What's the stupidest thing you've ever done to injure yourself?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Can’t think of any good stories about myself off hand… so here’s a couple of family stories:

Story 1:
Mr. Pol is about 10 & the family is going to Cedar Point. They stay at a hotel the night before - next to the parking lot is a rather steep hill. Mr. Pol, being a boy, decides to run down the hill. Parents tell him not to. He does anyway and trips & falls. “My shoulder hurts!”. Parents check him over - no blood, so he must be ok. Serves him right.

Mr. Pol’s wearing a tank top that day & just can’t seem to keep the strap on his shoulder. They head home that night - in the morning his shoulder still hurts.

They go to the doctor & guess what? Broken collarbone. These days his parents would probably be accused of child abuse/neglect!

Story 2:
Mr Pol’s brother (in his mid-late-teens) & family were at a basketball game. They were about 5 rows up in the bleachers, near the end of the row, away from the stairs.
Mr.PolBro decides to get some snacks & junp/slide off the end of the bleachers instead of bothering everyone & going to the stairs.

As he slide-jumps off the bleacher, his belt-loop gets hung up on a bolt. He HANGS there for a moment or two - feet about a foot or so off the floor - before the loop gives way. Everyone in the bleachers (it seems) saw it. No injuries, except to his pride.

62

I sliced my hand on a baby bottle.

It had broken, and I tried to uscrew the nipple while holding the broken top in the other hand!

It took almost a year before I got full use of my thumb, and my index finger will never reach down to my palm again.

63

Oh, where do I begin? My life is full of stupid injuries, since I happen to be one of the most uncoordinated people I know. I have long claimed that I can fall down, fall over, or fall out of just about anything. It is no small miracle that I have not yet broken a bone or Darwinized myself. I’ll offer one example from many, and may add more later as they occur to me.

As a little ninja of about four or five years of age, I was spendinding the weekend at my mother’s best friend’s house. Her father’s fishing boat was in the back yard, turned upside down to keep the rainwater out. I decided that it would be endless fun to perform a balancing act on the boat’s keel. All went well until I got closer to the prow of the boat than than was wise. I fell flat on my behind and slid down the prow of the boat like I was on a sliding board. The trailer hitch bolt went right through the bottom of my foot, creating a very unpleasant wound. I didn’t realize that I was bleeding immediately, only that I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t stand. I crawled across the back yard, through the back door, through the kitchen, through the living room, and up the stairs before I was discovered by my caretakers by the trail of blood I’d left behind. I had some vague notion that if I went to bed and took a nap, everything would be better. Seeing blood oozing steadily out of my foot, my mother’s friend and her mother both freaked out. When I looked a the bottom of my foot, I likewise went into hysterics. End result: 7 or 8 stitches, and a lasting bitterness toward the doctor who’d seen one too many screaming kids that day, and was decidedly lacking in bedside manner.

Since my friends don’t read this board, I have no reservations about embarassing them here. Several years ago, I was playing basketball at my friend Kevin’s house with a group of people from the neighborhood. He had one of those adjustable hoops, and we’d decided to lower it so we NBA wannabes could dunk. Kevin unleashed a monster dunk shortly thereafter, and celebrated by hanging on the rim and swinging in true highlight reel fashion. He swung a bit too far and crotched himself on the pole holding up the basket. His eyes widened in shock, and he let go of the rim. He was now only a few degrees out of a completely horizontal orientation, and fell straight down and landed on his driveway with a splat. Dazed for a moment, he suddenly jumped up and started running in circles, screaming like a little girl as his body registered all the pain he was now in. Luckily, he sustained nothing more serious than a few bruises and a goose egg on the back of his head.

And finally, I’d like to add my own bonfire story. Last spring, we were going to have a bonfire down by the pond on the grounds here at St. Pius, and we were gathering wood for the fire. Having no access to a saw, we’d been wedging logs into a crook in a tree and pushing on them to snap them in half, and make them a more manageable size for the fire. After a few successful applications of this technique, we got to a log that we just couldn’t break. We decided to call over Pat, who is our resident bull in a china shop. He too was unable to break the log, even after putting all 270 pounds of his weight onto the branch. Somebody came up with the brilliant idea that the branch might break if Pat got a running start. So he backed up about thirty yards or so, and went through a Sumo wrestler’s pre-fight ritual stomps, while we all chanted his name. Pat got up a full head of steam, and charged at the tree with the log portruding. He shoved it with all his accumulated momentum, causing it to bend, but not break. The log snapped back and hit Pat in the face, knocking him flat. After ten minutes of laughing uncontrollably at his misfortune, we finally dragged ourselves off the ground to check on his condition. Pat had knocked himself out, and was bleeding from the mouth. Fortunately, he’d only cut the inside of his lip on his braces, and hadn’t lost any teeth. We knew that he wasn’t seriously injured when the first words out of his mouth as he revived were, “My glasses! Has anyone seen my glasses?” After another five minutes of laughing, we finally did commence the search for his missing glasses, which it turned out had been launched an impressive distance when the log knocked them from his face.

