The 'What's the dumbest self-inflicted injury you ever had' thread

[RichPA]

Well, let's see - when I was 13 or 14, I was chasing my brother through the area where our dad was building an addition, and stepped on a nail sticking up through a board - right through my shoe and foot.

Or the time a couple of years later when I was helping my grandpa shelling corn from an old-style corn crib and hit a wasp nest with a corn rake - 100 or so stings, and I woke up on a gurney in the ER

Or when I was working on the edge of the roof damaged by a fallen tree and the ladder slipped - got a half-titanium shoulder out of that one

I'll skip the various x-acto knife, soldering iron, and breaker-bar stories and tell this one about my wife: she dropped a 25-lb. free weight on her big toe, finished the remaining 45 minutes of her workout, and came home and said "can you help me get my shoe off?" - poured the blood out of her sneaker and took her to the ER.

So, yeah, I'm familiar with self-inflicted injuries ...

 

[mbskeam]

as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words....LOL

 

[onepixel]

Breaking my wrist, when jumping from an old wooden ladder to the roof. Ladder broke and I landed on the sidewalk. I was 13.
Big ass charlie horse when I rode off a 20 foot cliff on my motocross bike. Same year running in between volleyball net stands and taking a divot of flesh off my hip bone.

Yep. I understand, intimately.
My favorite,... casting a weighted wooly bugger with my 6'6" #2 One Ounce rod. You know, completely overmatching the fly to the rig. I lost a freight train of a brown on the Upper Owens River doing that; a true monster. That was stupid, and it hurt.

Double hauling a weighted line and fly, on a 8 wt. for winter steelhead and just when you let go, smacking the back of your head and seeing stars. lol Upper Owens River, love it!

 

[onepixel]

as they say, View attachment 981703 a picture is worth a thousand words....LOL

ok... you win.

 

[ScottFan355]

Popped open a beer that was half full with active yeast after a month in the fridge with a lighter. Aimed at my eye. Got a 2mm scratch on my eye that was the most horrible uncomfortable pain ever...

 

[elcoholic]

In 5th grade I was trying to fix my the leg on my desk chair. It had broken dowels in two directions. Trying to twist and lever it back in it with all my might it popped out and I stuffed it into my mouth full force. The ER Dr kept asking my dad as he stitched "he was fixing a chair?"

I was roofing my house back in my 20's. I had @ 90# roll of roofing on my shoulder when I stepped on a patio cover skylight with one foot. Did a power splits with one leg, but "fortunately" my nuts broke my fall. My wife called up "are you OK up there, sounds like you're puking?"

 

[zebra03]

8 days ago , I was naked , on all fours , covered in soap , bleeding from 8 different places and had 30 lbs of shattered glass on top of me .

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/in...up-broken-glass-how-do-you-get-it-all.781444/

 

[FONSguy]

So, when Empire Strikes Back came out I was fascinated by the Imperial Walker stop motion model. Watched the movie 8-9 times making drawing of the things. So while fabricating the feet, I was cutting out the channels of the feet for the 'toes' with a Dremel tool with a carbide steel bit. I would drill into the back of the channel and push forward. Worked perfect for 3 of the 4 feet, which were hard wood. Well..... on that last channel I didn't push hard enough to clear the foot before the bit grabbed the outside of the foot and the tool spun around the foot about 6-7 times. The bad part is I was holding the foot in my left hand and ground off the skin on the top of my index finger and thumb. It was a 7 paper towel kinda thing. Scabbed really thick so I couldn't move those fingers for about 5 weeks without re-opening the wound. Then I discovered vices..........

 

[Satch]

- Grabbed without looking inside a working tube radio;
- Broke my little right toe a couple of times bumping into furniture, boxes and - once - a bike;
- Caught a soldering iron, while working, that fell. More than once;
- When I was young drank myself into the hospital with an acute alcohol poisening;
- Curled my car around a streetlight while I was still inside.

If I find more stupid ways to hurt myself I let you know. Probably won't take long.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Wow some real doozies.

When I was about 11 I went to the YMCA with my older sister who was lifting weights at the time. She was showing me the machines and free weights and for some reason I never did learn, walked over and handed me an empty weight bar. What do those weigh, 20+ lb? I was not thinking she was going to let go if it and when she did, I dropped it on my toe. The whole thing turned 18 shades of purple and green and black and I eventually lost the toenail.

 

[djw99mn]

My dad was drilling a board once and had it resting on his leg and ended up drilling right into his leg!!!

