one morning I was running with my sweatshirt on and thought it’s be really cool to take it off while running. There was a 2 foot area of the track that had about a 8 inch dropp and I ran right off it and sparined my anky. Goodness, what I’ve done to myself…

4

At work, sitting at my desk when most people are out at lunch. I am talking to a friend on the phone whilst changing the blade on my trusty Exacto knife. Knife held point-up in left hand, phone on shoulder. Right hand unscrewing blade, right elbow propped on desk. Elbow slips off desk; knife goes straight into right palm a goodly distance.

Blood everywhere. I say to my friend on the phone, “I have to go now.” No one is at their desk except one lady I know vaguely; I ask her to drive me to the emergency room. One stitch. (The ER care is amazing once they ask me “Did this happen at work?” and I say “Yes.” I didn’t even have to fill out ANY paperwork; they did it all for me. Cost me $0. God bless America.)

Come back to the office, and there is a small crowd gathered around my blood-spattered cube. They assumed I had slit my wrists, then mysteriously vanished. One manager was reported to have been salivating at the blood.

5

Some years back, I finished a shower, then found that the two-part sliding shower door was off its runner a bit. I tried to jerk it back into place and the whole thing came loose and crashed down on my instep, near the toes. I had to ice it, keep it elevated, and take painkillers. I was lucky I didn’t break any toes.
:rolleyes:
Dumb, dumb, dumb!

6

Let’s just say you are NOT on your own with this type of injury. :slight_smile:

The dumbest I’ve ever done. This is classic 3 Stooges material.

When I was in 7th grade metal shop we were all set down at the “welding bench” which used torches.

At some point during my welding I managed to burn the ring finger on my left hand. I think I reached across the flame of something. I dunk my hand into a bucket of water sitting on the bench and let it cool off. Of course with one hand in the water, I couldn’t turn off the torch.

I take my hand out of the water to check out the damage. It’s pretty bad. All the skin in the area of the finger where a ring would sit was burned up. Brown bits pealed back, it looked pretty bad. I start to go into shock after seeing it.

I turn around to try and find a teacher to help me. All of a sudden I feel a burning on my little finger right next to the damaged ring finger. I look down and find I had let the buring torch slip down from my right hand and it was pointed RIGHT at my little finger. SPLASH, hand goes back into the water.

Man did I feel stupid.

I’ve still got the scars today.

7

I was young and clumsy, playing tag in my backyard with the neighbor kids. “Safe” was the outside door that led to the basement. (this was an old house.) That was mistake number one.

Whomever was “It” was chasing me, and I had to get to “Safe” to avoid beng tagged and becoming “It,” so I was running as fast as my short legs would let me … headed straight for the door.

The door that had windows.

Windows made of glass. (are there any other kind?)

My arms were extended, and without even thinking, I stuck my whole arm through the glass, cutting my arm. There was blood, but it was not deep enough to require stitches. Stupid little kid…

The following winter, I was playing outside and, for some reason, decided that our garden tools would make excellent toys. So I grabbed a hoe (the tool …) and began knocking icicles off the roof with it. There was a very pointy icicle that looked too tempting to remain there, so I swung and it came crashing down…

…right on my head.

Stupid little kid.

-Dirty

8

Where shall I start…

In about 3rd grade I had a really cool jumprope (just ask me). One day after recess, we came back in and I noticed there was a knot in it. I sat down to listen to the story being read and thought I’d get the knot out at the same time. With a nice pair of scissors I proceeded to pry and wiggle the scissors into the knot. I glanced up to listen to the story and the scissors slipped… I poked myself in the eyeball with the scissors - and no they were not the nice rounded, blunt type. It hurt so bad, but I didn’t want to interupt the cool story. I just rubbed my eye and cried quietly in the back. The pain eventually went away, but to this day I have a funky spot in my eyeball where the scissors went in. Kinda neat, huh??

After many years of maturing and non-self injurous behaviour (yeah right)…

My family went on holiday to the coast and decided to go dune riding on 4-wheel ATV’s (huge Honda monstrosities). We rented them for several hours and decided to see if we could find the ocean we knew was nearby. We took off across the sand, driving through small lakes, trying to go up near vertical sand dunes a hundred feet… needless to say we became slightly disoriented. Dad parked Ma and my sister on top of a huge dune and told me to go in one direction while he went in another - looking for someone to lead us out, or at least point the way.

I could hear people not too far away and thought I could find them. After about 5 minutes scootin across the sand, something strange happened… I woke up.

I pulled my face out of the sand, pushed the bike off of me and tried to stand up but my left knee had popped out of place. I pushed it back into place and took stock of the situation. The handlebars of the bike had been shoved forward about 10" by my tummy and hips, and my body hurt like the dickens.