64

I was playing with my dog while I was in grade 6. Now this dog was a Golden Retriever but he had epilepsy ;(. This meant he could be temperamental, but it RARLY ever happened.

Well, that day, my two brothers and I were playing with him as we had always done for years. This time, he stopped and started growling.

I back off a bit and patted him on the head and tried to sooth him. Then…

SNAP

I saw him lung at me and I put my hands to my face.

I pulled them away and said, “Whoa, hey pup, it’s ok. Calm down.”

Off to the side, I heard my older brother say, “Oh my god…”

I looked at him and said, “What?” That’s when I look at my hands and they were covered with blood.

I looked closely at my hands and could not see any cuts or anything. I looked at my brother again and the look on his face frightened me.

I quickly got up and made a run for the bathroom to see what had happened. (Spraying blood all over the living room as I spun around.)

My brother tried to stop me as he didn’t want me to see what had happened. I squirmed away and made it to the bathroom and looking in the mirror.

Almost nothing left.

The dog had clamped onto my face and tore. His upper jaw had grabbed me just below my left eye and his lower jaw grabbed my left cheek and he ripped back.

In the mirror, all I could see is the flesh hanging off of my face. It was then that I started crying uncontrollably. I still could not feel anything.

M<y brother bandaged me up and ran me to a neighbors house. He ran me to the local hospital.

My parents, in the mean time, had heard what had happened and arrived at the hospital just after we did. The doctor said he could for me and they sent me to another hospital in a near by major city.

A plastic surgeon was brought in to put me back together.

He did a damned good job too.(Thank Gawd!)

65

I didn’t injure myself on this one, but I was the cause of it, so I think it can be shared. Several years ago, me and several neighborhood friends used to gather at Jay’s house. On such day, we were all bored and restless. Jason was laying on the floor, reading a comic book. Laying on his back, with his feet flat on the floor, so that his legs were bent. For some reason that seemed like a good idea, I grabbed a telephone book, climbed onto the back of Jay’s couch, rolled up the phone book, and DOVE off, ramming the rolled-up phone book into Jason’s scrotum.

66

For some reason my embarrassing injuries involve horses and lack of forethought.

I decide to shoe my own horses. No point in paying a farrier to do something that looks so simple. (Note: for people who keep horses, expense should be the last consideration.) The first step in horse shooing is to trim the hoof. This is done by turning your back to the leg the hoof is attached to, reaching down between your legs to grab the horses leg and pulling it up between your knees where the hoof is held by squeezing your thighs together and supporting the foot with your left hand while you whittle away at the hoof with an extremely sharp knife. At this point you and the horse are facing in opposite directions. If you let your left thumb stick up above the hoof there is a good possibility that you will cut it off. While I kept my thumb it took about three years to get the feeling back in the tip.

We had a big old gelding that just refused to cross water unless another horse went ahead of him to show him that it was safe. One afternoon I decided that the beast had to be taught a lesson and that I was the guy to do it. After a half hour of playing games with the big dummy I dismounted, put a lead rope on him and tried to lead him across a little creek. Placed in this position a horse will not walk through a barrier. It will try to jump over it. With S. Gelding pulling on one end of the rope and the gelding on the other end there was only one place for the horse to jump – straight down the rope. My last recollection of the incident is looking up and seeing the horses belly passing over me. Fortunately the horse did not want to step on me any more than I wanted to be stepped on by a beast that out weighted me by half a ton.

Trail ride. A friend’s wife dismounted while her husband led her horse across water the right way. Ever gallant I offered her a stirrup to carry her across the water. She stepped on, the saddle slipped, the horse blew up. My passenger stepped off when the saddle slipped, but witnesses to the train wreck say that I peaked out fully ten feet off the ground.

67

This happened when I was a freshman in high school. I had this broken umbrella. It would open up OK, but it wouldn’t close all the way, because one of the spokes was bent or something. So this one day, I came in from outside and was trying to get the damn thing to collapse, when I noticed that I was right outside the door of the math teacher’s classroom, the math teacher being the “really cool teacher” that year.

So in a lame effort to impress the cool math teacher, I held the umbrella in the palm of my hand, and WHAM! slammed it on the ground as hard as I could, to get it to close up properly. Unfortunately the floor was less giving than the umbrella, and that broken spoke came free and shot straight up into the palm of my hand.

