Oh yeah…
Age 7: Playing Knight and Dragons with friends at the Boys Club, found good sword-sticks to use. Went to throw one, and then noticed the rusty nails at the bottom and they pierced my hand dead center.
Age 14: Mom’s dog and a friend’s dog were fighting, so I tried to step in and break them up, only to have them both turn on me. 14 bites in total.
JP
When I was about five, I was playing with some paper dolls and a coloring book at the kitchen table. At some point, I realized I couldn’t find the nice, sharp, pointy scissors I was using to cut out the dolls. So while searching , I held up the bottom edge of my coloring book to my left eye and tilted the other end up. Sure enough, the scissors came sliding out of the book right for my eye! I was damn lucky I only ended up with a shinner.
Patty
Age 3: opened car door, fell out & got run over. Result: 1 broken leg. Still have interesting scars on legs. (Poor Dad wouldn’t buy a 4 door car ever again)
Age 15: knocked over pan of boiling soup. Result: 1st, 2nd & 3rd degree burns on left arm.
Age 27: first experience with ice skating. Result: concussion and 2 badly bruised knees.
Age 47: sprained ankle getting out of recliner. As I told the ER doc, just your usual Laz-e-boy injury.
Stuck hand in fan blade of running car.
Sliced open ring finger on right hand on canned ham can. Tip to first knuckle, through fingernail to the bone.
Ran 7" grinder with course pad across my right forearm. It was very hot and cauterized the gouge as it passed through. Really didn’t hurt much till the nurse used a scrub brush on the wound.
Touched end of spark plug on running lawn mower.
The best on was while I was in the Navy. Touched the inside of a powered VHF transmitter. The jolt blew apart my $20 wedding band (recently married for the first time), knocked me back about 10 feet into a brick wall, hit my head on said wall knocking me out. Fellow co-worker fearing I killed myself (could not find a heartbeat), attempted to start my heart by hitting me in the chest. Twice. I opened my eyes just as the second blow was being delivered. I was diagnosed with a second degree burn to my left hand, 2 broken ribs, a concussion, and temporary paralysis to my left side.
This is not about myself - because, of course, I never do anything stupid. Not anything I would admit to anyway.
This is about my late husband.
He broke his big toe when he tripped getting out of the shower one morning.
When the guys at work asked him how he broke his toe, he replied with:
“All I can tell you is that I was naked when it happened.”
Man oh man did their heads spin trying to figure out what we were doing that morning to break his toe!
Picture this.
A new home on top of a LONG steep hill. My sister wants to try her new Roller Blades, I take my skateboard. I start down the hill, and start to pick up some SERIOUS speed. At approxomately 35 mph (pretty damn fast on a skateboard, my board starts “The Death Wobble.” At this critical jucture a car starts up the hill. Heading right towards me. “The Death Wobble” prevents me from turning, slowing, whatever. (Did I mention that I was NOT a proffesional skateboarder?)
I decide - (wait for Brilliant Idea) - to just Jump Off the Board!
Problem is: I can’t run 35 mph…
My sister claims it’s the coolest feat of acrobatics she’s ever seen. I apparently jumped off the board, took a Longer step than believably possible, dove into a foward sommersault, rolled TWICE, and sprang to my feet like a gold medalist.
I just remember springing up, embarrassed that anyone could be witnessing something so clumsy, and in a fit of embarrassed anger, kicking the board - there by spraining three toes. My right palm had a red circle which looked oddly like muscle… and was that a wrinkle of next to it that should be covering that muscle? By the time I got back to the house, the thin membrane covering the wound was filled with clear liquid - swolled to the size of a golf ball. Required a wet, messy drainage. Gross.
My god my post is attrocious. I’ve been up for 36 hours. Feel free to insert appropriate punctuation (closing parenthesis)… missing words (like “skin”, after: wrinkle), and replace nonsense words like “swolled”… “SWOLLED???” … My God, I need to go to bed…
When I was 12 my buddies and I set up a bike jump. Since we didn’t have a lot of material with which to build the jump, we had to settle for the 3 cinder blocks and the single 2 x 4 we procured (stole) from the local lumber yard. The results was a really steep jump that you had to hit dead on to avoid riding straight into a short cinder block wall.
