I guess the first one that I had, although I do not remember it, was the typical, mostly red-neck-sounding injury: It involved a pony in the yard, a baby carriage in the yard, the pony being tied to a pin, and the tether flipping the thing when it got spooked. Apparently I was ok. Apparently I was ok. Apparently I was ok.
(LOL)
At four years old, I tripped and quite literally smashed my bottom lip/chin/teeth into a coffee table. Lip was rebuilt, spent time in the hospital for that one. Still have an unconscious pout because of it.
At five, I got banged up pretty good when I lost control of a riding lawnmower. Yes, I could drive a mower at the age of five. There is a drainage ditch behind my parents’ house – about 2 metres deep. It was dry at the time, and I went sailing down the side and got pinned under it. Kinda happy it shut off, and didn’t start on fire. Could have died at five years old. LOL
This is of course not about little things – all of the scraped knees, chinked fingers, barked shins.
At nine, well, I was eight – I had my ninth b-day in the hospital – my appendix blew up. The stupid doctor that was covering for our normal GP (remember – I was EIGHT years old) gave me a list of instructions and said, “if it gets worse, give us a call”. Apparently, that was only told to me. 3 days of not being able to move from the couch, eat, drink, sleep … they took me to the hospital and as a little 8-year-old kid, I had an 11-inch scar. I remember measuring it, and back then, we were still using that “Imperial” measuring system. I spent two weeks in Intensive care, then another 6 days in paediatrics. My second day in the ward was my ninth birthday. Almost didn’t make nine years old.
**Shortly after getting home, I was playing outside (still had the giant bandages over this giant incision, and still had stitches) and tripped, landing in a thudding faceplant. Thought for SURE I blew my abdomen open … but no, all was cool.
**From the time I was a baby, until I was 8, I used to get so sick – which doctors blamed on my toncils. I got fevers that topped 103/104 to the point of dehydration, hallucenation, blackouts. After getting my appendix removed, I never had that problem again.
At ten – I had my 10th b-day in a house trailer because we were rebuilding the house (more than doubled the size of it – there were five of us in total now, with my 6-year-old brother, and 3-year-old sister). We were unloading large stones (on the order of 25 to 40 pounds each) and this idiot girlfriend of one of my uncles dropped a good sized-rock on another good-sized rock … which I happened to be picking up at the time. It landed on my right-hand pinky-finger and ring finger, not quite breaking the bones, but hard enough to forcibly eject both fingernails. My uncle had to restrain me from punching her.
Eleven – a whole year – but the two things I remember are accidentally over-extending a bow, and having the satellite (four-bladed, pointed) tip of an arrow just nicely insert itself into my left wrist and getting bitten by a spider in the left hand when cutting the grass at my aunt’s house, down by the lake.
Had I let go of the bowstring, I would have driven the arrow through my wrist: Had I let go of the bow, no idea. So, I used all of my brute-Jethro force to pull back on the bowstring and pull the friggin thing out of my wrist. Like most of the things I have mentioned – I still have the scar for that one.
The spider bite – kinda new thing – never happened before. I am allergic. Didn’t know that. In fact, after a few other encounters, I found out that even the most common spiders can kill me. My hand actually swelled up to the point where my fingers all touched. I actually could not move them. (Later on, twice, spider bites nearly made me “drown in my own lungs” do to allergic reactions.)
When I was 12, we were playing outside in the Winter – almost Spring – and when crossing that aforementioned ditch (snow-covered at the time) I went through! Had one of the guys I was with not hooked me with a hockey stick, I would have not only drowned, but been carried away by a surprising current in unexpectedly deep, cold water. It was only about 100 yards to the house, but that hypothermic walk, after being nearly drowned, it might have well been 100 kilometres. How many near-death accidents is that so far?
**That was the same year that we accidentally burned down the barn. Me and my neighbour burned down his barn – doing typical kid stuff – and forgetting to keep an eye on that kid stuff. The thing is, we were off playing way far away from home – and my parents and his thought we were still in there. It was NOT a pretty site. Wasn’t much fun gettin’ punished for that one, either. LOL.
When I was lucky 13, I started to work for area farmers during the summer. I picked cucumbers for a farmer that had converted the “sit down” stations into “lay down” stations. I didn’t actually like doing it that way (we had a tomato harvester that had 7 seats, so I was able to pick vegetables that way). Anyway, 2 months of that ended up really hurting my left knee. That was aggrevated later on with a few accidents, and eventually I had to have a “lateral release” done arthroscopically when I was 18. That same farmer also had pigs. Those porcine demons attacked me a few times.
Fourteen. Let’s see. Burned my right wrist quite badly with roofing tar. Cut my left thumb to the bone when doing body work on a friend’s Mustang (Sixty-Four And-A-Half, Convertible, Pony, 289, 3-Speed). Hacked my right ankle (ya, coulda cut my foot off) with a chainsaw when cleaning brush from a fencerow.