 

[jlh3rd]

I was cleaning the bike in the picture including the chain. Initially,I was taking my time and being thorough. I grabbed what I thought was the chain lube but instead it was the spray degreaser. Now, I had to redo the chain. So, now wanting to hurry up, I started the bike, put it in gear, and held a rag on it as it rotated through the rag wiping the degreaser off. I use to do the same thing in early days with no trouble The rag got caught in the rear sprocket and pulled my hand with it. The picture of the thumb tells the rest of the story.....luckily, it was just the thumb....

 

[camerakid]

Mine isn't as bad as some I've seen here, so I have two to make up for it

#1. Once when I was a small child, my family and I went fishing on vacation. When we were done fishing, we packed up the poles in the car and we were on our way. The only problem was that my parents put the fishing poles in the very back of our van, but they were leaning on the back of the back seat with the lines and hooks going over the seat, hanging next to me. Well, as you could imagine, I ended up impaling myself in the wrist with one of the hooks, with the line still attached to the reel.

When we got to a gas station, my mom said my brother and I could get candy. So, me being a young child, ran out of the van not knowing the hook was still in my wrist, and I was able to get about 20 feet before the line got caught in the door. It did a pretty good job slicing up my wrist, and I was lucky it didn't hit any arteries. I still have the scar on my wrist, but it's just a white line more than anything.

#2. I was just starting out in soldering, and I had one of those little soldering irons powered by three AA batteries. I can't remember exactly what happened, but somehow I managed to burn my thumb... it was pretty nasty. The burn mark was there for a few weeks. I almost fell over in pain, which doesn't surprise me considering the fingertips have lots of nerve endings.

 

[mfrench]

How about the long lasting mental scars inflicted by parents and relatives,.. at least, perhaps, the humorous ones?

I was four'ish. My dad was just graduated from dental school, specializing in childrens dentistry (so many directions this could go already. I was getting my baby teeth as he was studying the child tooth trade; just imagine the possibilities).
My uncle, he was studying to be a doctor, or, perhaps already one, internship/residency?
This was a most evil pairing of non-related minds (yet completely parallel).

We had gone to visit my uncle and his family in central Utah. We were there to go fishing, and by god, I was going fishing, despite the fact that these guys all wanted to sit around the house, and blabber.
They said that they needed some NightCrawlers for bait, and that I could pass some time by going out by the garden and digging some up.
For those unfamiliar with NightCrawlers, they are giant earthworms that could compete with small snakes. They come out at night, and you can easliy catch them without digging. This effort was in broad daylight, and required the dig.
I grabbed a shovel, and empty can, and headed for the garden to dig some worms.
Total success.
So, I bring my catch to the men, and proudly display that we had bait, and that daylight was, in fact, burning.
As if in unison, the doctors asked me if I had been bitten by the NightCrawlers,.. that they are poisonous.
W.†.ƒ.? Why didn't you guys tell me that they bit?
Panic starts to set in, and they see it, and, run with it.
We've got to get you to the hospital before this stuff gets you. The only way to treat it is with serum, injected with big square needle!
[Jaw Drops smilies - insert here]
W†ƒ?? Why didn't you guys say anything about this?

Mental scars
Yes fishing also occurred.

 

[jdurbin1]

I've got a bunch that qualify for consideration:

1) When I was a kid, hanging from parallel bars in a park and let go, put my hands down to help land. Result: fractured wrist (summer outside DC, NOT a good time to have a cast on!)

2) Also a kid, rolled a big wooden cable spool down the driveway - towards the house, which sloped down slightly - and grabbed the sides to get pulled up onto the top so I could walk on the turning center. Great plan, had done it before no problem, but that day I had a loose long-sleeved sweatshirt on. Result: splinter on the rim snagged on one arm of the sweatshirt and the spool yanked me off the ground, launched me face-first over the hub onto my teeth, whereupon I cracked both front teeth in a nice V shape, then the rim ran over my ear on one side and just about severed the tip, left it hanging by a thread. Good save by the Navy doctor on that part.

3) Opened the short blade of my brother's medium-sized Swiss Army knife one day, and proceeded to fumble and slip that blade right into the web between thumb and forefinger, blade stopped after it had slid most of the way into the joint. The slice was not quite parallel to the web so I have a nice little knot there still to remind me not to do stupid shit like that again.

4) Working under the dash of a Peugeot, a 505 or 604 IIRC, tried to thread a wire through the heater box by mistake and in the process split the end of a finger open when it found the fan blade, which was spinning at the time. Hard to see that one now but there was a gray line there for years. Superglue is amazing at fixing stuff like that - way better than the usual installer black tape debacle.