On my first attempt, I managed to hit the jump perfectly and went sailing straight up into the air, only to tip down again and land on my front tire thus slamming my chest into the handle bars with enough force to break a rib off my sternum. Of course with the wisdom of youth I never told anybody and as a result it never healed.
Okay, the husband said I ought to post this story on his behalf after I had read the one about ChristmasEve and the spot welder to him over the phone.
He was 14 at the time and his mom had just finished cutting his hair. Don’t know how the scissors got from her hands to the couch, but Husband plopped himself onto the sofa and, unknowingly, onto the open sheers as well. One point went into each butt-cheek and tore nasty holes into his pants. He informed his mother, a nurse, of what had happened but was REAL hesitant about showing anyone his wounds!
heh you want stupid? here goes. drinking and teens dont mix kids! when I was sixteen I was drinking beer with a few friends. One “friend” laid a 100.oo bill across the back of my hand and told me “I’ll put a lit cigarette on it and if you could keep it there till the bill gets a burn mark you could have it” well long story short the bill didn’t have a mark and 17 yrs later I still have the scar. BTW this “friend” is now in jail for a looong time. heh bad karma…
Age 8: went to visit Dad for the first time since the divorce, 4 years ago. Dad bought me one of those motorized squirtguns that loudly fires a short jet of water a couple of times per second. We went over to the grandparents house. On the way, I decided to spray my stepmom, in the other car. Oh, the mock-outraged face she made! I knew I had to flee in mock-terror, so I did, as soon as the car stopped. Straight through the grandparents house, onto the patio, slowed only briefly by the very, very clean plate glass window. I retain a faint puckery scar on my left temple from that fiasco, where a few square inches of my head were shaved off by a falling shard.
Age 15: My first job, at a waterpark. Long days of food service, on my feet the whole time, dealing with drunk dads and screaming kids. At last, the day is done. I hop on my trusty bicycle and cruise through the parking lot on my way back to my great-uncle’s house, where I was staying that summer. Relieved to be done for the day, I remove my hands from the handlebars to straighten my back. Continuing to pedal, I ssssttttrrrrreeeettttcccchhhh my shoulders and arms. Relaxing, I close my eyes briefly. Inevitably, I run directly into a parking stop. Two skinned elbows, two skinned knees, a bloody lip, one handlebar end DIRECTLY in the solar plexus, and plenty of wheezing “I’m fine, I’m ok” to the throng that gathered, unable to believe my stupidity.
Age 21: Replacing the old wicking material on my juggling torches, which involves wrapping the new wicking on, then screwing the screw through the layers of wicking and into the body of the torch. The screw goes through the wicking fine, but for some reason won’t screw into the torch straight. Lots of jiggling and different angles are attempted. Eventually, I get frustrated, and resort to brute force. Unfortunately, this works poorly, as the torch is round in cross section, and simply rolls to one side when I try to push straight down on the screw. No problem, I’ll just rest the end with the wicking in my hand, and hold it tight, THEN push and turn the screw. You see where this is going, I’m sure. The screwdriver slips, and instead of glancing harmlessly off the floor, glances harmfully off my second metacarpal, parting the intervening skin with little concern. My friend looked sick when I came upstairs with my cupped hand filled with blood.
More silly than stupid, when I was 3, my sister and I were jumping on our parents’ bed. She jumped as high as she could off the bed, and ran out to do something else. I tried to emulate her feat, but landed on a pair of nylons. Nylons on carpet are apparently rather slippery. One foot stayed put, while the other shot out to the side, and I did the horizontal splits. I’m sure it looked great, until I started screaming from the pain of my broken femur. No fun.
I was at work the winter before last, taking my smoke break. The smoke deck is on the second floor of the building by the kitchen and restaurant. You walk out into the freezing cold (or hellish heat), and there’s a walkway that runs alongside the building and leads to a small deck with chairs and whatnot. Beyond the paved walkway is just flimsy material covered in rocks that is the overhang of the loading area next to the exit on the first floor.