Fifteen … Broke both of my thumbs. One, wrestling around in a friend’s living room, when he landed on my hand; the other, walking. Ya. I was simply walking out of my parents’ house, my hand on the deck railing. Got to the stairs, and jammed my thumb SO HARD I cracked it. Shut up. All of you.
Sixteen. Hmm… Feeding pigs (I hate them) I got hit in the head with an auger on a Mix-All. Knocked me out while feeding them. Woke up to getting stomped and bitten by them. Did I mention I hate them?
Jump to Eighteen. Got my knee fixed around my birthday (wtf – I hate my birthday now, too) and my first action, when I got home, it to walk off my crutches. That time – I WISH I had died. LOL. A few months later, I had all four wisdom teeth pulled. Contrary to popular belief, my mouth is actually not big enough. I had two hard impacted and two soft-impacted teeth. Got them pulled under a local. Well … not “A” local. He had to give me EIGHTEEN F’ING NEEDLES IN MY MOUTH!!! The only two that still make my eyes water are the two that are in the roof of your mouth. Those hurt like hell.
I was crossing the road as a pedestrian when I had not only the right-of-way, but an actual crossing light. In order to beat the oncoming traffic, the driver of a shitty green station wagon lurched forward into me.
Nineteen, my girlfriend at the time, who decided to sit beside me as I lay on my couch brought her knee up, nailing the glass I was drinking from (as I was drinking from it) and broke one of my front teeth.
Let’s go now to 1989. Working for GMD. I wanted to see a panel that we had to do stuff with in a CN Locomotive. I was hurrying to see it because my co-worker was about to close it. CN Locomotives are not “open” on the body – they have the walkways long them inside. This is likely for inclement weather. SO, as I rush up to see this panel, I also pre-emptively tilt my head. Then, I find myself on my knees against the wall. I had actually hit (AND BENT) a 2 inch by 1/4 inch spar for the outside wall with my forehead. Yes, there is still a dent in my skull. I think they fixed the one on the locomotive, though. LOL. Had a good concussion – had to stay up for about 24 hours after that so … lol … I didn’t die.
Now, in February 1990, I was working with some of the largest cables in a locomotive – AWG “0000″. I slipped while placing one, and my hand flew into the back of the distribution box. My knuckles met the metal, and my hand folded down so quickly and violently that my thumb actually hit my forearm.
*waits for you to actually try to touch your thumb to your forearm*
So, that little event actually broke the scafoid (not to mention really messed up the tendons, caused carpel-tunnel syndrome) and after trying to work like that for about 3 weeks, I was off on WSIB (comp) until they sent me to school to become a computer programmer. I was off work for about 14 straight months. I actually lost the use of my left hand for a lot of that time, it atrophied, had to start learning to use it again. I still eat with my left, but my writing with both hands is just atrocious.
I have a scar on my cheek from leftover gravy, which was heated a little too quickly after one Easter. Another Easter I stubbed my toe so badly walking out of my bedroom in the morning I thought I broke it, it bled so much. I love Thanksgiving just as much, having once cut my finger with my butcher knifes hacking an abnormally tough turnip (again, to the bone … probably have a permanent nick in it). Burned my arm taking a gigantic turkey out of the oven.
A little over a year ago, I was opening a child’s toy. Using the scissors on a funny angle, cutting something with a wire core (didn’t know it until too late), I broke through the wire, and somehow caught most of the pad of my pinky finger inside the scissors. Clean cut (even took pics) of my almost incising half of a fingerprint.
I know there is more. I am just looking at the scars to see what I have missed. LOL.
I just remembered – I have two fingers on my left hand, the back of both, around the first knuckle, which are quite shiny. This was a result of one of my short-order cooking jobs. I have been horrifically sunburned once (which, LOL, was on my 12th BIRTHDAY) which I could not walk for 3 days. I have been burned by 750 C roofing tar. That took a month to heal and I still have scars. However … those two fingers were scalded by steam from a roasting pan. That was the most intense, lingering pain I have ever felt (and I am no stranger to pain, as you can see).
I have a scar on the bottom of my right foot, I got that walking barefoot through that creek I mentioned, behind my parents’ house. Very stupid, I know. I got a slice in the sole of my foot about 8 to 10 cm long. Been bitten and clawed by dogs, cats, snakes, chickens, cows, sheep (been run into by sheep, too), goats (same as sheep). Been stung by bees, wasps, hornets. Snakes, flying insects … no allergic reaction to them. Just friggin spiders.
I once had to go to the hospital to have a metal sliver taken out of my sclera. You know, the white part of the eye. They used this nasty dye to see it, and a magnet and tweezers to get it out. LOL, my father tried to do it with a magnetic screwdriver for about 15 minutes when I had had enough and told him to take me to the hospital (was about 15 years old then).
If I think of anything else…
London Speak