I lifted my hand from the umbrella…except that the umbrella came with it. So I yanked the damn thing out of my hand, and managed to make it to the nurse’s office before blood started to well up and spill everywhere. They Mercurochromed me and bandaged it and remarkably, I managed to avoid all the bones of the hand, so I just had this purple-black bruise that extended from the palm of my hand halfway down my wrist, and a hideous looking wound in the middle of it. Almost like stigmata, come to think of it!

No permanent damage, but I still feel it in my right hand whenever the weather changes.

68

I was 15 years old. Riding in the car with my dad driving. He stops in a parking lot. I see a friend of mine. So excited to see my friend, I slam car door on my left thumb. Dad has to open the door, because I can’t get to it with my right hand.
Results:
Pissed pants
Pissed dad
Bruised thumb
Bruised ego
Permanently deformed thumbnail

69

that must have been really, really messy.

70

I got really drunk one night and almost died. You’ll have to ask for details…

71

Stupidest thing on a long list? (I was an uncoordinated youth.) Threw a lawn dart into my own foot. 'Nuff said.

72

hmmm… I’ve done some of these things without ill effects- notably setting myself on fire (in chem class. neat but painless) and touching the coils of a car lighter (interesting swirly pattern, also painless.) but fortunately not on purpose.

However:

  1. A couple of weeks after turning six, Elfie is driving her mother nuts by going in and out of the house; the cats are probably a bad influence. “Either come in and stay in, or go outside!” Well fine, Elfie thinks, and pushes the storm door closed. On the glass part. Guess what? The door wasn’t safety glass after all! So Elfie and Mommy go to the emergency room. The emergency room staff wants to know if Mommy is in labor, as she’s about eight months pregnant at the time. After she snips at them they finally get a doctor to look at my wrist. Butterfly tape instead of stitches. This time.

  2. Thirteen year old Elfie is babysitting for two hours after school. Having decided that wittling seems neat, she decides to carve out the center of a piece of wood, with a box cutter. Surprise! The box cutter slips and the blade imbeds itself right under Elfie’s thumb. Elfie doesn’t notice until her hands is wet, but decides It’s not that bad and wraps hand up in a face cloth. When 15 minutes have passed and blood is still pouring out, Elfie finally calls mom, who ironically enough works in the billing department in a hospital, and describes the injury. Mom gets all frantic and speeds on the way home. It’s not until Elfie has hung up the phone that her little brother even notices that she’s dripping blood all over and gets scared. Too. Seven stitches.

And as a bonus, my most recent injury:
This past March I woke up early one Saturday and heard my Dad bringing in groceries, some of which they’d left on the porch when they went to the car for more. Though I wasn’t dressed warmly enough to go outside, I decided to be nice and bring the bags into the kitchen for him, so I stepped onto the porch, grabbed the bags of soda and lifted them up. I quickly realized my error, as one bag didn’t contain two bottles of soda, it contained one bottle and a square,gallon, can of olive oil which under no circumstances should have been put together in such a flimsy bag. I realized this because the can was now on my big toe, and the corner of the can had dented said toe. Until then I didn’t realized flesh could be dented like that. As soon as I lifted the can up, the toe immediately turned dark purple, even under the nail, except for the dent which was mauve. All colors produced in less than 30 seconds. I thought it was a pretty impressive injury for something dropped only 18" to produce. The dent took 3 days to go away, but the toe didn’t break, just was a little chipped is all.

73

One time, when I was seven, I wanted to run and jump and have my dad catch me like in the movies. So I ran, jumped, and then proceeded to fall straight onto the floor, cracking my head on the wooden floor.

About a month ago, I was in my boyfriend’s car. We were driving along and I decided to stick in the cigarette lighter and look at it being red-hot. Yes, I am very smart.
Well, I didn’t leave it in long enough, so it didn’t turn red. So rammed my finger into it to see if it was hot. Ouch. It was very hot.

I was sitting in my desk chair (w/out wheels, just a ormal chair) the other day. I leaned to the trashcan to throw something away, but the trashcan was a little too far away. So I leaned more. The chair slowly tipped over, causing me to fall so that I was resting with my neck on the edge of the desk. A large amount of my body weight was pushing down on my neck, and it felt like my head was being slowly cut off.
Now visible injury, but if I touch my neck in the right places, it feels like stuff inside is moving around where it shouldn’t be.

I think that that’s enough… no need to appear any dumber than I already am. :slight_smile:

74

After laughing my ass-off and wondering how some of you are still alive, to tell these tales, I thought about some of the things I’ve done.