It had snowed that day, and it was freezing. I had on my work pants, a t-shirt, my work shirt, and a pullover work fleece that has one big pocket running across the front. My friend and I huddle by the door, on the walkway, because of the cold. I lend my friend my lighter, she lights her smoke, lights mine while it’s in my mouth, and hands me the lighter. I had noticed earlier that the top plastic piece was loose from the main barrel, and somehow the lighter was still lit when she passed it to me. Somehow I put it in the big pocket of my fleece without realizing it’s lit. A few seconds later, I feel something, look down, and realize my stomach is on fire. I didn’t move - I guess I was in shock - but my friend shrieked, started punching me, and somehow communicated to me to put myself out in a snow drift a few feet away, which was on the flimsy material covered with rocks.
I hurled myself through the air, belly-flopped into a snowdrift, heard a distinct sizzle, and immediately felt the snowdrift…shift. I hear a weird cracking sound, and the snowdrift that I am face-down in starts to move downward. I realize I am going to fall through the roof onto concrete; if I’m lucky, a car will break my fall.
I catch my breath, propel myself back with my arms (a super push-up, if you will), and sort of skip a few feet backward before colliding with my friend and the people who heard her screaming for help and came running. Remember, it was right by the door, so I knock into four people, two of whom stumble into another person holding the door open. They all collapse in a jumble; I’m mostly on top. The one person who remains standing has a fire extinguisher; though I am now thoroughly put out (thanks to the snowdrift), she blasts me with the fire extinguisher. I’m trying to block it from my face; she drenches everyone in the pile. We’re all screaming or moaning, more people come running, someone calls an ambulance, and it takes about ten minutes for everything and everyone to get straightened out.
The end result was some pink skin; a t-shirt, work shirt, and fleece with a huge perfectly circular area missing in the stomach section; and structural damage to the roof that I was told cost several thousand dollars to repair. A few months later they had to replace the whole damn thing because of building codes. My friend insisted that I looked like I was possessed as I flung my burning body into a snowdrift and, seconds later, flung myself back out of it.
I also listened when Billy Fox told me I would go faster if I put my foot in the spokes of my bike. It was the closest I ever came to flying.
Oh, and one more: growing up in the city, a huge summer treat was going to my aunt’s house in the county that came with a swimming pool. It was four feet deep, with a wide white metal rim. The outside was metal with a weird bamboo print. The kind of pool that you bought for $250 and installed yourself.
Next to the pool was a tree with a tire swing, and right by that was a privacy fence. The tire was in an upright position. When I was about 6 or 7, my brother and cousins decide that I’m going to stand on top of the privacy fence, they will hand me the swing, and I will hurl myself into the four feet deep pool with a wide metal rim. I’m not sure exactly what happened while I was in the air, but I ended up slamming everything from the hip-bone down into the metal side of the pool (which dents with surprising ease). I cut my belly on the metal rim, and managed to hold onto the tire swing as it dragged me back. It lost a lot of momentum after I body-slammed the pool, however, so it sort of twirled a bit while I hung on and finally dropped to the ground. You could clearly see the imprint of my legs, knees, and feet in the side of the pool for years after. My legs were bruised from hip to toe, I had a four-inch gash on my belly that required about eight stitches in three different spots that were really nasty, and I broke my big left toe when it was twisted as I crashed into the pool.
Soon after, we realized that if you sat at the top of the swing, instead of dangling from it, you could safely land in the pool.
When I was three, I was going home after playing with the kid who lived next door. But there, in the middle of the lawn, right in my path, the neighbor’s big furry dog was sleeping.
Big, furry, grouchy dog.
Hmm. How can I get past it? It was right in my path, there in the lawn. I couldn’t go under it – so I decided to climb over it.
I remember that, and then I remember sitting on the bathroom counter, wailing, as my mother cleaned out my wounds.
When I was seven, I had my only bicycle incident. I was leaving a friend’s house: his driveway was steep and short, straight down onto the street. I got on my bike, headed down the driveway onto the street, saw the opposite curb coming up, and panicked. Which is to say, froze.
The bicycle seat rammed into my crotch; for many minutes, I lay on the curb, contemplating pain.
When I was four, my forehead had a traumatic encounter with the toilet seat. Traumatic as in seventeen stitches. Moral? Never chase baby brother through the bathroom.
Well, this has certainly been an amusing thread. At one point I laughed so hard my dog woke up and started barking at me, wondering what was wrong with me. Although all of the stories so far have been good, I submit that they lack one crutial element. I am, of course, talking about pyrotechnics.
