In a thread yesterday, valued commenter Schrodinger’s Cat confessed that she injured her foot by tripping over her own husband. Perhaps because misery loves company, she also suggested that we should compare ridiculous injuries. Here’s a thread for that purpose. I’ll go first:
Several years ago, I was riding my bike down a quiet side street at moderate speed when a Japanese beetle (notoriously clumsy flyers) smacked into my forehead. It was a more violent collision than you might imagine, Japanese beetles being fairly big as far as insects go, and it caused me to swerve into a large trash can that was parked next to a driveway.
I knocked over the (full!) trash can and landed in the soft grass…in a big pile of dog shit. So to recap, a BUG caused me to lose control of a bike, slam into a trash can and land in dog shit. I only twisted my ankle, but that was small comfort as I limped home with a welt on my forehead and dog shit all over my clothes.
Our host’s domestic mishaps are legendary, and I’ve always suspected we have a particularly accident-prone readership. So I know you can top that. Fess up!
debbie
I was driving around, dropping off work at clients’ places. I was thinking about another project and was beginning to feel pretty aggravated. Apparently, I started chewing my gum more vigorously and bit a hole in the side of my tongue.
I’m on blood thinners so there was significant bleeding. I tried to be careful (not wanting to chew, I thought a spoonful of peanut butter would be okay. Wrong.), but when the bleeding didn’t stop, I went to my doctor who prescribed antibiotics and 2 weeks’ total silence.
Not having to talk to anyone was actually pretty nice. I communicated by email, fax, or tapping yes or no on the phone. I was kind of sorry when I returned to the speaking world. The world probably was too.
Baud
There was that time I hurt my own feelings. It’s too painful to talk about.
raven
After football practice in 8th grade I was walking home with two girls when I decided to climb and apple tree to get them treats. I got up to the top and the lady came out and yelled at me to get out of the tree or I’d get hurt. I yelled, “don’t worry lady, I have insurance”. The branch broke and I smashed my left leg in to 18 fragments. I spent 7 months in a full leg cast. We did not have insurance.
Last spring I spent Sunday tearing down a deck with breakers bars, a sledge and sawzall. When I finished I was taking chicken to the grill when I tripped, tried to catch myself and sliced my ulnar nerve in half. I had surgery 5 days later and went to the beach. In the first hour I caught a big redfish. I put her in the bucket and then realized I needed to put water in it. I carried the fish down to the ocean in the bucket, bent over to fill it and the fish jumped out. It was shallow water and the big critter was tired so I was able to jump on top of it and catch it in my hands. Unfortunately it was a rocky bottom and I sliced my knee open~
raven
@debbie: Ouch!
jl
Zipper incident as young child, male junk variety. Not serious but humiliating scary and painful. Did I mention humiliating? Don’t want to say any more.
BC’s narrative appears to be incomplete. Was BC naked or trying to mop while bicycling?
MobiusKlein
Broke my hip while taking my sweater off.
While biking.
On a major street in the SF Peninsula. (El Camino)
On the 4th of July.
Not drunk.
Because my backpack got caught in the front wheel. (did I mention that?)
Oh, and we just closed on our house, so I was laid up in bed @ hospital then home.
PurpleGirl
While I’ve fallen a few times over the years, it wasn’t usually with anyone around and it was a straightforward downward fall. I feel for anyone who has fallen in weird manner or otherwise hurt themselves.
Baud
Five comments in and I’m done with this thread.
debbie
@raven:
You too! 18 pieces!
raven
When I was 5 I jumped off the garage using an umbrella as a parachute. I broke my collar bone.
When I was 7 I was swinging on a rope from a tree. My foot was in a loop and I fell upside down. Other kids ran and got my mom and, by the time she got there I had turned purple. She raced in the house and came back with a knife and one of the kids yelled in horror “Are you going to stab him”!
jl
@Baud:
” Five comments in and I’m done with this thread. ”
Yes, that is ridiculous, Baud.
Some people wonder whether Baud has what it takes to be president. Some people wonder whether when that 3 AM call about a ridiculous international crisis (and there are many) comes, will Baud know what to do? Some people say…
Edit: and if Baud replies, uh oh, major trustworthiness scandalgaffe! Critical Juncture alert!
raven
@debbie: Shattered and was everything but compound. It was just like Theissman’s broken leg in the NFL. Oh yea, it didn’t keep me out of the Army.
And then there was the broken T-6, rods on my spine, 9 months in a full body cast!
raven
@MobiusKlein: Ass over teakettle!
Josie
I used to have the habit of sitting with one foot tucked underneath me. One night I fell asleep sitting up on the couch watching tv in that position and my foot went to sleep. The phone rang, I woke up with a start, jumped up to answer the phone and crashed to the floor, rolling my sleeping foot and ankle so badly that it took weeks to be able to walk on it. After it healed, I stepped in a hole in the front yard with the same stupid foot and ruined it forever. As I crawled back into the house, I hoped there were no pictures being taken. I still (20 years later) have one ankle slightly larger than the other.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m cringing. I think I may have to flee too.
raven
@Josie: They never really heal.
raven
@Iowa Old Lady: Strong in the broken places.
jl
@raven: That childhood fall sounds more awful and serious than ridiculous.
WereBear
It was Christmas morning and it was my first winter up North, and I hadn’t thickened up my blood yet, so I left my father’s old station wagon running for the heater while I ducked into a convenience store for cranberry sauce for dinner.
I came out and the car was gone!
I was leaving the store with a police officer I knew, so I actually grabbed him by the lapels and babbled that I had to find my father’s car. And we did, pretty quickly.
It was a couple of block away, across four lanes of traffic, up many flights of steps, blocking the doors of a church. Turns out, this model was known for kicking itself into reverse (fortunately I slowed it down with the emergency brake) and it had taken a wild ride.
So that’s my wildest accident story.
Except… no one was injured.
muddy
I was making mashed potatoes with a hand mixer. The plug fell out of the mixer end, and cleverly reminding myself not to plug it back in wet with potato, I put it in my mouth to clean it off. I yelped. My bf came rushing over over and was checking my hands, but couldn’t find the burn. That’s because it was in the mouth.
