What's the stupidest injury you've incurred?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Two injuries, I think I’ve posted about them on the board, but what good is a story if you can’t tell it over and over again?

I call this “The Summer Yancey Discovered Physics”

**Chapter one: **I was getting paid by the nail to remove them from the shake shingles we were replacing on our roof. I was busily hammering away at the roofing nails and most of them were popping right out, but one was giving me trouble. No matter how hard I hit it, it wouldn’t budge. I decided more force would solve the problem, so I grabbed the hammer with both hands (this bit is important) removing the left one from holding the offending board down.

I watched the board fly up in my peripheral vision, and that’s the last I remember until I woke up in the car, with a towel on my head, heading for the emergency room.

Five stitches and a better understanding of conservation of momentum.

Chapter Two: Up on a ladder, cleaning the second storey windows. the next window was over the roof of the basement entrance, and I was going to have to get down the ladder, move it over and climb up on the alcove. I had learned the phrase “work smarter, not harder” earlier that summer, and decided I could jump from the ladder, the two or three feet to the alcove, and be done that much quicker.

I grabbed my squeegee, and my bucket and with a might leap, managed to push the ladder out from under me while traveling only about a foot in the direction I needed to go. Not enough to cleanly land on the roof, but enough to land half way. On my ribs, and then slide down the graphite shingle we had just put on down to the ground.

Two broken ribs, gravel rash and an inside look into Newton’s Third Law.

42

I got two:

First in high school. The girl who sat in front of me hated her pig tails to be pulled. I pulled one. She spun around and stabbed me in the left leg with her pen, hard. Right through the jeans. It took everything I had not to scream out in class. Left a nice pen tip shaped hole in my leg for a couple days. I still have a tattoo ink dot on my leg 30 years later.

I was attempting to change the head on the weed whacker. Instead of picking up the proper tool for the job, I tried using a screwdriver to turn the head lock off. The head spun, the screwdriver slipped out of the groove, and promptly stabbed me in the right palm, deep. I have a nice Phillip head scar to remind me to buy the right tool for the job.

43

I sneezed one time and pulled a muscle in my ribs. It hurt for months.

44

I had a huge crush on Sherry Goldblatt in 10th grade. When I finally worked up the nerve to ask her out, she said no. So that hurt, a little bit, yeah.

45

1.Rinsed my eyeballs with mouthwash.
2. In college, I worked in a hospital kitchen. One day, bored, I flipped a butcher knife into the air and caught it safely by the handle. Confident I could do it again, I said, “Hey guys, watch this!” Didn’t work so well the second time. Luckily the ER was a 45-second walk down the hall. This wasn’t my only walk down that hall either.
3. Do injuries to pride count? I have dozens of those stories.

46

My brother was the talk of the high school for inserting tweezers into an outlet in biology lab. (It was small school and not much happened.) He would have been high school aged.

Also, do not use all-metal scissors to pry an obstinate plug out of an extension cord. I would have been college aged but hadn’t learned this tidbit yet. The scissors were more injured than I.

47

Some people would say it’s the time I broke my ankle landing a parachute, after jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. But I think this one is even stupider:

I used to work in a radiator factory and for a while my job was to stamp radiator tanks out of pieces of sheet metal on a press. The press would form the tank and trim off the excess sheet metal, about a half-inch all around. I would remove the tank and the scrap, insert another piece of sheet metal and start over.

One time the piece of scrap got stuck in the press. I reached in, grabbed it and yanked. The razor-sharp edge of the scrap metal left a very deep cut in my finger. It bled a lot too. That was over 30 years ago and I still cringe when I think about yanking that piece of metal.

48

My husband broke his right wrist once, explaining to someone how it was that he broke his left wrist, so he ended up with both arms in casts at the same time.

About 20 years later, he broke his left wrist again, because when he was at drill, they were running in formation, and some butterbar got the idea to make them run backwards. Of course, my husband is the one who trips, and causes a domino topple, and when it’s all said and done, his wrist is broken.