I was riding my bike near the railroad tracks (a big no-no) when I spotted a huge pile of asphalt. It looked like the perfect ramp for a jump. I started pedaling like mad to get up some speed for a world class jump. There were some men working on a section of track and they started yelling at me. I thought they just wanted me out of their work area, so I ignored them and went for it. The pile of asphalt had just been dumped and was still soft and very hot. My front wheel was buried in soft asphalt and I did a header over handle bars and into the pile. My arms were in up past my elbows and getting cooked. I was scrambling to get out but had sunk up to my knees. It was hot and I was screaming trying to get out, when one of the workers pulled me out. I lost one of my brand new PF Flyers in the pile and by the time we got my bike out the tire was kinda deformed from the heat. I was covered from head to toe with tar, my arms looked like lobsters and were starting to blister. I had to ride home about three miles. Trying to explain how I lost one of my new shoes, and why I was at the RR tracks, was tough. Suffering agonizing wounds did not reduce the severity of the inquisition.

75

I’ll post one for a friend - I’m sure he won’t mind. :slight_smile:

He had just finished filling a Zippo[sup]TM[/sup] lighter. Before putting it back in it’s case, he decides to light it to check the flint.
The lighter fluid on his right hand flashes merrily into flame, of course.
“oh sh**!” and transfers (still lit) lighter to left hand, shaking right hand to put out fire. Left hand catches on fire. “oh sh**!” Transfers lighter to right hand…
Apparently he managed to go through about three cycles this way.

76

you think this thread is horrid this one tops everything http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=83223ery thing

77

Once in a previous life, I was working as a Geotechnical Logging Engineer in Milwaukee. One morning one of the drill hands comes in with a large bandage across his chest. When questioned, he replied that he had spent most of the evening in the ER.

It seems that when they got off work the day before, he had gone to the house and because it was hot, he opened the window (no screen)and proceeded to take a nap. It seems that a neighborhood cat came in thru the window and decided that his chest would be a good nap spot. The drill hand was allergic to cats and basically terrified of them, so he had his roommate remove the cat. The roommate proceeded to pull the cat off the other guys chest by pulling on its tail. Needless to say, Kitty did not want to go. Claws, fangs, and a determined cat, result in deep wounds.

There comes the saying, “if you have to move a cat, push don’t pull.”

78

Let’s see, must have been around the time I was about 10 years old or so. Two of my friends and I decided that it would be fun to have a bicycle race. We decided that we would race down their driveway. No problem, except that it was only wide enough for 2 people to race at any one time. Oh yes, and it was very steep. It was paved, but it had a lot of gravel on it from the sides. So…one of my friends and I decided to go first. The second friend started us on the race with the countdown. And we were off!!! Faster, faster, faster. Rule number 1. Pay close attention to where you are going, not where you have been. I turned around to look at my other friend that was watching the “race”. Have you ever noticed what happens when you are on a bike and you turn around to look behind you? Your whole body also turns, to a little bit of an extent. At least, mine did. We were neck and neck in the race. I collided right into the side of my opponent. It was NOT a pretty sight. He flew over the top of me and down over the side of the driveway, breaking his elbow. I, one the other hand, continued on down the driveway, ON THE SIDE OF MY HEAD! When I finally stopped skidding, I found that my left ear was now just dangling buy the smallest of pieces of flesh. And, as is a well known fact, head wounds bleed worse that any other part of the body. When I got into their house, crying hysterically, I was really something to see. Tears mixed with blood adds up to make it look worse than it really was. My friends mom about had a heart attack. They rushed me to the doctor. I don’t recall that I got any stitches, since the ear is, I think, cartilage. At any rate, my head was wrapped up in a gauze bandage for a month. I remember thinking that I looked like a mummy. And I have never raced a bicycle since.

Oh, did I mention
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I won the race. :D:D:D

79

Kwyjibo, what happened to the dog?

80

A year ago I was getting out of the car and slammed the door on my left thumb. I didn’t notice it until I tried to walk away and noticed that hey, my thumb is still in the car! I opened the door back up and took my thumb out, it was nasty and bruised and :eek: jammed! I couldn’t move it. I had to last the rest of the day without being able to use my left thumb, which is hard when you are trying to paint a mask.

I got home and didn’t feel like going to the doctor so broke a popsicle stick in half and made a lame excuse for a splint for my thumb.

End of story? No. Like an idiot, before I got home I rented a video game I had been wanting to try out for a while. Of course, In my condition, I could not use the directional pad and was forced to move the directional pad with my index finger. Let’s just say I died over and over and over…

You can still see the marks if you look hard enough. And for some reason I can move that thumb back a lot farther than I can move my right thumb.