Weirdest (and hardest to explain?) I was messing around with a bo staff at TKD one lazy summer day, many moons ago, attempting to recreate a stunt my (much wiser, more skilled, and blessed with greater common sense) instructor had done. It involved a somewhat pole-vault-esque technique: planting the bo and propelling yourself through the air and spinning on it. In theory.
He had a good, sturdy, flexible bamboo staff.
I had a cheap, aptly-named hardwood toothpick bo. Ever had a three-foot long splinter sticking out of your hand? :smack:
Or there was the time I managed to ride my bike over my own foot, dislocating my toe in the process…
A few months back I was installing a pair of French doors and I decided to put ball catches on the tops to hold them shut.
This type of catch looks like a 3/4" wide ball bearing in a brass sleeve backed by a spring, kind of like a metal version of a roll-on antiperspirant bottle. The sleeve is threaded on the outside; this fits neatly in a brass faceplate that is mounted in the edge of the door.
The doors were too tight, so I thought I should screw the sleeve in a few millimeters deeper. All I needed to do was rotate the sleeve a turn or two. The ball was too slippery, so my first instinct was to press the ball down with my thumb so I could contact the sleeve and turn it. Moments later I discovered that the brass sleeve was razor sharp and I had cut a perfect 3/4" diameter circle in the fleshy part of my thumb (fortunately not all of the way to the bone).
I was so grossed out by it that I wrapped it in one of those handyman band-aids and tried to forget about it for several days.
Amazingly, it was healed to the point where I could go without the band-aid within a week.
I actually sustained my weirdest injury ever this past weekend.
d_redguy and I went camping at North Carolina State Park with gmarkstephens and his 7 year old. The beach is right there, so we went for the day on Saturday.
We bought two beach chairs- one was adjustable. When I attempted to adjust it, I found that it stuck a bit, being new and all. d_redguy tried to help me by working on one side of the chair while I did the other. Then-
The chair slipped.
Somehow, my left index finger got caught in the track of one arm. One of the prongs that the arm rests on punctured my finger. :eek: It went straight down to the bone. Lots of blood, blah, blah, blah…
We all drove to the emergency room. Ever had to tell a doctor you’ve been wounded by a beach chair? I felt incredibly stupid.
(For the curious- No stitches. Just some kind of strange “stitch-tape” that is supposed to dissolve on its own. I can’t get it wet and it hurts/itches. I get to take off the bandage in a few more days.)
Broke my ankle jumping 6 inches off a bleacher step before a softball game. Went 3-4 with 2 doubles, and waited 2 days to go to the ER, since I thought I just sprained it, which I’ve done more times than I can count.
I went to the ER alone, and the X-ray tech asked me how I got to the hospital. I said I lived a block away and that I walked. He laughed, and told me I was crazy for walking around for 2 days on a broken ankle.
When I was a kid I managed to get a meat-fork stuck in my head trying to open a stubborn package of potato chips.
Much later, I “broke” a sensitive part of my anatomy when my GF fell out of bed at an inopportune moment. Nice big black blood blister at the base. I get green just thinking about it.
I was kneeling down while drilling a deep hole sideways through a table leg with this real long drill bit. The chord to the drill was under my knee in such a way that when I finished the hole and went to move away the drill spun in my hand with the still spinning bit heading for my neck. This smoking hot drill bit picked up a link on a chain I was wearing and proceeded to wrap itself onto and into my neck. Seared flesh and blood pumping I managed to hit reverse and squeezed the trigger backing the whole mess out.
You know what everyone said? “Gee you sure are lucky…”:smack:
The first and only time I rode double on a bicycle, I sat behind the seat on a rat trap type book carrier. To slow down after a hill, we cut through the corner of a ditch. The rat trap broke and I fell onto the wheel, which threw me forward into the newly broken prongs of the rat trap, turning me into a human shish kabob.
I tried explaining to my mom that I needed to go to the hospital, but unfortunately she started screaming hysterically from the horror of it all. I telephoned my dad, who upon listening to my tale of woe and hearing the screaming in the background, started laughing.
The bad part was the humiliation at the hospital. I counted over sixteen nurses who came to gawk at my teabag.
I walked too fast through a set of sliding doors, caught my shoulder on one of them; the vibration dislodged an expensive china teapot from the shelf above and it fell on me, knocking me down. On the way down I hit my head on the corner of a coffee table, gashing my scalp - when they stitched it up, I could feel/hear the end of the needle scratching against my skull.
