I thought of this today because I pulled a bozo maneuver. My dresser is starting to come apart a little bit, Ikea, so I brought the hammer upstairs to whack it back together a bit. I finished it up, dresser looks great, put the hammer down to put the laundry in the drier then went downstairs to do some email. Drier buzzes so back upstairs I go to pull the clothes out and toss them on the bed for folding. Enter the hammer. In my stupidity I’d put the hammer down on the floor. I didn’t step on it as much as I kicked it. I didn’t kick it as much as bury the claw end of it in my foot. Between my toes. Hurt like hell! I hopped around a bit then cowgirled up and went back downstairs, putting the hammer back where it should have gone. About 5 minutes later I noted my foot is bleeding like crazy! Wow! I had pierced a couple layers of skin! Now it REALLY hurts. Cleaning it was a trick and now I have a BandAid wedged between my toes. Not dramatic. Not crippling or even incapacitating but incredibly stupid and surprisingly painful.
I know xraycharlie will have a contribution or two…
I needed a thin shim of wood to get the spacing right on a countersunk hinge on a box I was building in high school. I used a belt sander to thin the shim down a bit. It got sucked under the backstop, taking my finger with it. It took a couple seconds to turn the machine off and extract my finger. Took a decent amount of finger off- still no print there, about 15 years later.
Power equipment and a lack of attention to detail is a bad mix. I saw a few guys shoot themselves w/ air nailers- grew up doing construction work for my old man. When I was a supervisor in a warehouse, I saw a few forklift accidents- huge injury potential.
I almost ripped my ear off (that’s what it felt like anyway) when I was in a hurry and shut the hatch of my car, didn’t get my head out of the way in time and the hatch door edge caught my ear. Seriously, I thought I ripped it off. I didn’t, but I sat in my car a cried a bit it hurt so friggin’ bad. It was bruised for a good week.
Most of my stupid injuries were already covered in the “Embarrassing Bike Crashes” thread. This week, I’m dealing with a stupid illness - bronchitis caused by running that 5K with a cold. Hard breathing sucked the virus way down deep into my lungs. Talked to a friend in San Francisco on the phone earlier this evening, and she said that my coughing sounded just like the sea lions down on the pier.
I’ve had some minor injuries caused by inquisitiveness and an inclination to take things apart. When I was 13 or 14, I got one of my fingers snagged like a fish on a hook, except it was on a spring in a recliner chair that I was attempting to reassemble. (I think I still got the chair back together before my parents found out I’d dismantled it.)
More recently, I discovered that if you’re not careful when changing the chainrings on a set of Powercranks, they can turn into improvised thumbscrews. No lasting damage.
About 18 years ago somebody hit the pavement in front of me in the Manhattan Beach GP… so I hit it too. When I started to get up I had this amazing shooting pain behind my knee that goes up into my hamstring… then it was just sore. I looked and there was just a little cut… and chainring tracks. And a few contusions from flying up in the air and landing on pavement at 30mph.
An ambulance came to take one guy to the hospital and they asked if I wanted to go too. I said “sure, I have good insurance” (the beginning of the stupid part). So I get to the hospital and the doc is checking me over and I tell him about the weird pain in the back of my leg. He feels and presses around, but everything hurts the same. He is not impressed. He puts a bandaid on the cut and sends me on my way.
Cut bleeds for a couple of weeks then eventually closes up. I start riding again slowly and I eventually feel pretty good. Doing stretches one day with my hand on my hamstring and have a WTF?! moment. There is a big hole there… like a hollow spot where my hamstring should be. A little more feeling around reveals that I’d completely severed a pretty major hamstring tendon!
Of course it is too late to do anything about it now. A bit later I find out that the insurance has refused to pay all charges because my injuries were not serious enough to warrant the ambulance or the treatment. Doh!
I guess the good part is that the injury doesn’t seem to bother me now… not physically anyway.
I got a fishhook in the eyelid when I was a kid. We were casting off a little too close together on a dock… my brother cast off right into my eye lid. Good thing with my lightening quick reflexes I closed my eye instead of getting the fishhook right in the eye.
Really wasn’t even all that gross though. Didn’t even bleed. And they just pulled it out real quick at the hospital. I didn’t even blink (which of course got them very concerned lol). I’m a pro!