Apparently that doesn’t kill you.
debbie
@raven:
Good grief! I’m surprised you can get up in the morning for your early walk with your dogs. I’ve had numerous minor injuries over the years and it takes me 20 minutes to unkink in the morning.
MobiusKlein
@raven: Slammed down so fast my ass never went over my head.
Oh, forgot to mention I had my cycling shoes on, locked into pedals.
Ever try to take a shoe out of the pedal with a broken hip?
MomSense
A year or so ago I fell asleep watching a movie, woke up and tried to walk before I realized my foot was asleep. I was trying to flip it the right way when I fell down. I was so sleepy that my brain could not process why my foot wasn’t working properly. I didn’t break anything but my foot and ankle were terribly sprained and took a long time to heal.
raven
@jl: Hell I have a picture! Me and my unk in about 61.
Leaving Texas
I got a shiner when I somehow hit myself in the face with a car door while climbing into the driver’s seat. My husband broke his nose when he slipped on a wet tile at a DC Metro station and vertically face-planted into a parked train. That last incident was both ridiculous and disturbing.
raven
@MobiusKlein: Damn dawg!
WereBear
@Josie: Reminds me of the time my alarm went off and I reached up to turn it off only I had been sleeping on it and it just flopped around, knocking the clock off my nightstand and smacking myself in the face and freaking me out.
I mean, I’ve been injured. But just in straightforward ways, not ridiculous ones.
raven
@debbie: Here’s the body cast, 1974 it was. I’ve always felt really lucky.
jparente
While offering a treat to my doggie and another we were interviewing for possible adoption, new doggie bit into and severely lascerated my hand. My Baby Girl, Ginger, went for the other dog and grabbed and fractured my wrist. After much vocalization, on my part, bothe pups sat next to each other and wagged their tails.
I was at fault for offering a treat without knowing Both dogs.
I spent the next 6 weeks in a wrist brace on my rt. hand and 6 stiches in my left hand.
Wrong action.
Wrong dogs.
Wrong time.
debbie
@muddy:
It’s hard fighting reflexive moves. A few years after biting myself, I sliced into my tongue licking the lid of a soup can.
Josie
@raven: That’s what I discovered, in the most painful way possible.
raven
@jparente: You are not related to Michael are you? eta, never mind, it’s spelled with an I not an E.
Loneoak
I once got my foot lodged firmly in my mouth. Another time my head was squarely up my ass.
jl
I walked off the top of a haystack when I was a kid, fell, and broke my ankle. It healed fine.
I forget why I forgot I was on top of a haystack.
JDM
A week ago my girlfriend got a leg caught in her pants leg while putting them on, fell and broke her arm on a bed frame. Minor crack luckily.
But get this: it was in Thailand, so we went to the local, excellent hospital where I’d had an operation 10 years ago. Walked in cold, two hours later walked out after having seen the doctor, gotten an x-ray, sling, prescription painkillers, excellent care. Total cost was $75.
jl
@Loneoak: We are talking about ridiculous accidents, not chronic conditions. You note I did not brag about mine.
Politically Lost
I was a bus boy at higher end restaurant in a somewhat swank hotel not too far from Disneyland. I needed a bucket and there were two stuck together in the kitchen. I asked the dishwasher to hold the bottom one while I yanked hard on the top one. There were no less than ten waiters, cooks, managers etc. within 15 feet and had full view of the festivities. The buckets separated with all due force and the rim smacked me on the nose just at the point where my upper lip meets my nose. I lost… I can’t say consciousness, but I was definitely not present for at least a minute. (You know that Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field Picture…yeah, it was like that.) I slowly came back to this universe on my hands and knees staring at a rather large puddle of blood and was assisted to a chair. The thing was, I was more embarrassed than anything because of the show I put on. They were arranging for transport to the hospital while I recovered. However, all I kept hearing sort of in a low murmur from everyone there (and for weeks afterward) was, “That SOUND”. Like, “Oh, man the sound it made.” People would turn green, get a distant look in their eyes and talk about, “Dude, it was like a broken pumpkin.”
Loneoak
@jl: Hey, you should have seen how ridiculous I looked with my head up my ass. You would’ve thought I was a Bundy.
Schlemazel
I know, you guys were just waiting for me!
My grandmothers house was stucco & had a bay window that stuck out over the walkway around the house. I was running along the walkway & ran right into the wall. Picked stucco out of my forehead for a couple of days.
Building a tree house as a kid, jumped out of the tree & landed right on a nail driving it through my foot.
After retirement my folks moved into an old duplex, the had the very heavy cut glass globes hanging on chains from the ceiling for the lights. The lights were the pull string kind and the string ran over the edge of the globe. I pulled the string and instead of turning on the light it tipped the globe into the ceiling causing it to break. At the ER (for 8 stitches) the nurse asked who had shaved my head because they did such a nice job she wouldn’t have to do it before stitching me up.
Then I had a ladder slip off the roof & I fell 4 feet but managed to break my acetabulum.
I think JC and I may be related.
muddy
@debbie: I’m really good at grabbing things that are falling or being knocked over, even way in my peripheral vision. People comment all the time about how great I am at it. The part they don’t appreciate is that I get a lot of practice because I am always dropping/knocking things in the first place.
There shouldn’t be a need for people to say, “Good save!” to me multiple times a day when I don’t play sports, is what I’m thinking. Probably I should wear my glasses more or something.
Mustang Bobby
February 1, 1989, Longmont, Colorado. The weather forecast called for an Alberta clipper to drop the temperatures below zero. I decided to go out to the garage to put more anti-freeze in my 1959 Buick. On the way back to the house I stepped on a patch of ice, I lost my balance, and as I went down I heard a sickening “snap” in my left ankle. I hollered for my partner who was out in the front of the house putting anti-freeze in his car, and he came and helped me into the house and onto the bed. My ankle was swelling up like a balloon and when I moved it, I felt the bones shifting. The pain was amazing.
