Ask Lemmy

I once tried to grab my glasses to keep them in place while I leaned forward or something. Except I was wearing contact lenses at the time, so I just poked myself in the eye. It wasn't a serious injury, but I felt really betrayed by my own brain.

I'm not sure if it counts as an injury as such, but close enough...

When I was in my early 20s, I took my eye drops out of the fridge and put them on the bench. I went to the toilet, came back, picked up the eye drops and tried to drop them in to my eyes. Turns out I picked up the super glue. Thankfully, I was really bad at eye drops, so I blinked, and just glued my eyelashes together, but still, it's one of the dumbest things I've done :)

I wrench on cars and there have been moments when I was trying to break a bolt loose and thought to myself "If this thing comes loose right now, I'll probably smash my knuckles against [object]... Nah, I have it under control."

I have, without fail, always hurt myself right after having this thought. I just don't seem to learn.

I was finishing a tile backsplash. The last thing is using a sponge the size of a brick that has water in in it to wipe off the grout glaze .

I had recently put nice copper knobs on the cabinets.

The wires from the wall outlets were pulled out, and being an idiot I didn't flip off the circuit breaker.

So I leaaned with the wet sponge and hit the wires with the sponge just as my head hit one of the copper knobs.

It felt like Zeus sent a lightning bolt up my ass and up out through my head.

Im a more cautious person now.

Wanted to cook for my mother when I was a young child. Grabbed a chair, climbed on, stuck on the hob, waiting a minute and checked to see if it was hot by putting my hands on it 🤦‍♂️

I’m recovering from a head injury. I got out of bed in the middle of the night, more than half asleep, stood up too fast and passed out. I fell backwards and hit my head on the floor. Gave myself two haematomas and a huge concussion. Missing a couple of weeks memory, don’t remember the ambulance ride.

Pretty traumatic for my family, but I missed it all.

Microwaved a boiled egg to reheat it. Didn't know microwaved boiled eggs could explode. Bit into boiled egg and it exploded in my face. Ended up with a scratch in one of my eyeballs.

When I was a kid, I was playing with some friends who had managed to get a big plank of wood up into a tree, balanced on just two branches.

I climbed up onto it and walked out onto the board between the two branches and it predictably collapsed. I fell, landed on my feet, and the board landed in front of me completely vertically. My nose went down onto it completely and hit hard.

Had a nosebleed for several hours. Was not a good time, but I can look back and laugh now.

Running in the bush, I put my foot straight in a wombat hole. A wombat hole is about 2 feet across so I ended up feet first, chest deep in the hole. My bug toe landed first and shattered in 7 pieces. Sprained my ankle on the other foot too so it was a super fun walk home!

11, had just learned to ski, and so had my 8 year old brother. Except he hadn't really learned to brake yet so just went full speed downhill. As a good older brother I thought I should teach him and skid up next to him, reminding him to put his skiis in a V shape to brake. Unfortunately I was too close to him and our skiis got entangled, resulting in us traveling for a good 10-20 meters as a violent ball of skiis and limbs going whichever direction.

My kid brother was luckily fine, but I twisted my thumb bad enough to puke, freaking out the rest of the kids we were with. Didnt get to skii much more that trip.

I was rushing to complete a wizard's staff for my son's Halloween costume and trying to chisel out a compartment in the staff (a branch from a tree) for the electronics to trigger a flash from a strobe light.

The chisel needed sharpening, and I was tired, but I thought it was almost done.

Luckily, when the chisel slipped, the bevel side was down, and it rode along the tendon in my left wrist, so it just unzipped the skin without doing any serious damage to anything but my pride.

After we got back from the hospital, I went back down to the basement where I had been working to try to figure out how I did it, but I couldn't remember exactly what I was doing or how I managed to be pushing the chisel to wards my left wrist.

Eventually I finished the staff and it was awesome!

I broke my toe by dropping a medical kit tin on it.

Teacher, jumped in to play some football with the kids. Played for about 5 minutes before spraining my ankle badly and fracturing a bone in my foot.

2 years later it’s not good.

All I wanted was to have some fun for a couple of minutes.

When I was 8 or so, I decided I wanted to have one of these soccer balls with a rubber band that you can strap to yourself, so it comes back when you kick it.

So I DIY'd it.

I took some kite string, attached one end to me, knotted a small nail to it on the other end and stuck the nail into the valve of a soccer ball.

Kicked the ball gently, the string made "plongggg" and the ball rolled away.