5) Stuck a spinning Dremel carbide bit into the side of one of my middle fingers, in the thickest part of the finger right down to the bone (nice clean hole, could actually see bone at the bottom). Result: no blood, minimal pain, packed it with Bacitracin and it healed right up. Another one I can hardly find these days.


John

 

[jlh3rd]

I remembered another one. I was about 14 and was working on a lawnmower engine in our back yard. I'm sitting on the grass doing this and I scooted around to reposition myself and felt this huge stabbing pain in the lower part of my right ...cheek. I immediately jump up and look down and it was a broken piece of glass and I was bleeding bad. So, I get to the bathroom , get a mirror and getting as much blood out of the way ,I could see a 2 inch long, deep gash . It was bad. I knew if I told my mom it would mean a trip to the doctor for stitches.....I was 14, that was not gonna happen. I manned up, got the alcohol and cleaned out that gash, and that hurt, bad...I then got the medical tape, and gauze. Have you ever tried to tape up a b!tt cheek by yourself?...I then butterflied as best I could to close that gash...it worked, no infection...and no nurse sewing me up......I still have one nasty scar, seen only by me....

 

[sum of sand]

6th grade
Winter
Snowing with snow on the ground
Cold

Kids had been jumping off picnic tables
to dunk at our local park all summer
I avoided it being too good to stoop

So one day after school with some friends i guess the wintry challenge aspect got me and attempted my first picnic table dunk
Only I wanted mine to be special
Little more airtime
A 180 dunk behind my head

Rim was iced over
I slip off
Do a vertical 180
Punch the table on the way down
Punch the concrete
Get up and excuse myself immediately

Walk home

My neighbor catches me and i show her my swollen wrist
I think i sprained it
She just looks at me
I sleep it off for a couple hours mother coming home in the meantime
I dont take naps so she knows somethings up
I finally wake up and ask for something to drink
She wont help me with a glass of water
I think shes talked with the neighbor/her friend who has warned her of my arm
Refuses to help with a glass of water
I walk out to get my own drink but lifting the mug with my hand is excruciating
I walk to the bathroom and cry a little
I say we have to go to the hospital

So anyway
In ER till 1 or 2am
Break my wrist all up
Break both forearm bones below elbow and above elbow twice

One of the best things to happen to me

 

[crazy-in-az]

Four year old me thought it would be fun to make a "catapult trap" for my nine year old sister. I took an old, shallow cooking pot, laid a three foot 2x4 across it and placed 4 fist sized rocks along the edge. Of course, I had to test it first. I stomped on the end of the board and sent a three pound rock into my forehead and bled all over my friend's grandparent's backyard. It was fun explaining that to mom.

About 5 years ago I was helping my neighbors fix their roof. My friends were already there and they showed me where a soft spot was. As I was walking I found another weak spot and alerted everyone. Not 15 minutes later I stepped over a small gable and put my foot through the spot I just found. I ended up with my right leg sticking through the ceiling and my left leg went flat across the roof, keeping me from falling to the ground. I ended up in bed for a few days with internal bruises on my leg and ribs.

Shortly before or after that I went outside to turn on our pool filter and stepped BAREFOOT on a rattlesnake. It was a good thing it was in the shade and too cold to fight! It rattled at me and disappeared into a wood pile. My dad came over with his 38 loaded with snake shot. He tried shooting twice, the first time shooting the rattle off (he was sweating and couldn't see which end was which). The second time he shot it in the stomach.

While we were flipping boards over to find the snake and finish him off I stepped on a rusty nail! I'm glad I recently had a tetanus shot. Dad finally found the snake and finished it off with a head shot.

 

[toxcrusadr]

I stepped on at least one nail as a kid, I believe with shoes on each time. I have no idea why there were so many boards with nails sticking out lying in our back yard.

Also stepped on a bee at least once. We had quite a crop of clover in the lawn and there were always bees.

But really, who Didn't step on bees and nails as a kid?

 

[mfrench]

currently...
I've been building an awning over a new sliding door that I installed in a bedroom. I'm getting ready to do the roof. I've opted for corrugated steel, as it is quick and easy, and long lasting.
So, I cut a panel, and put it up on the roof to size it. There is a ladder right there, ready for me to use.
Do I use it? Nah, the panel is only 4.5' long, no problem...
Nah, I just reach higher, on my toes, and I go to shove the panel into place. Something went glitch in my shoulder.

Holy criminy, I can barely hold my arm up now without some brace. My shoulder is screaming at me something fierce.