My partner called his father and they took me to the ER at Longmont United Hospital. After waiting for two hours, an X-ray, and an exam by an orthopedic surgeon (who was an acquaintance), they decided to operate and put my ankle back together. (Yeah, I got screwed three times and slept through the whole thing [rimshot].) I was in a cast for twelve weeks and still have the screws in my ankle.
When friends asked me how I broke my ankle, I told them I was either doing the grand slalom at Vail or slipped on ice; which one do you believe? Funny, they went with the ice every time.
ETA: At the time I was teaching at a college in Denver and had full health insurance, but I had neglected to sign the papers. Fortunately the college backdated the paperwork and all I had to pay for was a $14 co-pay from the X-ray.
p.a.
Not my accident, but I was a participant. Salmon fishing on Lake Ontario on a charter boat. My 2 fishing partners backed out at the last minute, so it was just the Captain and me. In previous years he had a mate but replaced him with an autopilot unit. Late Sept. water conditions off Rochester NY can be rough; it was. The capt. lost his balance, put out a hand to steady himself, and got one prong of a trebel hook through the meat side of his ring finger, barb included. Not a small hook; the Salmon we caught were 20+ pounds. There’s a trick to getting them out: hold the hook shank against the flesh, wrap heavy line around the hook bend, pull quickly.
It worked perfectly! Not even any blood. Except with the force of the pull the hook swung around the line I used and went through his pinkie! Again, barb and all. Well, at least I knew the ‘trick’ worked. Did it again. Perfect! No more skewering of the captain. Except this time 1 drop of blood. Honest, just one drop.
He passed out. So the capt. was out cold and the boat was on autopilot heading out into pretty rough water towards Canada.
He came to with a few shakes. He was a retired fireman, so I told him I couldn’t believe blood affected him like that. “My blood does.”
grammypat
The only thing that saved this from being a total embarrassment was the fact that no one was around to witness. Wet “Black” ice. Perfect one-point landing. On my tailbone.
Last thing I saw before impact was both of my feet in front of my face (I remained “gracefully” upright). Result: a dislocated coccyx, a crushed L-1 (that’s one of the biggies), whiplash, and a concussion (complete with amnesia because “skull stopped … brain didn’t”). Fun times.
That was nearly 20 yrs ago and I still pucker up when there’s ice on the ground.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
I joined a gym a few years ago. Before my first workout, I went shopping for gym clothes. I saw something on a low shelf that looked good, bent down to pick it up, and wrenched my back.
Yes. I was so out of shape I injured myself buying workout clothes.
Patricia Kayden
@raven: How are you still alive?!! Was cringing all through your comment. Dang it.
muddy
@Schlemazel: Aah the nail through the foot. I got one in this horrible old hotel we used to go to in Philly in the 70s. It was lying in a crack between the floorboards but somehow it tipped up on the end when I stepped and it came right up through the middle. I was 10. I kept messing with the wound on top as it was healing and when it would bleed more I’d tell my mother it was stigmata and she’d get really mad. Good times.
JPL
Hopefully reading this thread doesn’t jinx me.
Warren Terra
It’s maybe not my most ridiculous injury, and certainly not my worst, but the one I remember most clearly and most cinematically was one night when I was biking home from work, across campus – not realizing that while I’d been beavering away the town had been covered in a quarter-inch of ice by freezing rain. The bike was stored in an indoor bike room, and there was an overhang where I started out, so I set out on normal dry concrete and had no clue about what was in store. I was doing fine, not even realizing about the ice, and had traveled perhaps a hundred yards, when someone walking across the campus hailed me to ask for directions – it was late at night and fairly deserted. I apply the brakes to stop and talk to the guy, when I discover the ice – and I discover that while you can bike on ice, and even turn on ice, you really, really can’t brake on ice. All of a sudden I’m skidding sideways and falling over in slow motion, until I land heavily on my side, injuring my bad knee. And I still had to limp home a mile and a half on the ice, leaning on my bike for support! (Obviously, I wasn’t too badly hurt, or I’d have found another option).
WereBear
We were sharing a foster kitten, and I went out to meet the car St. Patrick’s Day in my slippers, on the melty icy sidewalk, carrying the case. Went down, all in sections, because, as my friend marveled, “The last thing to hit was the cat case, and it was barely any momentum by that time.”
So, no real harm done, except my elbow, which had taken the brunt of things, and hurt for a few months. Moral of the story: wear proper footwear for the weather!
raven
@Patricia Kayden: I broke my back in March of 1975. I laid in the hospital in a demerol haze and watched the war end. There was another Nam vet on the ward with me and we watched the fall of South Vietnam day-by-day for a month. Talk about bizarre.
Roger Moore
@Schlemazel:
With a name like that, it was inevitable that you’d weigh in.
Schlemazel
@muddy:
I am good at that too, never considered it a gift though. One time I almost caught a glass before it hit the floor. What I actually caught was a broken piece of glass. Not bad enough to need stitches so it doesn’t count.
@Mustang Bobby:
Love that! My wife tells people I’m one screw short of a dozen so I’m going with your line to top her!
Hungry Joe
I’m going to insist that my injury was the dumbest, both because of my age at the time (58, well into you-should-know-better territory) and the details (just wait):
I was laying out a row of bricks around the edge of the garden, burying them just about a third of the way and wedging them in as closely as possible. Nothing fancy. One of the bricks needed to be knocked a little closer to its neighbor, so I slammed another brick into it … WITH MY THUMB IN BETWEEN THE BRICKS. For the first few seconds I was distracted from the pain by my astonishment that anyone could live this long while being so stupid. Then for the next few seconds I was slightly relieved from the pain by the sheer wonder at just how incredibly much it hurt. Finally I tumbled to the dirt amid a sea of purple explosions of pain in my head — almost equaled by purple explosions of profanity, all of it aimed at my sorry self.
Eventually the thumbnail fell off. Took months to grow back.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
You need to find some money in your campaign coffers to buy me a new iPad. The one I had been using is covered with red wine.
Origuy
I was about eleven when my friend and I decided to see who could hit a croquet ball the farthest. He went first and caught my face on the backswing, because I was standing right behind him. It broke one front upper tooth and loosened the one next to it. Of course this was after normal office hours so my dentist had to come in and put in a temporary cap. I had several caps over the years until I finally got a root canal on that tooth and a permanent crown. Then a few years ago, I bit down on a Chinese sparerib and the tooth broke off at the gum line. Nothing to do for it but an implant.
