In what stupid ways have you injured yourself? Were you drunk? (Everyone asks me that whenever I get hurt.) Want to hear all the ways I've smashed my fingers over the years? (Just kidding -- be nice to me and I won't tell you.)

-- Anonymous, July 31, 1999

Answers

It was my first time around in college.

I was making some extra money by running spotlight for the "Cindarella Pagent."

After the show was over we were loading all the different props and light units onto the back of a truck so they could be hauled off to a different theatre.

I was stepping onto the bed of the truck as someone else was trying to step around me. Inadvertently they knocked me off. I remember hearing a scream and then realizing it was mine! The next thing I know I'm sitting on the curb rubbing my ankle and seeing blood slowly trickle onto the pavement.

I ended up spending most of the night in the emergency room. I left with a serious sprain that put me on crutches for six months and a bunch of cuts...to my goodies. I had caught the corner of the bed with my crotch on the way down.

That was...five years ago last month. I'm completely healed now.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 1999

That was six weeks on crutches. Not six months.

I can't imagine six months for a sprain. Oops. Time for that morning coffee.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 1999

When I was 16, I was at a tennis tournament sitting atop some monkey bars, and as I climbed down my leg slipped inside the monkey bars while the rest of me fell outside them. Pop! went my anterior cruciate ligament, though it went undiagnosed for about 5 years until I was doing aerobics and tripped (I am notoriously clumsy) and ripped up some cartilage too.

I have always told people that I hurt it at a tennis tournament so they'd assume I was on the courts at the time, but of course as usual I had lost my very first match of the day and was just goofing around when I hurt it. Now I can't do high impact aerobics or go skiing and I'm just fine with that. But now and then I'll do something like you did, Beth, and it'll swell up and ache and I just figure, oh, wiped out some more of that cartilage. Oh, well. It now creaks audibly everytime I climb the stairs.

I guess I can get the whole works replaced in 20 years, eh?

-- Anonymous, July 31, 1999

Beth, the guy who sold us your first car (The T-Bird) has no children. And if he did, they wouldn't be doing leftist things like writing journals, they'd be marching in neonazi parades and burning crosses.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 1999

Hey, Beth...

I guess it was around eleven years ago. I used to be active in a historical recreation society (yes, one of those ones where you dress up in funny clothes, camp out of the back of your car, and hit each other with sticks...not necessarily all at once). Look, I was young, okay?

Anyway, I was in the process of hitting someone with a tape-wrapped stick when I shifted my weight slightly to my right and pivoted. That was it. Next thing I know -- just like Jackie -- I'm hearing someone scream, realize I'm on the ground, and that the scream is mine.

The accident? My patella snapped out of position, dislocating, then snapped back in. Fracture time. I ended up with a cast from ankle to upper thigh for six weeks. (Again, just like Jackie.)

Driving was hard, but I managed. I probably SHOULDN'T have managed, but I did. What I did was, by swinging my cast-clad leg to the right -- it was an automatic -- I could work both the gas and the brake with my left foot. Thinking about it now... Jesus! What the hell was I thinking?! I might just as well have gotten down and manipulated the pedals with my hands. It might have been safer.

For showering...well, I guess everyone goes through the same thing. Plastic bags all around! I remember buying a couple of pairs of pants at the local Goodwill and chopping off the right leg. I thought I could always chop off the other leg later and wear them as shorts, but of course I never wore them again, once the cast came off.

Speaking of the cast coming off... I have this hideously vivid memory of the studly young doctor who helped saw it off. Oh, god, the sight of that ghastly pale leg and that sickly hair that insisted on growing, there in the dark....

