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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
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    Weirdest self-induced accident?

    Threw an old pair of pants into a fire today. Minute later the pants blew up, shooting a burning lighter to my groins.
    Oops.

    That got me thinking about weird incidents and injuries one have managed to collect.

    So, I'll start with my personal best: KO by crowbar...in a closet.

    Few years back renovated the house and was tearing down basically everything. Particularly difficult was a corner with several small spaces, in this case, a closet inside a closet. Things had been ridiculously overbuilt in the bygone era and I was struggling inside a 2x3foot closet with a 2x4" that was nailed to the roof that refused all attacks. Took a crowbar, went inside the closet (inside the closet) and started wrestling. As the 2x4 was high in the ceiling I had to stand on a small chair forced me into a challenged position, crowbar high above me. Decided to go all in on that piece of wood and...

    Wife happened to walk by the scene, seeing only the outer closet door, hearing muffled sounds of struggle inside.
    Suddenly a bang, I come exploding out of the inner closet in a cloud of debris, into the outer closet door, taking that off the hinges, landing on top of that on my knees, with perfect oriental pose. Accordingly to the legend I said "uuuuzzzhh" while bending down, bleeding from the imprint of a crowbar.

    Apparently, I had managed to hit myself with the crowbar in the back off my head in that enclosed 2x3´ space.

    Friend came by the next day, took a look at the bloodied scene, measured things up and asked: " Are you sure that your wife didn't try to top you off? It is virtually impossible to hit yourself in the back of your head in that space. It just is impossible."
    Hmm...



    So, knowing that maggots are relatively accident prone by nature, what is your personal best.
    I have a hunch that my incident wont make the Top 10...

    The floggings will continue until morale improves.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
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    2,624
    I think I've blocked mine out. I'll do the best to recollect a few of them.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
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    northern BC
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    Back in the day my dad and his hunting buddy shot a couple of moose ( its canada eh? ) they were hoisting the 1st moose up with a block n tackle when the rope broke,

    he fell backwards on the 2nd moose and was gored in the calf ,

    a pretty nasty hole in his leg that took a long time to heal
    Lee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    11,146
    also not a top 10 but here goes

    I was working on soffit at the back of a 3 story house with walkout basement. Get to the top of the ladder and I'm not happy with the stability.

    So being the genius that I am I take my hard hat off and set it on the ladder shelf and climb down the ladder to the bottom.

    I bend over..adjust the ladder legs a bit..give it a little shake...yep, now I'm happier with my placement.

    Look up to see how the top is doing.....hard hat was dislodged by me shaking the ladder and is now descending at mach 3 right into my teeth. Chipped the bottom of one of my front teeth off.

    Bossman asks, after I visit the dentist, if I wanted to file a claim for the costs. I declined - I'm not writing that report up.

  5. #5
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    Jan 2016
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    Greg_o
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    I find that pants are reusable and can be washed between uses. You don't generally need to dispose of them or.. throw them into a fire?!

  6. #6
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    Feb 2009
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    On Vacation for the Duration
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    14,373
    Drilling into my palm through a plastic bottle cap that I was holding in my fingers comes to mind.
    A few people feel the rain. Most people just get wet.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
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    Where bankers' bankers breed
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    2,662
    Accidentally peed on an electric fence. And yes the electricity shoots right up the stream.
    Gimme five, I'm still alive!
    Ain't no luck, I learned to duck!

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
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    The "unsmart things done" thread is full of these stories.
    Quote Originally Posted by powder11 View Post
    if you have to resort to taking advice from the nitwits on this forum, then you're doomed.

  9. #9
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    Jan 2016
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    Greg_o
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    Dropped a brand new blade (lenox gold, complete with the heavy utility knife. These cut through carpet really easily) into my calf. Not a big cut but the amount of blood I lost had my so worried I was googling fastest methods of regaining blood. When I saw the results (eat kale, liver, asparagus etc) I just stuck to beer.

    This is obviously really minor but it was a day after completing a ~6 week project that saw two large rooms completely refinished. This included ripping up a wood floor that was bonded to a concrete floor so it would only come up in splintery bits. New tile in one room, new wood floor in another. Paint, new doors, trim etc.