Me, being annoyed that it didn't work, picked up the string, followed it to the end, only to realize the small nail stuck in my upper arm. Only half a cm or so, if I had to guess.

Pulled it out, luckily it didn't bleed noticably or hurt. So I never told anyone about it

Young car enthusiast me had gotten a new car, my first with disc brakes. I was admiring those brakes after a drive, and decided to touch them.

Turns out, brake discs get hot.

Just a few hours after building my first 3D printer and running a test print, I stabbed my palm trying to trim some extraneous plastic from the model.

Yesterday

Got high, used hammer, broke finger.

Cutting a loaf of banana bread, 6yo me decided to use a paring knife. When it wasn't cutting well, I used my index finger for more leverage. It wasn't cutting well because the blade side was up. Sliced my finger up pretty good.

I bought a smokeless firepit, which works by surrounding the fire with a compartment of air which gets superheated and shot back out into the smoke, igniting it and getting rid of almost all the smoke a fire normally puts out.

The day I set it up, I had it sitting on the grass and started wondering if the outer wall was hot enough to set my yard on fire. There happened to be a lot of dead leaves around, so I decided to touch one against the outer wall of the firepit and see if it caught on fire.

When I actually went to go do this, my brain skipped over the "pick up a leaf first" step, and I just touched the firepit with all five fingertips of my dominant hand.

I somehow ended up with mostly second-degree burns and only a couple smaller third-degree burns, but 0/10, do not recommend. Fire is hot, and touching it results in a lot of pain.

As an overweight child, I for some reason thought I was athletic enough to try acrobatics on my mattress.

I was not.

My first attempt at a back tuck, I landed on my back and kneed myself right in the eye. My mother was super pissed because she knew teachers and shit were going to ask questions. I can still hear her cussing under her breath as she applied makeup to my eye before school 😂😂😂😂

I was reaching above the stove and put my hand on a red burner. For a month I had cool circle scars.

Coincidentally just punched myself in the face by accident... I'm on a crowded train replacement bus and my hand slipped while pulling up my backpack...

As a young teen, I microwaved Kraft singles in an air tight magic bullet container trying to make nacho cheese (I was inspired by the infomercial). Lid got stuck, so I had to use a lot of force to get it loose. Molten cheese exploded all over the kitchen and on my left arm. I had second degree burns and a scar for a few years.

15 year ago, I slipped in my kitchen and tore my left kneecap in half. 5 years ago, I stepped on the edge of a 1" deep hole in my yard. Rolled my ankle and tore my right kneecap in half as I went down.

Legs go in funny directions when you do that.

I barely know where to start.

One time I was jumping over a table at a summer camp. Just jumping, over and over, sort of spin-kicking over it. It's hard to describe but the important part is that it required a specific approach angle and my torso was more or less horizontal in the air. Then I heard someone say, "Hey, [counselor], watch this!" clearly referring to my jumps. I didn't have time to line up my jump but self-conscious about having an audience, I went any way. I slammed face-first into the far side of the table and crashed to the ground. I was more or less just stunned but being a teenager I bounced straight back up. It was only after I'd left the room in shame that I began to notice the pain in my foot. I'd hit my foot against the floor and broken a bone. Then of course the story circulated that I'd been the one who said, "Watch this!", got everyone's attention, then immediately ate shit.

When I was a teenager I twice broke knuckles punching inanimate objects.

As kids we were playing a game of train on a playground. It's not a well-known game, we made it up on the spot and only played it once, possibly due to how little game there even was and also to how poorly it went. Basically one kid is the front of the train and they have to do a loop of the playground with the other kids in tow, then you change spots. I was in front and my brother got in front of me, which was against the rules. I decided to get back in front of him by sliding across the top of a round-topped tunnel bridge thingy. I slid off the edge and landed on my elbow, breaking my ulna, humerus and dislocating my shoulder. My aunt was a nurse who gave me a shoulder sling with styrofoam cups to keep it protected while we got on the plane. Oh yeah, my aunt was there because she was driving us to the airport to fly across the Pacific Ocean and continenal US that day. I got a temporary cast in LA and finally an X-ray in New Jersey. Thankfully it was the 80s so DVT hadn't been invented yet or else I wouldn't have been allowed to fly due to the risk of embolism.

Also one time playing a friendly game of soccer my foot slipped on a slippy bit of grass, then gripped on a grippy bit of grass and just... rotated. It rotated to a position feet shouldn't be in.

I have since found out that I have a sleep disorder that can result in impaired judgment depending on how poorly my sleep has gone.