Sei ---- sei@pillow-book.com

-- Anonymous, August 01, 1999

When I was in third grade (or fourth?) I was riding my bike to school, made a much wider right turn than I meant to, and rode straight into a wall. The middle of the wall, not even a corner or anything. Didn't break anything, did slide forward and smash my crotch into the bike frame, though. That wasn't fun. And that is only one of the several sets of forks that needed replacing on that bike. I also rode into a parked car on one occasion. In sixth grade I rode my bike into a squared-off curb, fell over, and broke my collar bone. I felt like I was watching it happen, thinking 'my, that was a bad idea'. I got to rig up my denim purse (oh-so-fashionable) into a sling, hobble along to the tennis courts, and watch my firends play while another friend went to call my parents. I also did something to my knee in high school, running on the beach at Pt. Reyes. Not really stupid, (I was running, something went 'pop', and it hurt a lot) but it did involve a long (5 miles??) hike back to the car. And I just now decided that might be connected to the pain in the knee that I started to get last year. But I think my stupidest injury would have to be riding into a wall. Even if it didn't _really_ hurt me. But then, I grew up with the Master of stupid injuries, and I never managed to hurt myself as dramatically and stupidly as he did.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 1999

I have so many battle scars! So many accidents! So many injuries! The first was when I was a baby and just learning to walk; I fell into one of those old metal radiators and split my skull open (not fun, though I'm glad I don't remember the trauma). I got older and as I was running across the street one day, got my foot stuck in a storm drain in the curb and fell right on top of a rusty jagged water pipe sticking out of the ground. It tore my knee up and I had to have it sewn back together, nerves, muscle and all. (this scar is UGLY!) Some time later I was at a house warming party and being the hyper child that I was, was jumping around this table in the basement (where the homeowner sent us kids to play!). Well, "Mr. Responsible Homeowner" didn't bother warning us kids in advance to avoid the huge butcher block table because it wasn't nailed down or secure, alas leaving it to fall (all 12 inches thick and hundreds of lbs.) on to my fragile shins. CRACK! Both my legs cracked. That was truly frightening, not being able to feel/move your legs at all, yet being conscious enough to know it. *shudder*. I wore casts from my toes to my waist for a year. I underwent much physical therapy and had to be taught how to walk, crawl etc. all over again. I hated going out in public because I would be standing there and all of a sudden, my legs would give out and I'd just fall right over. People laughed at me. I hated it. At first I was bothered by all of my scars but I've learned to accept them as memories and remembrances of how to avoid childhood accidents. (Watch your toddlers when they're learning to walk, teach your children not to run up curbs, and warn kids in advance of possible safety hazards in areas that they play. That or monitor them closely)

-- Anonymous, August 02, 1999

Stupid? Y'all don't know from stupid. Did you know that you can land yourself in a wheelchair for three months...grocery shopping?? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you can!

Okay, not actually during the shopping part, during the 'remove bags from floor of car' part. During January, with just enough frost and ice to make you think there isn't any. Slip slightly. Watch part of leg go *in* the car, while the remainder goes *under* the car.

Snap. Crack. Pop.

Scream, wail, and holler for help. Tell nice neighbor man not to call 911, but...yeah, a blanket would be nice. Tell fiance not to call 911, but move please so I don't puke on you. Note that they call 911 anyway, but think you don't much care as you pass out. Spend entire ambulance ride complaining that somebody needs to put the groceries up or they'll spoil.

Dx: Complete rupture of quad tendon, complete rupture of MCL, badly sprained ACL, fractured patella.

Three months in a wheelchair, many months of physical therapy, a whole new appreciation for what those handicapped accessibility laws are about, and (two years later) the limp is almost gone!! Hey, I can even climb stairs again!!

Bonus: I can predict the weather with my joints and I'm not even 30 yet! Loo

-- Anonymous, August 02, 1999

When I was in college, I was the manager of the on-campus coffeehouse. We had jazz, open mike nights, folk singers, and the like.

I also hate to wear shoes.

Both of these facts are important.

I was at the coffeehouse, and things were in full swing. For some reason that I no longer recall, one of my staff people put an extra coffeemaker on the same circuit as the other coffeemaker. Yup, blew the fuse. The fuse box was located in the hallway behind a fullsized metal door that you had to open with a key and lift off the wall.

Know where I'm going with this?

Yes, I dropped that door on my foot. On my bare foot. Broke a few toes and had to be carted off to the emergency room in the back of a campus cruiser.

The worst part? At a prime time to let loose with a string of obscenities, all I said was "ouch."