Schlemazel
@raven:
OK – I think “broke my back” wins the award for the worst sounding result so far. YIKES!
raven
@p.a.: I had a similar situation on a lake in N Georgia. A little girl had reared back and embedded a hook in her grandmother’s arm. It was a single and the best way to get this one was to push it through and snip the barb. I don’t know who was in worse shape, the lady or the little one. The lady gave me the OK so I did it and all was well.
raven
@Schlemazel: I was sooo lucky, just a bit more and I was a quad. As it was it just forced me to stop working construction and go back to school.
Shana
Elementary school. My school had a combined auditorium (raised stage along one long wall of the rectangular room, folded up bleachers along the other long wall), cafeteria with the racks for sliding your tray along that folded down along one of the short walls, and gymnasium. During gym class one day, running relay races, my keds slipped out from under me as I neared the cafeteria end of the room and I slid at a pretty pace right into the lowered cafeteria tray racks. Nothing broken but I had a beautiful black eye for what seemed like weeks. Just the thing a 4th grade girl wants.
SiubhanDuinne
My first visit to London (1959) and I had a newly-bought-for-the-trip bag with a shoulder strap. Was getting off one of those London buses, hopping down from the platform, and somehow the long strap wrapped itself several times around the pole. I went tumbling into the road, much more worried about my purse (passport! traveler’s cheques!) than about myself. In the event, I wasn’t hurt at all — must have been a bit bruised and sore, although I don’t recall that — but the bus conductor insisted I go to hospital for a once-over. The main thing I remember about that hospital is that the nurses gave me cup after cup of sweet milky tea, thereby confirming several of my stereotypes in one go.
Schlemazel
@raven:
Yeah, ‘a mater of inches’ means a whole different result.
Patricia Kayden
@raven: My question is repeated. How the hell are you still alive? What is left to break? You’re one tough dude. Steven Seagal wishes he were you with all his fake macho acting.
Schlemazel
@Shana:
Would only been better had it been picture day so you could enjoy the vision forever
Leaving Texas
@Origuy: I had a root canal fail in the same way. Eating Chinese food, suddenly I am biting down on a porcelain crown. Horrified when I pulled it out and realized what it was. Had to get a bridge though because my tooth’s root was not long enough to support an implant (small mouth).
Pogonip
Uninjured but embarrassed: another student and I were playing around before jujitsu class; I backed up, caught my heel in a wrinkle on the mat, and fell flat. Teacher leans over me and says “That was a really good fall! Can you do it again while we all watch?”. Oops. No, I cpuldn’t.
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
Oh, yeah, I forgot. I did that too (sat on my foot until it fell asleep, leaped up to answer the phone, C R U N C H), except I actually snapped a couple of thin bones. It was 52 years ago; I honestly can’t even remember now which foot it was.
Fermion T. Clown
about mile 10 of my 50 mile ride, my German colleague ran into my bike as we pulled over to check maps, knocking both of us over.
about mile 35 of my 50 mile ride, as I was huffing and puffing up a low incline, head down … I ran smack dab into a mailbox extending into the shoulder.
Knocked the *shit* out of it.
And me.
The owners and I thought about it, they decided they’d fix it, I decided I was too embarrassed to blame them.
About mile 40 of my 50 mile ride, I caught up with my riding buds (who of course were waiting for me). They looked at my bike, and pointed out that perhaps the reason I was struggling was that the first collision had separated a spoke, which had put my wheel out of round, so my rim had been rubbing against the brakes for 25 miles.
More recently, I ran into the rear end of a school bus parked on the side of the road soaking up a good ten feet (3m) of the lane. Damn lucky no car was behind me, or I wouldn’t be writing this.
p.a.
@raven: We used to cram 3 six-foot tall guys in a 14′ semi-V to fish smallies. Boonie hats an absolute requirement: much more ear protection than baseball hats.
SiubhanDuinne
@Josie:
Ha, Josie, I posted my #67 before I even saw your story!
Roger Moore
@Mustang Bobby:
There’s your problem. I never did see why anyone wanted to live in Longmont. Of course I grew up in Loveland, so I’m not in a great position to point fingers.
My most embarrassing accident happened during swim practice. It was toward the end of practice, and our coach had us practicing racing starts from the blocks and from the edge of the pool. So we’d do a racing start, sprint to the other end, hop out, and repeat. We were supposed to be going as fast as possible, so I climbed out by pushing as hard as I could off the bottom of the pool with my legs and as hard as I could from the side of the pool with my arms- and hit my head on the under side of the starting block. I managed to cut my scalp open all the way to the bone, and the doctor who sewed me up said I must have a very hard skull to have avoided fracturing it. It scared the hell out of my swimming coach, too.
lamh36
No need to remind folks here…but elections and voting do matter!
John Bel Edwards signs Medicaid expansion to make 300,000 eligible for federal program
geg6
I fell off a mushroom and dislocated my shoulder when I was about 8 or 9. It was actually a mushroom that you sat in and spun around on at one of the county parks here. I spun too fast and fell out.
I also made brownies once and blew up the stove when I was 13 or 14 I left the can of Pam spray on top of the stove while the brownies baked. It became a missile that collapsed the stovetop and blew through the ceiling, the floor of my sisters’ bedroom upstairs and lodged in the box spring of the bed. No injuries though.
Now off to read all the others commenters’ adventures.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear:
Lying in bed, or reclining in a recliner, reading something (most likely Balloon Juice) on the iPad. Falling asleep, iPad smashed me in the mouth. Cut both lips all to hell. The amount of blood was astonishing.
SiubhanDuinne
Have I ever told this group about the time my mother stapled her boob to the screen door?
RSR
A number of falls ago (as in season, not action) when our boys were maybe 4 and 2, I had the great idea to arrange ice skating lessons for the entire family in advance of the winter rink opening along the river in Philadelphia. I was imaging Normal Rockwell painting-style family outings all winter long.