I was practicing tossing a knife from hand to hand.

While simultaneously changing the blade orientation from "north" to "south".

While running up stairs.

At work.

I "caught" it!

By the blade.

With the webbing between the second and middle fingers oF my right hand, WHICH IMMEDIATELY SLIT APART.

A falling knife has no handle.

Also, throwing a knife from hand to hand just creates falling knives.

I held a carrot in my left hand, and tried to cut it along its length with a knife in my right. As I pushed with my right hand, and pulled with my left, the carrot split in two in the middle and one end of it went straight under my fingernail. It hurt.

From that day onwards I cut carrots like a normal human being.

My friend's summer house got burglarized and we went to remove the rest of the broken window.

With our fists. After drinking some vodka.

The operation to restore nerves and muscles in my hand was long, but as chubbyemu would say, I made a

full

recovery.

Tbf we were at the apex of puberty back then.

Woke in the middle of the night to a case of travelers diarrhea so bad I legitimately considered calling an ambulance. As I was sprinting to the bathroom my bare foot impacted my luggage. The wheel part. The wheel part spun around and carved a half circle in my little toe.

I sat on the toilet losing a noticable part of my body weight, flushing every 60 seconds, while cradling my bleeding small toe on my right foot.

3 stiches and two courses of antibiotics for the infection since who knew that the little wheel on luggage isn't exactly clean nor is the hotel bathroom.

My back hurts from just laying in bed. 😩

Although maybe the time my dad was putting wallpaper in my bedroom when I was 3 and I took the razor blade and just sliced my hand open was the dumbest. I still have the scar.

I was playing dressup when I was a kid. I had stiletto heels on and was dancing, kicking my legs all around. Kicked myself right in the cooter.

Somebody filled a trash bag full of sharp objects they were planning on throwing out, then decided "I can't just throw a bag of loose sharp objects in the dumpster. Oh, I know the perfect place for this! Dead center of the living room floor." I stepped on it in the pitch black of the night. Luckily I only hit the edge so I only injured a single toe, but I straight up ripped the flesh nearly from the bone of it. Even stupider, I didn't go to the hospital for it. At least until I had an appointment for something else anyway, at which point they saw it and immediately made me go to another doctor to get it addressed.

Tripped over my shoelace when I was 10, The kid behind me tripped on my feet and fell on me, Broke my collar bone, a rib in 2 places and a fracture to one vertibrae. I had to have an operation later as things didn't heal right.

Broke a rib by stretching too hard. :(

Hurt my knee cuz I sat down wrong. Had to add "can't tuck my leg behind me when I sit" to the old man list.

Almost impaled myself with a ruler in 4th grade. Another student was pulling me down the hall and I was wearing socks. So I was 'skiing' down the hall. Except I had a ruler in my mouth for some reason. Anyway, my sock caught a rough spot and my skiing came to a halt flinging my upper body forward. My hands caught my fall, and that ruler in my mouth just gently stabbed the back of my throat. Big brain moment. I didn't realize until later how close I came to dying.

When I was about 6 I put a plastic toy arrow in my mouth. It sliced my tongue pretty bad.

We once removed the safety rail off a skate ramp and did tricks off the back. I fractured and dislocated my wrist and missed a trip to Disney land Florida.

On my wedding night I tripped up the stairs and broke a bone in my hand. Had to do the honeymoon in a arm cast.

My first time at what is more or less a Renaissance Fair. There were several knives and swords on display. I thought they were plastic. Found out the hard way they were not.

I should add that this is in a country with gun control, i.e. weapons for sale is very much out of the order. I really was not expecting them to sell actual daggers!

Tried to kick ice chunk off of road, broke big toe.

Running with scissor, a classic.

Stabbing my hand while trying to remove an avocado pit ........ (Not so badly). Always using a spoon now 😅

I've frequently slept in such a way to fuck up my neck to where I can't turn it for a few days.

I feel old when just sleeping can fuck me up.

I did a commando roll off the end of my bed to make my daughter laugh. I rolled on the foot rest and broke my ribs

Edit: can't type.

I was using a sharp stick for breaking and steering while sledding, only I had the stick in front of me so it stuck to the snow, and pierced my face.

I wasn't very old.

I still have a scar on my left cheek where it went through.

I was putting my cat's food down, and slipped on some water from their bowl. Landed on my left shoulder and fucked up my rotator cuff for a couple months.

I tried to open a can with a pair of pliers because someone had taken the can opener from the club house.

Smoke cigarettes