I got demoted from my job so naturally I went to my friend’s house to drink my sorrow away, got on the stupid bar room tricks…
You might know the trick where you bet some one you can break a beer bottle with just your hands. Coors/Bud long necks work best, first you drink the beer then fill it all the way to the top with water leaving about 1/2 inch of air then grip the bottle solid with one hand and stike the opening of the bottle with the palm of your other hand and the bottom of the bottle drops out ( usually) well I tried to have my drunk friend do it and he smacked the crap out of it and didnt break it (and he’s a big boy 6’6 280ish).
So in my drunken state I grab the bottle to show him how’s its done not realizing that the bottle had several hair line cracks all through the bottle and hit it pretty solid and in my less than sober state I notice not water oozing out from from my hand but a red liquid… well having a 6’6 guy squeeze into my small car to drive my drunking bleeding sorry ass to the E-room was loads of fun. 6 hours and 26 stitches later and less than sympathetic doctor digging around in my hand for any glass … huh wasnt a big hit on the home front that night
A group of girlfriends and I were trick-or-treating when we were in junior high ( I know, too old), and we were using pillowcases to hold our loot. We were almost finished and had LOTS of candy in those bags. Suddenly, we saw a group of older high-school boys wearing skeleton masks and dangerous attitudes. The boys circled us for a few minutes and then one of them ran quickly past our group, grabbing my pillowcase of candy as he went.
None of you all know me, but 1) I love candy, especially chocolate, and 2) I’m really stubborn. So, what did this very short junior high girl do? I held on to that pillowcase as tightly as I could, sort of running along with the boy as he dragged me down the street. He was, of course, bigger, stronger, and faster than me, and I soon fell, losing the candy and twisting my knee underneath me as I went down.
My knee didn’t feel right as soon as I stood up. My friends helped walk me home and, after my parents took me in the car to look for the hoodlum with my candy, we went to the hospital. Torn acl, torn meniscus, 6 months of rehab, crutches, etc, all because of a little candy.
I snipped the tip of a finger off while trimming some lavender in my front gardens. There was blood everywhere. I washed it, wrapped it up, and didn’t go to the doctor. It grew back!
Last summer I broke my hand on a rock while kayaking, and I stubbornly waited 10 days to go to the doctor, thinking it was only a sprain. Finally went and had to have surgery and two screws put in as the bone was shattered.
Jumped off a sofa, landed on a toy rake. Cut my eyelid off.
I was less than two years old.
Jumped off a jungle gym, landed on a friend’s head. With my chin. Put my teeth through my tongue. Happened to be the back yard of a doctor, who stitched me up with a curved needled (yes, I remember that needle from more than 40 years ago).
In high school, I had this nasty habit of going over the crossbar in the pole vault with my left leg bent. One meet I managed to swipe my right leg above the knee with the bottom of my left foot. Think needle-sharp spikes slashing across flesh.
Trying unsuccessfully to multi-task…I was preparing to carve the bird tableside and offer a welcoming toast at the same time. Began to steel the carving knife and “missed” the steel…
Decided to forego stitches rather than miss Thanksgiving dinner, although my wife insisted that someone else carve the turkey.
The scar is still pretty impressive after 15 years.
This wasn’t me (honest!): a friend was installing a pull-down attic stair in his garage. Somehow, he managed to accidentally close the thing such that his hand got caught in the metal braces that hold it up. He was stuck and bleeding. He had to yell to his long-suffering wife (he does this crap all the time) to come and rescue him.
He also fell off a ladder and put his arm through the glass front door. Too many bike crashes to count. Yet he’s one of the smartest, most skilled guys I know.
Swinging out of my overhead loft bed in college, I broke two toes. I had left a chair in the middle of the room the night before. Still ranks as the most painful moment in my life.
I pierced the middle of my hand with a knife while attempting to juggle three of them. Kitchens get boring sometimes. It looked kinda cool with it sticking straight up out of the middle of my palm. Pulled it out, wrapped it up and went back to work. I think i washed the knife after?
I got knocked out by a schoolyard bully after I was dared to pick a fight with him. He was about two feet taller than me and mean. Had a headache for a week. What was I supposed to do? I was twelve and I was dared.
I had a buddy lose an eye on a demolition site because he was not wearing safety glasses. he pulled on a ceiling panel and a heavy wire came swinging down with the sharp end sticking straight out. Right through the eyeball. More than one person on site puked.
I was helping my dad finish my parents basement. I was barefoot and took a step backwards without looking wear I was stepping and stepped right on top of a piece of a metal stud. The stud was so sharp that I didn’t realize that I was injured. It took me a couple of steps to realize that my foot was squishing and flopping open. The stud had split the full length of the bottom of my foot open.