Well, the boys just hated even the concept, and clung to the hockey benches like cats being put into a bath. My wife had a great time–said she felt like Dorothy Hamill.
I, of course, fell hard, and cracked a rib. My nephews still refer to me as ‘Blades of Glory’ from time to time. \o/
Scout211
Wow, this thread is sure a change of pace.
All of these stories put my usual DIY mishaps to shame. Like the time I swatted a fly, while on a ladder, with a gallon of paint perched on top . . . I ended up on the floor with ladder on top of me and an entire gallon of paint soaking into the carpeting (that was brand new). My legs were caught in the ladder so it took me some time to get untangled and by then the entire gallon had emptied onto the carpet. The injuries were only bruises, thank goodness. But extracting an entire gallon of paint from the carpeting was quite a challenge.
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
When I was on the fire dept I went on a call for a roofer who nailed his knee to the roof (autonailer). But your mom deserves an award for that.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne:
” the time my mother stapled her boob to the screen door? ”
ummm… yeah yeah.. now that I think about it, I think you told about that. No need to repeat it. No no. It’s OK, really…
p.a.
I was working on a stepped tel. pole missing some steps, so I was wearing my gaffs. Cut out while maneuvering, dropped about 4 feet and got caught by a step under my right arm. Hung there in shock for a few seconds and managed to get back on the pole. Luckily wintertime so I had several layers on; bruised but no skin break. Couldn’t lift my arm above shoulder height for a few weeks after.
When we moved from pole to pole we were supposed to remove the gaffs or put the gaff guards on while walking so we wouldn’t dull the gaffs or gaff ourselves. You know how that goes. I know a few guys who ruined good boots by gaffing them, but no flesh wounds. I sliced my pants legs a few times.
WereBear
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh, those facial injuries bleed like heck.
JCJ
When I was in high school I was at a party drinking way too much beer with some friends. I am quite ticklish and friends would poke me in the ribs to see how high I would jump. Someone did that and I got up like I was going to wrestle him. Another friend flew in to tackle me and all the weight came down on my left hand. The impact broke a bone in my hand (a metacarpal) but once we were down everyone jumped on the pile. It hurt so everyone gave me more beer. I was not able to finish typing class nor was I able to try out for the golf team.
Shell
I was four years old. A neighbor had just gotten a new fridge and all the kids were playing with the big empty box. W One kid would get in and the others would tumble the box like a low-tech amusement ride. When I arrived on the scene, someone had the bright idea of putting two kids in the box. Me and Stevie Olson. On the first tumble,, he fell slam into me and broke my collar bone. I walked home screaming my head off but it wasn’t until we got to the ER that they found out the problem.
Mnemosyne
Do I even need to mention that the highly accident-prone among us probably have ADHD? I can’t decide if I should tell the most recent story, the most serious story, or the most ridiculous story.
I’ll go with the holiday-themed one: on the morning of St. Patrick’s Day, I managed to cut my thumb so badly with the potato peeler that G had to take me to urgent care. Fortunately, they were able to get the bleeding stopped without any stitches, but I did have to get a tetanus shot.
Oh, and when I broke my little toe, Dr. Dmitri (who was a dish, but don’t tell G) was impressed with how well I had taped my own toe. No medical training, just Dr. Google and experience at patching myself up.
Mustang Bobby
@Roger Moore:
It was a step up from Gunbarrel or Lyons.
raven
@Patricia Kayden: No, it’s not tough at all. People have much less severe injuries yet they have incredible pain. I don’t and I chalk that up to luck.
schrodinger's cat
Wow we are bunch of klutzy jackals and hyenas.
raven
@p.a.: So you were a pole lineman?
Chamois
Drying my hands in the kitchen without turning on the lights, I ran a metal towel rod up my nose until it hit bone. Not recommended. Still have sinus issues on that side.
raven
@p.a.: I had a 14ft Alumacraft with a 4 horse Eska.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: May be you just have a higher threshold for pain.
Mnemosyne
The ear/nose/throat doctor said, “Has anyone ever told you that you have a slightly deviated septum?”
I said, “No, but I’m not surprised. I have four older brothers.”
lamh36
I’m gonna watch Finding Your Roots tonight mainly for Soledad O’Brien…and a lil bit for Maher…fuq Bill O’Reilly though…bleh
PhoenixRising
36 days ago (I’m now weight bearing as tolerated, with plenty of ice between rounds of rehabilitative lifts and stretches) my dogs & I lost a fight with a fire hydrant.
I thought the picture at the top might be an artist’s rendering, because:
-It was the first chilly morning, so I hadn’t found my gloves yet, so I had one hand in the pocket of my hoodie.
-The other hand was occupied with the bag of poop I had just scooped.
-When I handed the leashes to Mrs Phoenix, to facilitate a dash across the street to the only garbage can for 4 blocks, the dogs just looked at me like the RCA dog.
-So the Mrs called them. Resulting in the leash on the 15lb dog getting tied down at the hydrant and around the hind legs of the Great Dane…at exactly the height of my ankle.
-Because my hands were full (see above) 152 pounds of me pivoted gracefully around the fulcrum of the little dog’s leash, ending in flat impact on the concrete.
Score:
-Facial abrasion that took the color off my upper lip, in the shape of upper left incisor; everyone who examined me said I was lucky not to lose that tooth or crack my skull.
-2 torn ligaments in the knee that hit, behind a gory wound in the exact shape of my patella, and now pre-patellar bursitis because I had to fly to Ohio and shepherd my mom through oncology during the following weeks instead of following care instructions.
But that’s just my most recent Stupid Meets Concrete story…
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: Easy for you to talk, you are neither and both injured and/or not injured until you decide to tell us about it. Izzat right?
Definitely a ‘pix or it did and didn’t happen’ situation with you.
Schlemazel
@raven:
WOW, that is lucky. You don’t ache & crunch when you get up?
delk
I broke my back last January getting out of bed. Before my first foot hit the ground I heard and felt a rather loud crunching sound.