49

Playing with my friend’s baby, little Henry head butted me. He pounded his forehead into my nose. I thought he broke my nose. She complained, “You got blood on my baby.” I was like, “Your baby broke my nose” (Not really but it bled a lot). :slight_smile:

50

I was sleeping and when I woke up, I raised my hand and dropped it right into my eye. Scratched the cornea and had to go to the Emergency room.

51

Another: Put medicated ear drops in my eye. To be fair, I didn’t have my contacts in, and the bottles are nearly identical. Same antibiotic, too. Different concentrations.

God, that hurt.

52

My mom used her microwave for everything in the mid 80’s and made some baked potatoes. But for some reason some of them turned out a little hard on one end. I was trying to break into mine and was holding my potato and stabbed at it with my fork. I ended up howling with a fork sticking straight up on its own from my thumb, blood pouring out.

53

I got out of my car with my left hand occupied with a few big bags of apples. My right hand was busy removing the seat belt. My left foot shut the door- right on the tip of my right index finger. Left hand had to put the bags down and open the door, since it had closed fully and my finger wouldn’t budge. Blood, pain, and swelling ensued. The nail finished growing back six months later. There is a fine scr across the tip of the finger now, but the feeling has pretty much returned to normal.

54

Not much of an injury. but with hindsight a bit stupid…

When I was seven, I used to read The Beano (a British comic). An oft repeated gag was that of standing on the end of a garden rake and the handle whacking you in the face. Having an enquiring mind (and possibly being rather bored that day), I decided to see if that would happen.

It did.

Fortunately, it missed my nose but I got a proper “shiner” (black eye). Unlike Dennis The Menace I didn’t get any raw steak to soothe it, just got called a “daft 'apporth” by my dad.

I turned up at school on the Monday and after I’d rather sheepishly explained to my teacher how I got the black eye (and he’d stopped laughing) he gave us a short impromptu lesson about levers.

55

Several times while soldering, welding and cooking I have absent mindedly picked up something I knew darn well was too hot to touch.

56

After breaking up a dog fight, I grabbed the underdog by the back of the neck to restrain him from running off, so I could see how badly he was injured. Yes, he bit me. Why? because I was stupid enough to grab in him exactly the same spot the aggressor had just been holding him pinned down. Stupid move number one. Stupid move number two was yanking my arm away when he bit down. First rule of handling dogs that might bite…don’t yank your arm away if the dog’s teeth are in it. So instead of a puncture wound, I had a gash that needed stitches. I was the one most injured in that fight. I forgot all the rules.

57

Oh so many injuries… I have an entire drawer in my bathroom just for bandages.

The most spectacular and expensive would have to be the time I tripped and fell into a door frame. Split my head wide open, got to see my own skull in the mirror - freaked me right out. Blood everywhere. Got sixty stitches to put it all back together again and two gorgeous black eyes. I’m not sure the ER doctor believed me at first when I told him how it happened but he did after washing paint chips out of my head.

A close second would be the time I was painting my kitchen and took a step backwards to admire my handiwork, forgetting that I was at the top of a ladder at the time. The result was much more colorful than the kitchen.

58

Forgot that the back was missing off of a chair and fell off. Unfortunately my wrist was impaled on a piece of metal sticking out of the very chair back that was removed.

I have a nasty 1/2 inch scar on my wrist now that many people ask about.

59

Visiting parents. Used cheap disposable razor because I forgot mine.

Getting in the shower noticed the plastic cover for said razor on the floor. Figured eh, I’ll get it when I get out.

Got out of shower…stepped on pointy razor cover. Took weight of that foot too fast and strained the calf in the opposite leg. Couldn’t run on it for a couple months.

Also, coincidentally, at parents (I have a lot of work meetings in my home town.)

Reached in to my hanging bathroom kit to pull out my GOOD razor. It was blade-up.

It got hung up while I was pulling it out, and I sliced the tip of my finger off.

Fingers bleed like a bastard.

60

My horse was lame and I went to the stable to meet the vet. So I’m standing there next to my psychotic horse when something visible only to him caused him to freak. The first hoof to return to earth landed on my foot. I then understood the first rule of being around horses: wear boots, not sneakers.