I looked around and saw I had fallen off a 10’ sand cliff. Heard a bike coming so scrambled up the cliff to prevent the next person ending up like me. It was my sister asking where I’d been as I’d been missing for a while. She just laughed when I told her what happened.

Anyhoodle… got back to where everyone was waiting. I told them what happened, was told there was no blood so I must be okay.

Made it back to the rental place and we went looking for a campsite. By the time we found a place everything hurt. But being on holiday I didn’t dare complain or be a nuisance.

After 2 days the bruise had spread from just below my breasts to mid thigh. Belly-button level was very angry looking - purple, yellow, puce, green… A virtual rainbow and bugger me did it hurt.

When we made it back home a week later I made an appointment to see the doctor. She x-rayed the knee, and poked and prodded all the sore spots and just shook her head saying I was darn lucky. Major knee damage, major bruising, cracked wrist, neck sprain…I got a huge knee brace that I wore for months, wrist was wrapped (I didn’t want another cast - previous volleyball injury), and instructions on how to draw the bruise up and get it healing faster. Was told I should have been in the hospital… Oh well… no visible blood, so I must be okay… right??

I’m a tough ole bird (31 soon)!!

9

In my innocent childhood, one of the pasttimes of my friends and I was to hang around on the corner and shout incoherantly at passing cars.

Hey, we were young and bored.

On the corner was a fire hydrant. Can you picture it? A perfectly ordinary fire hydrant. Red, about thigh-high on a smallish kid. Three caps on the sides to attach hoses. A cap on the top with a poky thing sticking up about six inches.

So as we hung around, I stood on top of the fire hydrant, balancing my feet on the two caps on either side and straddling it.

Then I slipped.

My whatsit was horribly bruised, but I told no one because I was horribly embarrassed.

“Mommy, how did you lose your virginity?”
“I was raped by a fire hydrant.”

10

Years ago( I was about 7), I was playing Sonic Smash ( badmitton-like game with plastic raquets and a small ping pong ball) with my 2 step-brothers who were about two and four years older than me. The one who was four years older than me tried to be slick and lift the ball on the ground with the raquet. He let go of the raquet on the way up and it came flying at my head and cracked me hard on the eyebrow and the handle broke the little blood vessals in the bridge if my nose.

Blood was everywhere and never have I screamed so loud… I was seeing stars and stuck in bed for two days with a major headache.


Last night, I was involved in a stage production that included a gross interpretation of the movies Shrek, Zoolander, and Austin Powers.. The fairy god-father  who wore a tu-tu( narrator) has a huge book entitled "Shriek" (take-off on Shrek) and he was supposed to slam it shut.. when the time came, he got his tu-tu in the page and slapped that huge wooden book on his crotch! That was so not rehearsed!
11

I don’t normally hurt myself badly, but there’s one I know of that was both stupid and highly visible.

I’d just bought a new coffee table and two end tables. They came very well packaged indeed. The ropes that bound them up were attached to the bottoms of the tables with heavy staples. I didn’t want to leave the staples in, so I started pulling them out with a pair of pliers.

Of course, idiot that I am, I yanked way too hard on one of the staples, which gave way very smoothly, and I whacked myself in the face with the handles of the pliers. After seeing stars for a few moments, I stumbled into the bathroom to check the damage. Result: a black-looking cut about 1 inch long, above and through my right eyebrow. No real easy way to hide a cut like that on your face. I resolved to tell people that I was in a hockey fight, rather than “I hit myself in the face unpacking my new table.”

12

I was offended, for some reason, by a plastic collar on a bottle (left behind from the cap). I was trying to pry it off when the neck of the bottle broke, and I gouged the hell out of two fingers on the jagged stump.

That was pretty dumb.

13

FisherQueen’s story remined me of another one.
Sixth grade and my first monthat a new school. I was walking home with my new friends. I was in front of them and wanted to see who I was talking too, so I decided to walk backwards. About 10 feet later, I ran right into a fire hydrant. I flipped over it backwards, and sprained my wrist. Great way to make a good impression.
(sigh)

14

When I was a baby I saw my aunt shaving her eyebrows and decided to copy her. My mom was pretty pissed that there was a razor lying around where I could reach it. I don’t remember doing it, but I have a scar under my eyebrow. (I suppose this one doesn’t count since I probably didn’t know much about razors.)

I was about 4, and my grandma was ironing some clothes. I was running around with my cousins, tripped on the cord, and the iron hit me on my bare ankle. That scar’s faded over time, but it’s still there.

When I was about 5 or so I was playing with a stapler and managed to staple my finger. The staple was just a little narrower than my finger, so it went through a little skin on either side and came out the bottom.

Another time I scraped up my finger pretty bad by running it along a grout line in a brick wall. Somehow it didn’t hurt until I looked at it.