When I was in High School I came home early and decided to make a hot dog for lunch. As I was putting it in the bun I wondered if the hot dog was still fresh. I got too close trying to smell it and it adhered to the tip of my nose and gave me a clown like 2nd degree burn.
schrodinger's cat
@jl: No pics and it did happen!
Does getting bitten by getting between two snarling cats, count as stupid? The doctor even joked that they would have had to cut off my finger if it was in the days before antibiotics.
Mnemosyne
@PhoenixRising:
There’s something to be said for falling down a lot as a child — apparently I now have an instinct for falling well. When I tore my ACL by falling off a stepladder, I landed directly on the outside of my knee and snapped the ACL like a rubber band, but I managed to not break my wrists or tumble into the shelf full of 3-ring binders on one side of me or hit my head on the filing cabinets on the other side. So it could have been worse.
raven
@Schlemazel: Lil stiff but nothing to speak of. I think the couple mile walk @ 6 and then the daily trip to the Y help. Activity seems to be key.
Shell
My God, how is that even possible?
raven
@delk: Lumbar? What did you do?
Shana
@Schlemazel: Yeah, along with my baby blue cats eye glasses.
After I posted I remembered another injury. The next year I leaned over in my desk at school to pick up a dropped pencil. Tipped the whole desk with me still in it over on my hand. A couple of my fingernail got bruised so that eventually the fingernails fell off. That garnered a lot of “oohs” from the boys and “yucks” from the girls.
TheOtherHank
I’ve got three that I can think of.
1) I was about 8, racing my little sister across the church’s gravel parking lot. She was beating me so reached out to grab her shoulder and slow her down. I missed my grab, fell down, and skidded to a stop on my face. The scab was very impressive.
2) First morning of summer break after my first year of college. I had plugged my alarm clock in after getting unpacked back at Camp Mom & Dad, but hadn’t noticed that the alarm switch had gotten pushed to ‘on’. It went off and startled me full awake. I jumped out of bed to shut it off without realizing that my feet were tangled in the sheets. I skinned both my knees, so I looked like a five year old with scabby knees for the next couple weeks.
3) A few years ago my son’s end of the soccer season party was at an indoor soccer place. We had a parent’s and siblings vs the boys game. I brought my head down and forward to head the ball right as someone’s sister jumped up to head the ball. The top of her head hit me squarely in the eye and I got a truly impressive shiner. It was ever so fun explaining to my coworkers that I got beat up by a 12 year old girl.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Origuy: Reminds me of playing around with a basketball and a baseball bat with some friends when I was a kid. I had the bat, the ball got thrown to me, I swung at it.
(You know what’s coming…)
Thwack! Boinggg! Bonk! The bat bounced off the ball and hit me on the side of my head.
I saw stars, but no other damage that I know of.
Don’t do that!
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
Being part Weeble, no scintillating tales to share.
However, harken back to the then newly installed mayor of our fair isle, less than a month into his first term.
22over7
I fell ON a ladder. Got bruised up pretty badly. Still get shit about it.
raven
I was fishing on the Thunderstar, a headboat out of Charleston. It was August and one of the hottest days ever. We went out 30 miles and dropped anchor. Because of the depth we had electric reels (I didn’t know it until we were at the boat or I would not have gone). Everyone was in a hurry when we dropped lines and my line got tangled immediately. It was dumb but I reached for the tangle and the guy on the other side of the boat yanked his rig and the big circle hook went through my pinky. It was confusing as hell and the dude kept yanking thinking he had a fish. I could not get to my knife to cut the hook out so I had no choice but to pull that sucker through the end of my finger. We were 2 hours into an 8 hour trip and there was a nurse on board and she bandaged it up and I fished on!
delk
@Shell: Severe osteoporosis. Side effect of years of HIV meds. We had been monitoring for about three years. I was (and remain) terrified of ice/snow.
Josie
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s three of us in one thread. I feel so much better.
imonlylurking
Many years ago, during a quiet weekend day when the football was playing, my (now-ex) husband decided to take a nap on the couch and I decided to do some dishes. I put my headphones on and started washing mugs. I had one hand in a washcloth inside the mug and I twisted the mug around by the handle with my other hand, and somehow, I’m still not entirely sure how, I managed to not only break the handle off of the body of the mug, but I broke it off with a little piece sticking out and I managed to jab that little piece into my arm. Right into the artery.
So I’m standing there with my headphones on, blood spurting into the sink, and I just start laughing, because really, how stupid is this? I try to call my husband for help-I’ve still got the headphones on and I’m suddenly worried about dropping my cd player into the sink (because of course that’s what would happen next).
My husband, who is pretty much asleep by this point, doesn’t want to get up. I’m laughing so he doesn’t think it’s serious. I’ve got a dishcloth on the wound and trying to add pressure but it’s not helping. I finally convince him that no, I really do need him, it’s not just the cats doing something funny, please help me, and he gets up, comes into the kitchen, and doesn’t notice anything until he sees the red dishcloth on my arm.
We don’t own red dishcloths.
He disentangles me from the cd player and bundles me into the car (with another towel to stop the dripping, yes it was gross) and we dart over to the emergency room-the completely empty emergency room. They were fully staffed up-apparently football games are known to result in lots of stupid injuries that end in a visit to emergency.
I got a tiny little stitch-it wasn’t a big cut but it was deep, very deep-the doctor was really impressed when I told him I cut it on a drinking mug.
And then we went home and I didn’t have to do dishes for a week.
Mnemosyne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I was a nearsighted child (got my first pair of glasses at age 6), so I’ve probably been hit in the face by every type of sportsball common in the US. Which also explains the deviated septum above.
delk
@raven: @delk: L2 and L3. Luckily no surgery was needed. I wore a TLSO brace for about 5 months.
PhoenixRising
@mnem: I think the ADD has a LOT to do with how many exciting adventures with gravity I’ve had. An additional factor is laziness: my sister has pre-ordered a tombstone engraved with ‘She Refused to Make Two Trips’.
About 25 years ago I bit through my lower lip while vacuuming out my car. So that hairline scar is now directly south of the oddly asymmetric upper lip…remodeling…reflecting an adult life full of battles with gravity. I fought the law; you know the rest.