My friends, I humbly submit that I am the only doper who has, after much careful thought and consideration, blown himself up.
The year is 19-late seventies something. I am about 12 or so. Mom, Dad, sis and I are vacationing at my grandparents cottage in Maine. This is usually the best two weeks of the summer, gorging ourselves on cheap lobster right off the boat, swimming in water that’s always too cold to be comfortable, but at 12 seems perfect, travelling to Old Orchard to observe and participate in the typical American ocean boardwalk frenzy, nevermind that at least half of the folks there are Canadian. The word “idylic” would be apropriate.
This summer, for some reason, I get to investigating the attic of the cottage. There I found a genuine antique powder horn. Being twelve, visions of Davy Crockett swim through my head. ( It wasn’t until much later, majoring in history, that learned that Crockett was executed by Santa Anna after the Battle of the Alamo) I picture myself as a frontier adventurer. During my play, I take the cork out of the end of the powder horn, and realize that it’s still full!
Well, now, this puts a whole other face on things. I now have gunpowder at my disposal. I’m twelve, I’m smart, I am a keen observationalist of the world. I know just what to do. I go outside and write my name on the road using gunpowder. I’m hip, I’m cool, I’m just so awsome that God tips his hat to me. I know what gunpowder does. Years of Bugs Bunny cartoons have prepared me for this moment, if you light a trail of gunpowder, it burns like a fuse. I figure I’ll light it and watch my name fizzzz, fizzz, fizzz and be spelled out in gunpowder. COOL!
There is just one small, teensy weensy problem with this scenario.
Gunpowder explodes!
I bend down, my earnest and innocent twelve year old face hovering over the match as I touch it to the gunpowder.
BOOM!!!
The whole thing blows up in my face. My dad runs over and starts beating me over the head, I learn later that my hair was on fire and he was putting it out. For a moment, I am stunned. I turn to Dad, “What are your doing??” “Your hair was on fire, I was putting it out.”“Oh, Thanks” I say.
And then the pain starts. I have second degree burns all over my face and neck. I begin to scream, I’m only twelve after all. I get sent to the hospital, spend the rest of the summer under a big, floopy sun hat protect my face from the sun. No one who has seen my face to this day has any problems believing this story.
The time I went face surfing on rocks over the handlebars of my motorcycle about two years later explains the scar on my lip. I’m lucky to be alive!!!
let me see…
when i was in the eighth grade…my brother was going fishing and didn’t want the dog to go. he told me to hold onto the dog, which i did…for about 2 blocks. then i let go…i was pretty much blood from head to toe, but figured i still got off better than if i had let go…
i was sewing my confirmation dress a year later…when i lost the needle. i found it…when i stepped on it. unfortunately it was broken. my mom determined that it had broke off in my foot, and took me to the emergency room. the doc dug around for awhile, but couldn’t find it…so, THEN he xrays it. turns out the needle was broken when it went into my foot.
when i was about four, my brother was hammering …something. i bent over him, and he buried the claw end near my left eye. i still have a pretty little scar.
my oldest son, was shooting birds with his bb gun along the creek bank. he got one, and decided to go down the bank to examine it more closely. on his way back up the bank, he thought he would use his machete to help himself up. he buried it in the side of the bank, but his hand slid off the handle when he was pulling himself up…and he nearly severed 3 fingers. he was quite a mess…
then my youngest son, well, when he was about 3 he rode his tricycle down the hill in one of our pastures…right into a barb wire fence. he got quite a few cuts out of that one. …once he was jumping off the tailgate of the pickup and landed right at the corner of the tailgate…right between his legs. he had to have stitches…well, you can guess where. he doesn’t talk about that one much.
their sister not to be left out…jumped off the deck onto an upturned old rake. managed to put two tines through her foot.
i’m telling you…raising kids is a real hoot sometimes. there are many more stories where those came from, but…you get the picture.
This qualifies as doubly stupid because I did it as an adult, and really should have known better.
About six years or so ago, I decided to have a toasted bagel. Rather than put the bagel on the counter and slice through it horizontally, as professional bagel/deli people do, I merely held it in my left hand while I sliced through it.
I have a scar on my left index finger now. Three stitches.
And now my wife buys pre-sliced bagels.