-- Anonymous, August 02, 1999

The clumsiness that led to this accident was not my own, but my husband's. The Sunday after Thanksgiving of 1997, we were in the tiny kitchen in the apartment we then lived in. It is a tradition since we've been together that on Sundays we make a breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuits, hash browns, and sometimes my husband makes his own homemade gravy. We were standing at the stove, I stirring the hash browns, he stirring his gravy (which at that point was only flour and boiling oil). Vigorously, he stirred. So vigorously, in fact, that a nice-sized blop of boiling oil-flour went flying. Obliviously, I flipped hash browns. "Ooops, watch out," he said calmly at the very same moment that I realized there was an odd, sizzling pain on my right foot. When it occurred to me that the top of my foot was, in fact, frying, I responded by running around in a circle and screaming "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" My husband, trying to be helpful, bent down and wiped the sizzling oil from my foot, removing the unimportant layer of skin covering my nerves and stuff. Finally, I ran to the bathroom and thrust my foot under cold water. We spent 6 hours at the hospital (there was a big bus accident right before we arrived, and everyone hurt in that accident had to be seen first), and I got to live through the lovely experience of being shot up with Demerol and having the skin cut away from my foot. It was about 6 weeks before I walked normally and without pain. I still have a nasty scar, too.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 1999

The only stitches in my body, are on my right foot, second toe from the right.

These occurred as a result of a sudden fit of anger, as I stomped around the pool while away at dance camp, circa 1984-85.

Some kids had just made fun of me in the pool and I jumped out and stalked all the way around, and caught my foot on an ill-fitting grate laid over the drainage trench that went all the way around the rectangle.

I felt a slight scratch, but didn't think anything of it and continued on my merry way. A bunch of the other girls from the group were sitting against the wall chatting and I steered towards them, abently thinking that the floor in here was awfully dirty as I noticed the brownish stains on the tile.

It wasn't until I sat down and looked at my uptruned feet that I noticed the sickeningly thick gush of blood streaming from my foot.

In a tiny voice, I tried to get the attention of the oldest girl there -- we were without an adult supervisor that afternoon and Nancy had been put in charge.

It took me a couple of tries to talk loudly enough, but finally she noticed me and I pointed helplessly at my foot. She turned green, but had enough presence of mind to go get the lifeguard, who came running, took one look at my foot, scooped me up into his big brawny arms and took me to the infirmary, where they slapped a wad of gauze onto the cut to stem the bleeding and then made a quick call to a local doctor's office.

The camp supervisors were also called and they came zooming over in their little car. I was loaded into the front seat and just a few moments later, a kindly young doctor was spraying my foot with something very cold to numb the skin and stitching me up.

I was terrified and held my dance instructor's hand so tightly during the whole thing that she had a mark from where her wedding ring had dug into her finger.

I obviously, coudln't dance for the rest of the trip and I wasn't allowed to get my foot wet, so I had to take my baths with a stool in the tub for me to put my foot up on while I washed.

Two weeks later the stitches finally came out and I was as good as new, except that the top 1/16th of an inch of my littlest toe was missing, leaving my little toes different shapes, and a slight pucker in my fourth toe where the stiches were.

All that, for two tiny little stitches, because I got mad at some kids who made fun of me.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 1999

I broke my ankle during my first ever game of... hacky sack. Yes, that is how un-coordinated I am. I am not partial to sports, and hacky sack in particular annoys me beyond words, so I was really being generous to play. It was such an ignominious way to break an ankle:

FRIEND: So how did you break your ankle? IAN: Um... hacky sack. FRIEND: (spontaneous laughter)

FRIEND 2: So how did you break your ankle? IAN: Um... camping. FRIEND 2: Oh.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

I broke the bridge of my nose (between my eyes). I was on a ladder cutting steel wires for Wysteria vines to run along. It dawned on me that one piece of this wire could easily take out both of my eye balls so I got down and got some eye protection. This turned out to be a good idea considering what happened next.

I came back wearing my goggles and moved the ladder forgetting that I left the heavy steel clippers at the top of the ladder. I looked up just in time to see those puppies coming down on me POW right between the eyes, just below the nose bridge of the goggles. It's funny how a bonk on the nose can make you stumble around like you just hit your head. Anyway an X-ray showed I cracked a bone but nothing that a lot of natural swelling wouldn't push back together.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

Yikes, these are giving me the willies just to read about!