And when my body is prepared for what’s next–in my case, cremation–oh, the stories they’ll have to make up to explain how I got *that* one. I figure I’m setting up a puzzle for the next generation of medical examiners damn near every time I leave the house.
raven
@delk: Good. My wife had lumbar micro surgery a couple of years back and I was telling her about my harrington rod surgery. She said it was absolute state of the art in 1975 and that it would be considered barbaric now.
p.a.
@raven: @raven: Most Maine camps seem to rent 14′ semi-Vs with 8 horse motors. If you use a guide they run ‘Lakers’- big (16+) canoes with transoms and various hp motors.
In New England ‘Lineman’ is a specific job (contract name Outside Plant Technician). They set and replace poles and run aerial and underground cable, guy wires etc. My official job title was Splice Service Technician: Splice the cables linegang runs, maintain it, maintain air dryers (underground copper cable is pressurized with dehumidified air- manholes and duct aren’t waterproof), do customer installs and repairs outside and in the old days in the home. I left for another department before the advent of fttp (fiber to the premise). Highest tech stuff I worked on as an SST was ISDN, still the copper world or as it’s now termed BAU (business as usual) or legacy plant.
TMI?
I have a 12′ jonboat w 9.9hp Sears (Chrysler).
NotMax
Oh, okay, thought of one (but no injury).
Was painting the walls of a room inside a cabin way, way out in the woods. Ladder leaning on the wall. NotMax beginning to paint, using a roller, right up at the peak of the roof.
Feet of the ladder somehow or other slip and down NotMax goes. All ~ 14 feet down.
Nothing broken, nothing bruised. But there it was: a perfectly vertical stripe of the new paint nearly all the way down.
Took a full five minutes for the fellow painter in the room to stop laughing.
raven
@p.a.: I was in a signal outfit in Nam and we had pole linemen that ran the commo wire and such on poles. 36 Charlie if I recall.
eta I think Eska made the Ted Williams Sears boar motor back in the day.
delk
@raven: I spent the first 6 months of 2015 in a brace and in PT for my back. Last week I had rotator cuff surgery so I’ll be spending the next 6 months in PT. There’s a Yogi Berra quote in action in my life.
p.a.
Nice thread, but it can’t beat the boatcabin drinking scene in Jaws.
Skepticat
Not that I don’t empathize, I do–I really do–but I am laughing myself silly at some of the mental pictures these stories create.
–Missed a step carrying my printer down the stairs in the dark, dropped the printer on a tile floor, fell on top of it, broke my foot when I finally hit the floor. Wrote HP a nice letter because the printer still works fine.
–Tripped over a cat in the dark, slammed face first into the wall and got a bloody nose, fell onto a wicker chair that cut my face, and spooked the cat, who clawed me.
–Slipped and fell backward on a concrete boat ramp, this time in daylight. This led to a fairly good experience like JDM’s, as I was in the Bahamas and went to the government clinic because it was after my doctor’s office hours. I walked right in; they did six nice, neat stitches; they handed me pain meds and antibiotics; and less than an hour later I walked out after paying $50. The only real problem was that after increasing difficulty with my spine, it turned out I’d basically broken my neck, as I’d displaced four vertebra about an inch.
There are too many more to list. I like to have people think that I’m just a very active person, but apparently I’m simply a klutz–and a Yankee who doesn’t like to turn on the lights.
Mnemosyne
@PhoenixRising:
Two trips — yep, that would be the impulsivity. When they screen you for ADHD, one of the things they have to make sure you don’t have is OCD, so I made sure to explain that I go back and check things more than once because I have a well-founded fear that I left the stove on, not an irrational one.
danielx
Chasing a girl at some church event when I was 11….she runs through a pair of swinging wooden doors with glass panes, NOT safety glass with wire embedded in it. Too fast to stop when they swing back, better my hands and arms than my face, CRASH! Nine stitches in one arm, three in the other and utterly ruined the rev’s black leather desk chair which was okay because I didn’t like him anyway.
Oddly enough, mom was downstairs, heard the glass breaking and said “that’s one of mine” over her shoulder to whoever she was conversing with as she raced for the stairs.
Also too, never get tired of the Cracker artwork.
imonlylurking
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh, I’ve done the getting between two cats thing. Twice. You’d think I would have learned after the first time.
The second time was 11pm at night, the day before I was supposed to fly to Paris. Yes, that Paris.
I still went. It kinda sucked but I’d never been to France before. I found out that people are very helpful when you are clearly injured-I had to put my hand in a sling because it hurt too much to carry my hand around without it.
Mnemosyne
@delk:
One of my coworkers has a sister who’s been on and off chemotherapy for several years battling lymphoma, and she’s starting to have similar problems (in her 30s). It sucks, but she says the extra years of life were worth it.
cdono
Stubbed my toe on the door frame taking out wrapping paper out of the closet last month. I broke my little toe, and it still hurts like a mother.
p.a.
@raven: Many of the guys around when I got hired (’86) were Nam era vets, but I think only 1 had climbing experience in the military.
My first garage had 73 guys and 3 bucket trucks. By 2000 everyone had them. Wankers.
Pogonip
@delk: Yaktrax are your friend!
WereBear
@Pogonip: First frost of the season, they come out of the closet. Always handy. Worth every penny!
BruceFromOhio
Piling into my friends Chevette, I was the last one in, so I scurried to the open hatch at the back, rolled in on my side, and reached up to pull the hatch shut by grabbing one of the pneumatic struts. Which closed and crushed my fingertips between the strut and the hatch. My friend in the drivers seat had looked up in the rearview just as I did it, and said my name as I wrenched my arm back and felt the crushing sensation in my fingertips as my hand came free. It was difficult to hold a pen for a few days after that, and I’ve steered clear of such mechanics in any hatchback since.
@Skepticat: Gaia love us all, too many cats-in-the-dark stories to tell in one sitting. Furry little bastards do it on purpose, I swear.
Mister Papercut
Oh yay, a post relevant to my interests and expertise!
1) Had half my index finger crushed off by a swivel rocking chair when I was a small child.
