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.
Haha, isn’t that the beat feeling. Especially if you’re exercising. Happens too often.
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 :)
If that is “one of” and not “clearly” the dumbest thing you’ve ever done, I’d love to hear some of the others.
You are LUCKY. Mark your eyedrops-looking super glue so you don’t go blind next time.
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 don’t seem to learn.
Every single time.
One time the surface I smashed my knuckles into was … my face! Double ouch.
I’ve done this! Except it was the handle of a pry bar hitting my face.
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 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.
I think you win the thread. Glad you’re still with us. Electricity scares the crap out of me.
Seriously, I don’t do anything with electricity anymore. I’ll gladly pay up to hire someone.
My most recent adventure involved my HVAC unit repeatedly blowing two 50 amp breakers on a subpanel.
Turns out cat hair somehow covered the coil an blew the breakers. I’ve presented the cat with the invoice. But no, I’m not getting near anything with that much juice.
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.
For those who have never scratched their cornea I should add that it is the of the most painful injuries.
I was literally rolled in a ball wanting to die when it happened to me. I went to hospital to get it looked at (ha, eye pun!) and when the doc put some eye drops in to numb it I practically gibbered my gratitude.
Turns out you have to let it heal by itself and the eye drops works be wearing of in an hour or so. 3 days off work so I could lie on a sofa with my eyes closed. Fun times.
Jesus fucking christ. Have to read up on what not to microwave.
Fish
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!
oof, that sucks… better than an echidna hole though, I guess!
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 broke my toe by dropping a medical kit tin on it.
Hey, at least you had some supplies handy to handle it!
I mean, at least you were prepared.
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!
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.
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
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.
Oh the number of times I’ve burned myself during a nozzle change on my 3D printers, lol.
I just got a burn testing whether the nozzle was hot. I’d stupidly touched it and didn’t feel anything so I touched it again and was rewarded by a 190C nozzle jamming into the space between my finger and finger nail and searing the skin.