I've never broken a bone. The most serious injury I've had happened when I was walking to my car carrying my cat in her carrier after a vet visit. I tripped on the paving and went down, unable to catch myself because my hands were full. I landed on some bricks and cut my leg open just below my kneecap. A friendly samaritan drove me to the emrgency room in her Mercedes.

I was afraid they wouldn't let me bring the cat, and another passer- by offered to let her stay in his store overnight, but I decided to take a chance. Of course everyone in the emergency room thought it was cute that I had a cat with me and wanted to peek into the box to see what she looked like. She wasn't hurt, just shaken up, I guess.

I got a friend to come retrieve her while I waited to be stitched up. Ten years later, I have an ugly scar that gets a lot of questions but no permanant damage. I was lucky not to cut tendons or anything but flesh.

My knees are a mass of ruination otherwise, but that's because of fencing and Morris dancing.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999

I'm constantly tripping and bumping into things, which, while hardly consistent with the quietly sophisticated persona I try to maintain, has never resulted in any injury as horrific as the ones described here (usually just a lot of muffled guffaws from the entourage). However, last fall I did something truly idiotic: I managed to open a door into myself. At my place of employment, a magnetic pass must be used to enter the office. Usually the pass takes a second or two to work. But one night, it worked instantly, as I pulled on the door without really expecting it to open. I struck myself in the head. It left a bruise. The next day I noticed twinges of pain when I turned my head. I tried to massage and stretch what I assumed were "kinks" in my neck muscles. The day after that, I really couldn't turn my head much at all without feeling shooting neck pain. And the day after that, I couldn't get out of bed without weeping. Apparently the sudden blow had caused some sort of muscle spasms, and "stretching" the muscles had just made them worse. A few days with a neck brace, muscle relaxants, and plenty of codeine healed me. (But yes, the head injury could explain why sometimes I'm a little, er, testy.) So, does anyone have any ideas about how to explain a stupid injury in a way that provokes sympathy rather than ridicule?

-Jen

-- Anonymous, August 05, 1999

i have six nasty parallel scars on my right arm from a theatre accident. we were putting up walls for a set, and a friend tried to hand an (unplugged) circular saw over the top of the wall to me. i mishandled it and the teeth ripped right down the inside of my arm. it was dramatic. i bled all over.

i also ran my bike into the back of a parked car when i was in the 7th grade, jammed my shoulder diving head first into first base playing softball in 10th, and burned the hell out of the top of my right hand last week while reaching into the industrial strength toaster at work to retrieve a stuck bagel.

i have LOTS of scars. i love them.

-- Anonymous, August 06, 1999

My funniest injury was a couple of years ago, 4 to be exact, when I was horseing around with my son. We were sparring and I swung at him without unplanting my right foot. I rotated right off the tibial plateau. OOWEE. The crunching going on sounded like rice crispies at a convention. I went to my HMO because they wouldn't let me go to the hospital. The doctor there sais "it's just a bad sprain!" I insisted it was fractured, after all it was MY leg not his. Sure enough, the x-rays showed it, the doc appoligized and I spen 4 months in a cast from hip to toe, talk about runing your life.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

The time: 1987, 3rd grade.

The place: The jungle gym.

The scenario: Happy 8-year-old Maggie is sitting on top of the jungle gym, dangling her legs. Stupid 10-year-old Josh (who was still in third grade) comes along and decides it would be fun to hang on Maggie's legs as if they were part of the jungle gym. Josh, being a few pounds heavier than Maggie, pulls her off the top of the jungle gym. On the way down, Maggie's chin connects with a bar, resulting in her bottom jaw being snapped forcefully closed into her top jaw, resulting in her two front teeth (already loose) being knocked out of her head.

Happy Maggie turns into Homocidal Maggie, and proceeds to punch Stupid, Idiotic, Brainless, Inbred Josh in the face. Dumb Tattletale Josh runs off, holding his cheek and crying to the teacher that Maggie punched him. Meanwhile, Maggie is still standing under the jungle gym with blood running down her face and onto her brand-new reversible pink and green jacket with puffy hearts on it that her mom just bought! and two teeth in her hand.