Went to a friends place in the bush: he’d bought a new (ex race) horse, and assuring myself and the rest of the company that I was VERY experienced at horseriding, jumped on for a bit of a ride. Eschewing the helmet (I didn’t need it, I was cool ) got the horse ambling along when my dog, Jack, decided he didn’t like the look of me atop this creature. Jack started barking like a maniac, and ran between the gee-gee’s legs. Well, the bloody horse bolted didn’t it! NOTHING I could do would stop the bugger, so I decided to ‘bail-out’. I got one leg out of the stirrup, and lept off when my other foot got caught. So much for ‘quick release’ stirrups…
So there I was, with one leg contained in the gear, the rest of me bouncing along the ground while this stupid effing horse decided to bolt for Queensland. I had enough consciousness to keep my head off the ground, allowing my back to take the brunt of the damage, until I looked ahead and saw a huge gumtree that was in line with the position of my head! I just KNEW I was about to DIE!!
At that point I panicked and tried to wriggle out with my last ounce of feral energy, but STILL the quick release wouldn’t work. Fred (the horse) got in my way and brought his hind leg down with full force on my shin and ankle. Crunch. Splat. (Were they my bones?? Oh, dear, oh well, says I) But it must have shocked him somewhat 'cos he stopped dead in his tracks…just two feet from the massive tree!
I haven’t been on a horse since, and after 5 months with my leg in plaster, I still thank my lucky stars it wasn’t my head.
Remember kiddies, just wear a helmet!
My stupid injuries were not as longlasting as some. When I was four, I once tied my tricycle to our bassett hound so he could pull me around. Instead he took off sideways and I splattered on the sidewalk.
Another time when I was about eight, I was pushing a merry-go-round at school. It was an old wooden and metal merry-go-round, and some of the wood had rotted making a hole near the center of the merry-go-round. I got into that hole so that I’d be closer to the center of the merry-go-round, thus enabling me to make the merry-go-round go faster. Unfortunately, I slipped on the mud under the merry-go-round and fell underneath. I tried to sit up and hit my head on the metal underneath the merry-go-round structure. I wish I had a picture of my muddy bloody self crawling out from under the merry-go-round…very black lagoonish.
My ex-husband had some good ones. Once he walked straight into a very clean window inside a mall, injuring his nose and bending his glasses. I couldn’t help but collapse in laughter because he looked just like a bird flying into a window.
Another time, he was at work using an industrial-size box of aluminum foil. He dropped it, and moved swiftly to catch it. Unfortunately, he caught it right on the sharp industrial-strength foil-cutter and sliced his hands open. Seven stitches as I recall. He never could explain why it was so important not to just let the box fall.
A while back my family got a new garage door, with one of those handy laser things that stops the door from closing if the beam is broken. I press the button from the far inside of the garage, door starts to shut, I run towards the door. I hesitate, make sure I jump high enough to clear the beam.
Oh, I did. I didn’t clear the door lowering above me faster than I expected. Result? Nothing severe except the bruised ego, given a bunch of mes amis were outside the door, waiting for me, with front row seats for my jump. :o
My only other stupid thing was just a matter of clumsiness. Was in the cellar, had to get to the phone upstairs in my room which I heard ringing. Jumped up three steps, foot slips off third step to second, smashing shin on the way down. My other knee was under me by that time, so I hit the kneecap right on the edge of the stair, which made me do a reflexive kick…which smashed my foot into the support post next to the stairway. The pain of those brutally stubbed toes caused me to curl into a fetal position…which in my current position caused my forehead to bounce off the stair above me. Result: Me with badly bruised legs and forehead lying flat on my back at the base of the stairs when the stars cleared up after a few minutes. :o
-DE
My personal “favorite.”
I’d soldered up a loose wire in a radio a few days ago. I figured the iron had to be cool after two days, right? So I grabbed it up (by the barrel/tip) to put it away.
Y’all can see what’s coming, right?
It seems that I had not, in fact, ever unplugged the soldering iron. I very rapidly became aware of this fact. I literally had to shake the iron loose from my palm…
Result: a bit of charring at the root of my thumb (which healed nicely). Outboard of that was blister (ie pinkie, ring finger, and the area of palm below that). No scarring anywhere.
Oh yes, and a determination never to pick up a soldering iron by anything but the handle.