2) Broke my pinkie toe and split the skin between it and my forth toe, making a bloody, dangling mess, because I caught it while trying to slam my bedroom door as a less-small child.
3) Knocked myself unconscious in a study lounge in college. I was pushing a chair away from a desk, it caught on the carpet and tipped backwards, causing me to slam the back of my head on the edge of a large, heavy conference table behind me.
4) Missed a step (walking off a three-step porch) and sprained both ankles — one a grade 3 sprain, with a bonus fractured cuboid bone — the day after my first layoff, and two weeks before I had to move out of my apartment.
Diana
Deli at the corner installs new all-glass door, is so proud that they clean them every day.
Thinking that the door is open, not a new glass door, walked straight into them and gave myself two black eyes.
Since I lived alone with my cat Coco, best comment was a friend sympathetically looking at me and saying, in a hushed voice, “Coco becoming abusive?”
BruceFromOhio
@raven: That’s the universe SENDING YOU BIG MESSAGES. What they mean, only you can know.
Hob
Latest dumbass source of pain: Getting into a taxi, I grabbed the top of the door and managed to stick the last joint of my thumb into the open window while the driver was rolling it up, and got it smushed in there pretty good. It took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on – just hung out half-inside the car going “Ow – why won’t it move – ow.” Finally I yelled “The window! Stop closing the window!” The driver, presumably wondering what the hell I was up to, had already stopped closing it but when he half-heard me saying that, he started trying to close it some more. Surprisingly I didn’t lose the nail, it just turned into kind of a weird cracked blood aquarium for a while– almost finished growing out the fresh nail now, so I can stop grossing people out.
I’ve never broken anything, which is hard to believe given how clumsy I am. My bike accidents tend to be super stupid and violent-looking but leave me with just some lost skin. It’s possible that I have a guardian angel who’s going to lose patience with me one day, and then I’ll like tear off my head while trying to pick my nose.
Ruckus
Tried to cut off my thumb with a razor knife. Brand new blade of course. I should say that I wasn’t really trying it was an accident but I was about 6 ft in the air on top a machine so there was oil and grease and now blood spurting as I severed the artery and the nerve, which is probably why it didn’t hurt at all. Just missed severing the tendon (because I hit the bone. They are a nice color and softer than I’d have thought) or I’d have been in a hospital having my arm opened up to the elbow to retrieve it. Got down off the machine swearing a blue streak and leaking blood all over the floor. Found a great Dr purely by happenstance at a workers comp clinic who sewed me back up.
Evan
I once cut my foot badly enough to bleed by stepping on a sharp piece of lasagna.
So, yeah, that’s a thing that can happen in real life, in case any of you needed a new thing to worry about.
Culture of Truth
I have nothing to match these. Although a few years ago I did somehow slam my fingers in a heavy car door. That was pretty stupid, and painful.
ixnay
Very late to the party, but I did have a couple of interesting weeks this year. In July, while leaning over a barrier to grab the waterer for a bunch of new baby chicks, I separated a rib. Felt the “pop” – never a good sign. So: nothing to do about that but try not to breathe deeply, but it did make me walk funny. Two days later, turned a corner too closely (old farm house, things stick out sometimes) and broke my second toe. Now I walk even funnier: and slip in the shower and smack my coccyx well and good. All in one week, and all with nothing at all to be done but take painkillers. Separated ribs, by the way, take forever to heal.
So, things were looking pretty reasonable approaching Christmas — until I decided to take a comforter (which had more than its ration of cat hair) up stairs to the laundry. Wound my feet up in the dangling fabric, came down the stairs ass-over-teakettle, probably knocked myself out – no way to know, I was alone in the house. Some very impressive bruises. Three days later, had to get my husband to run me to the ER, because I had no interest in reading, which would be about like saying I had no interest in breathing. CT says I’m OK.
Lessons: Don’t lean your ribs on an immovable piece of fence, and always make sure that all the tails of laundry are within the basket.
Interrobang
Last winter, I slipped on some ice while walking across a parking lot, and fell on my ass in front of two Orthodox rabbis! I wasn’t really hurt (I was wearing a denim skirt with leggings underneath, plus a long sweater, and a full-length coat, so lots of padding), but it was quite embarrassing.
This past spring, I was walking to the bus stop from a grocery store, carrying two small bags of groceries, including one that contained (foreshadowing orchestral sting here) a carton of eggs. My foot rolled on a curb cut — I hate those damn things; they make things easier for wheelchair users at the expense of ambulatory people with mobility impairments like me — and I had to throw myself sideways in midair to avoid falling into two lanes of oncoming traffic…right on top of my groceries. I was bruised and battered up, but only three of the eggs broke!
Almost 10 years ago, I was loafing on my laptop and got up to get a Coke. I slipped on a slick patch of finish on my bedroom’s hardwood floor (I have a rug there now) and slammed to the ground, landing with my arm up on my bed at a weird angle, and my laptop brick directly under my ass.
Final tally: One broken coccyx, torn anterior ligament in my right shoulder with subsequent impingement syndrome, broken collarbone on my right side. The rotator cuff still intermittently gives me problems, and the old break aches sometimes. The worst part is, I went to my clinic, and the dopey-ass resident I saw said, “Oh, people with cerebral palsy always feel banged up after they fall; just take some ibuprofen and you’ll be fine in a couple days.” I didn’t even find out I’d broken the collarbone until about a year later when I was having a physical with my actual doctor, and she ran her finger over my clavicle and said, “When did you break your collarbone?” I said, “I never…oh waaaaitaminit…” Man, the pain I went through healing from that was intense.
redoubt
First year college, working grounds crew Christmas break to earn extra money. Got right middle finger caught between a gas-driven log-splitting wedge and a chunk of red oak. Lost the fingernail, gained eleven stitches. (Good thing I was wearing heavy gloves or it could have been worse.)
mr_gravity
140 perfectly good reasons to postpone this weekend’s home repair projects.
shpx.ohfu
Broke my arm playing Frisbee.
Later, I cut off a fingertip on the other arm while using a circular saw to cut limbs off a pine tree.
Skeptical
Mr. Gravity at 141 for the win.