Maggie gets sent to the principal's office after she's sent to the nurse.

Thank goodness Loser, Lowlife, Jobless Josh is in jail now for improper relations with a minor.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

About a year and a half ago, I was walking up the stairs to my apartment, and I dropped my keys. No big deal, right? I stooped down to pick them up, and heard a CRACK! and fell down -- down the stairs, backward. There was a wall four steps behind me, which broke my fall, but my right leg was bent at a decidedly unnatural angle. My kneecap had popped right out of place, sideways. Hurt like you wouldn't believe. I screamed, and right before I fainted I saw my very pregnant neighbor racing up the stairs to help. An ambulance was called, and since I couldn't move my leg the paramedics had to carry me down the stairs on this folding-chair contraption. They had sent two fire trucks with the ambulance, for no apparent reason. There was a huge crowd of neighbors standing around my front steps to watch. I got a quack doctor who told me not to walk on my right leg for six weeks, but didn't want to give me a brace or crutches. My fiance talked him into giving me both. Shortly after that healed, I decided it would be a good idea to carry the laundry down the slippery back staircase to the basement while wearing my big, floppy Scooby-Doo slippers. I slipped, and the laundry and I crashed down -- I had a bruise shaped like a stair riser on my ass for months.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 1999

I've had my share of bumps and bruises in my time, all of them quite stupid. But an incident when I was in fourth grade stood out in regrads to a classmate named Veronica. Albeit minor, nobody in our class expected somebody as bright as her to have this happen.

During recess, Veronica was jumping rope, then went to the monkey bar to scale the top bar. She loosely wrapped her jumprope to the top bar and started shimmying up the side so she could sit on the top. But she took a misstep and caught herself in her jumprope. She then lost her grip.

Many of the kids heard the faint sounds of Veronica calling for help. As they turned to the monkey bars, they saw Veronica dangling by one foot!

Many of the girls nearby ran to get Veronica down and others kept us boys at bay because in her upside-down position, Veronica's skirt flipped over and showed her panties. Veronica was okay, save for a bruise and rope burn to her ankle.

-- Anonymous, March 29, 2001

Ouch! Reading all these answers makes me cringe! At least my worst accident was nice and clean - no bleeding or legs sticking out at funny angles. Here it is:

On a car trip, everyone is talking about how they broke their bones, and here I am, feeling left out because I've never broken anything. We get to our destination. There's a rope swing, tied to a tree that is positioned on the edge of a small cliff. When the tide is up, one could swing out over the edge of the cliff and let go of the rope and fall into the water. But the tide is low, so there is no water below. We try the swing anyway. My turn. I don't grip it right, and as I swing out over the edge of the cliff, I slip and fall off. Over the edge. Onto a driftwood log below. I hear funny crunching noises and lay still for a moment. Everyone thinks I'm dead and panicks until I sit up and say, "Boy, does my ass hurt." To make a long story short, I told them it was probably just bruised, and then discovered I couldn't walk. Luckily, a friend had a cell phone to call in some help. At the hospital they discovered my femur and pelvis were badly fractured in 4 different places. I discovered that broken bones and wheelchairs are not fun. The End.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

One day, back in Junior High, I sneezed as I was walking down some stairs at schools.

I lost my balance and fell all the way down the stairs. I pulled some muscle in my back pretty badly that stills gets tender from time- to-time.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Once, when I was young and stupid (a week ago), I was wearing sandals with heels. Not so high heels. The kinds of heels that only the muscularly retarded could not handle. You know, like me.

So I was walking down the sidewalk in soho, only very slightly tipsy, but very happy. I did a little hooray, I'm happy! walk-skip, my ankle wobbled, and began to tip me over the side. I caught myself by wrenching my entire body back around the other way, lost my balance entirely, and crash-landed on my butt, on one of those raised metal- sheathed stoops that so litter the streets of soho.

Karen said "Ha! You're not so happy anymore, are you! Ha!" After she said "oh man, are you okay?"

And it was very funny. It wasn't so bad. I ended up sitting. My ankle was fine, but goddamn, my elbow still fucking hurts.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001