I did something similar to this back in 5th grade. I had a particularly deep blackhead on my forehead at the time and one day, I managed to accidently stab it with a pencil (I think I was holding the eraser end of the pencil at the time…hand went up, point went into forehead).
The graphite did finally work its way out by 8th grade, but for a long time, it looked like I had a third eye in the middle of my forehead. There’s still an odd bump there, but it’s barely visible.
And then there was the time I fell off a bus and sprained my ankle. Six months later, I stepped off a bus onto a bunch of gravel and sprained that ankle again. I cling to handrails when I walk down steps these days. But while I may be clumsy as heck, at least I didn’t strain my chest bicycle-riding like my mother did.
This one happened to a friend of my mom’s. The friend’s nickname, believe it or not, is Stumpy - has been for years. Anyway, last year, Stumpy parked her car at the base of the hill leading up to her house. She didn’t realize she’d put it in neutral. When it started rolling backwards, she chased it. She was half-way into the car (she’d left the door open) when the door smacked her. She fell over and the car rolled over her legs, breaking them both.
Okay - this happened to me. Not quite as extremely, but I thought it was hilarious. My fiancee & I were running around our condo after I had gotten home from a very long happy hour after work (thank god I take public transportation). Both of us have apparently never learned not to run in the house. So we were tearing all over the place. He was trying to tickle me, and chased me down the hall. I reached for the door and bounced right off it, because I didn’t remember to open it before I got there. I fell flat on my ass, both my arms flew out and I broke a finger against one of the walls on my way down. The sad thing was that I had had enough alcohol, I couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t over-imbibe to often any more. I only have so many fingers.
It was a cold, January day. My parents were at work, and my sisters were…somewhere. i don’t know, not at home. So I try to open the back door. “This is odd,” says I, and I trundle around the house in ass-deep snow to get to the front door. Which is locked too. Now, we never locked our doors. We never needed too, and so I certainly didn’t have a key.
As for how they got locked? Jaime locked them both the night before. We didn’t realize this because we never use the front door, and you can open the back door from the inside when it is locked.
“Damn,” I say.
So I start considering my options. I know the windows aren’t in their frames very tight, and maybe i can remove one from the outside? It’s worth a shot anyhow. So I pick one I can reach, and I barely touch it, and it shatters, outward, cutting my hand.
So I’m not quite gushing blood all overmyself and the snow, and the window is broken, and I’m scared the dogs are going to cut themselves on the broken glass on the snow. SoI go to my car and grab my cell phone, and out of habit call Jaime, not anybody who can actually help me.
“Hello?”
“Oh! Jaime. hi, I um, cut my hand.”
“Uh huh.”
“The window shattered and I’m bleeding all over the place—there’s blood in my car.”
“Right—what do you want me to do about it?”
“Oh, um, nothing. I’ll get back to you.”
So then I call my grandpa who lives down the road. He comes up, makes sure my hand is ok, clears the glass away from the window, crawls in, unlocks the door, and Bob’s your uncle.
I still have the scar on my hand, and I think there was some damage to the tendons because for the longest time I couldn’t move my finger without pain. It eventually healed though.
Of course, my mom though I intentionally put my fist through the window because, why would a window break outwards. Well, I don’t know why, all I know is what happened.
We used to play “Follow the Leader” on ATC’s (before the days of quads) where the goal was to ride as fast and as out of control as possible in order to ditch the one following. Well, one day I was the “Leader” and was flying through a peach orchard. I looked back to see if anyone was keeping up and when I turned…THWACK…my head hit a low branch. I tumbled off the ATC backwards and it went straight into the tree. I didn’t crack my skull but there was alot of blood and I still have a pretty good scar.
I was mostly worred about what my dad would say about the cracked fender and smashed headlight.
We’re twelve years old and my friend and I are riding bikes ~fast~ through a park after a thunderstorm. The path goes under a few low hanging branches. I’m in the lead and I raise my hand up to smack one of the branches… ouch. It sting a bit but , I’m amply rewarded by the gallon of water that showers down on my friend. Not to be outdone, my damp friend charges ahead, gets in front of me, raises his hand and OUCH F*****NG OUCH… picking an acacia tree was a poor choice as the three inch thorn had gone cleanly through his hand.