When I was 11 or 12 I was riding my bike around the schoolyard when I noticed a piece of string hanging on my front wheel nut. I didn’t like it there and tried to remove it while I was in motion. There’s a scar on my wrist where the tire scraped off a big chunk of skin.

One time I was sitting on the back of a chair with my feet on the seat. I fell backwards and hit my head on the corner of a table, and had to get 4 stitches. There’s a small bald spot there now.

My mom had this fabric cutting wheel with a spring loaded safety cover. One time I stuck my finger through the hole in the handle and was twirling it around, and smacked it into my other wrist. There was enough force to move back the cover, and I cut myself disturbingly close to the veins there, but not very deeply. That left a small scar.

15

I slipped on dog shit, put my hand through a plate glass window and ended up with a hunk of glass imbedded in my left wrist. Fortunately, I was with a doctor at the time, who told me not to pull it out, cause I would have bled to death. Instead, I went to the hopsital with this hunk of glass in my wrist.

I had a cast on my left arm when a wasp stung my left ring finger. I’m allergic, so the hand and arm immediately swell up, and the cast is cutting off my circulation. The bozos at the emergency room debate whether they should take the cast off. Finally, they do and my arm swells up to about twice its size. They shoot me with something, put a brace on the arm and send me on my way.

16

Whilst trying out a new kite, I took a couple of steps backwards to help the kite gain altitude. Sort of half running backwards. I trip over my own big, fat feet, and fall over backwards. I managed to get my right arm behind me fast enough to catch myself and not land on my back and bash my head. That was good. The bad part was that I was moving pretty fast when I hit, ended up slamming my arm into the ground with my ass. Did I mention that this was on the street? It hurt like a son of a bitch, but I figured I had only sprained it and didn’t go to have it checked by a doctor. My wife wrapped it in an ACE bandage, and it seemed OK.
On towards evening, she decided to take off the bandage and rub some kind of mentholated cream into my arm. Well, she took off the bandage and I turned white. OK. Off to the doctor’s office. I tell him the story, he looks things over and tells me that my wrist is fine. Well, DUH! My wrist doesn’t hurt - I had told him that it was my arm up by the elbow that hurt. He says “Yes, yes. Your wrist is fine. Go home, take some aspirin. It will be better in the morning.”
We go out of the office and start to go home, and each step pulls a grunt from me. The wife decides to drag me to the local hospital emergency room. This is some five thousand steps from the doctor’s office. I know. I counted the grunts.
The doctor on duty looks things over, and calls in a radiologist and they do som x-rays. It turns out that the radius is broken just under the joint. They put a half cast on it and send me home.
Four weeks I spent at home because I can’t do squat with my right arm. Why? Because I tripped over my own feet while trying out kite for my three year old daughter.
Pretty stupid if you ask me.

17

A few years ago, after cutting onions and chili peppers for dinner, I decided to masturbate and forgot to wash my hands first…:eek:

18

When I was three, I decided to ride my Big Wheel up the concrete steps in front of the house–fell backwards against sidewalk, resulting in lots of head stitches.

At about age nine or ten, they decided to yank some of my teeth in preparation for braces (apparently, they weren’t falling out fast enough to suit my orthodontist). I had Novocaine for the first time and I thought it was pretty cool that I couldn’t feel my face. After we got home from the dentist’s, I sat in the living room watching a movie, periodically gently (as I thought) touching my face to see if the Novocaine had worn off. When I went into the kitchen, my mother shrieked–I had basically gouged away a lot of skin from my cheek/nose area and was bleeding all over the place! Of course, it hurt once the anesthetic wore off.

19

Mine… uh… let me put it this way.

When you’re in the woods and have to pee. Make sure there’s not a yellow jacket nest under your stream…

20

High school. The “soccer” day. All had to learn soccer from a coach who had never played and said, “Ya just kick the ball and run after it.” I kicked, missed the ball, hit a guys leg and broke my toenail. It grew back ingrown (three times) and finally had to be surgically altered. Kept me out of gym for 2 years.

“Tightrope walking” on a metal bar that was 2 inches higher than my inseam. Slipped with one leg falling on each side. Sang soprano very well for a week.

Winter. Snow. Jumped off a pile a bricks. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Under the snow below were more bricks, but not so neatly stacked. Sprained ankle and wrist and got cut up pretty bad.

Close encounter with stupid injury:
My friend Eddy was playing with some guys in the street. One threw a stick that landed in Eddy’s eye. Eddy calmly pulled the stick out of his eye. One of the 10 year old geniuses that threw the stick said, “I heard when this happens, you’re not supposed to pull it out.”
Eddy put the stick back in his eye. He is blind in that eye now.

Not and injury, but classic:
My brother had a summer job doing geological surveys. His boss told him to go about 1/2 mile over some hills and hold the whatevertheycallit. After about 20 minutes, his boss when looking for him. Just in time. He was up to his chest in quicksand.