    Did that main project without getting a scratch. Then dumbass me decides to make cat furniture out of spare bits of carpet and left over wood when I drop the knife into my leg.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
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    9,855
    Buried a chisel in my thigh while hacking away at a sturgeon skull to get it's pituitary/hypophysis gland to make other sturgeon horny. Barely bled at all, even though I could see bone. Wasn't able to get it cleaned and sutured for 4+ hours due to being out on the water and knee deep in fish with pituitaries waiting for removal.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
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    50 miles E of Paradise
    Posts
    15,568

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    northern BC
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    30,881
    Hanging out at the parts counter wasting time with a few other when I smell smoke, so the parts manager checks the copier cuz they sometime catch fire

    then I realize it was me,

    I had a couple of rechargable nicad AAA's in my suit jacket pocket which have a lot of juice so when they shorted on my car keys the lining of the suit jacket started to smoulder not a bunch but enought to smell like a fire

    Recieved a call from the safety guy & after a shot interview became the subject of an IBM wide safety bulletin
    Lee Lau - xxx-er is the laziest Asian canuck I know

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
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    I can still smell Poutine.
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    24,506
    Quote Originally Posted by XXX-er View Post
    Hanging out at the parts counter wasting time with a few other when I smell smoke, so the parts manager checks the copier cuz they sometime catch fire

    then I realize it was me,

    I had a couple of rechargable nicad AAA's in my suit jacket pocket which have a lot of juice so when they shorted on my car keys the lining of the suit jacket started to smoulder not a bunch but enought to smell like a fire

    Recieved a call from the safety guy & after a shot interview became the subject of an IBM wide safety bulletin
    It is always a high honor to be the reason for a rule, warning, bulletin, etc.

  14. #14
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    Sep 2004
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  15. #15
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
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    3,896
    Was a teenager doing cable preacher curls in my parents garage, on one of those small at home gyms. Somehow the carabiner connecting the bar to the cable broke and i slammed the bar into my forehead. my eybrow split wide open and i had a nice stream of blood coming down the side of my face. The gash was about half the length of my eyebrow. My parents were unnervingly very unconcerned about it when i stumbled in and explained that i hit myself in the face doing bicep curls. They didnt even offer to take me to get stiches, my mom just threw me a box of butterfly bandages. I was 13.

    Decades later, im still OCD about triple checking carabiners in my local gym.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
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    2,656
    Probably not top 10, but in my 20s (of course) I opened a beer by tapping it on a fence post and the cap shot off and scored a direct hit on my eye.

    I saw an ophthalmologist the next day who told me "Yeah, you probably got punched in the eye, right? No way what I'm looking at happened the way you described. Anyway, you were bleeding behind your eyeball, and if you got enough blood built up back there, it would put pressure on your optic nerve and kill it. Fortunately it stopped bleeding though. Don't do anything to raise your blood pressure for a month, OK?" My vision in that eye was very fuzzy/poor for a few weeks, and I saw floaters / weird artifacts for a long time after that, but it eventually went back to normal.

  17. #17
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    Jan 2009
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    SLC burbs
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    My list is too long to even try to sort through but an incident last fall is worth mentioning: after pruning the chokecherry tree and saving the biggest branches for firewood I started loading the green trash can with the smaller branches. After 20 minutes of carefully breaking them so they wouldn't take too much room I got tired of it and started slamming armfuls of long branches in there then pushing them in with a rake. When the trash got full I climbed in and jumped on the branches to compact them. On the last round of loading/compacting one of my feet punched through a layer of branches in the corner and sank. It threw me off balance and I took a slow-motion fall with 1 leg buried to the knee in the can. I managed to curl up a bit so when I landed in the wheehbarrow next to the can I just slammed in the flat bottom instead of braking myself on the edge. The wheelbarrow fell to its side, I hit the ground, and the trash can fell on my other leg and dumped a bunch of branches on me for good measure. Once I extracted myself from the wreck I looked up to see Ms Boissal barely holding her shit together, she'd been calling me for a few minutes but I had really good noise cancelling headphones on. She said she could see the incident coming from a mile away and almost ran in to get her phone and document...

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    1,951
    Ah the old Exploding Pants routine.

    In college, I would drunkenly spray a little Zippo fluid on my hand and light it on fire then wave it out to impress girls (duh).

    Got a little too drunk and put a little too much fluid on and lit it up, couldn’t get it out out, burned all the skin off my hands. Luckily lighter fluid burns low so just 2nd degree burns, but it was several months before I could use my “me-time” hand again. Got lucky.

  19. #19
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    Jan 2008
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    truckee
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    23,111
    Not actually self induced--but my neighbor borrowed a shovel. She returned it by leaning it against the front door. Got me in the face. No damage done.
    And an accident I took care of--drunk driving down I80 west of sacramento, loses control in the far right lane, swerves across 3 lanes of traffic without getting hit, through the median and across another 4 lanes of traffic without getting hit, goes off the road, rolls a couple of times and comes to a stop. Without a scratch on him. The homeless guy sleeping under the oleanders on the median he ran over wasn't so lucky. Broke both femurs, both tibias, both fibulas. Kept saying "What happened, what happened?"

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
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    I can still smell Poutine.
    Posts
    24,506
    Not sure if I have told this story here before. It's also one of my first memories. When I was about 3 I placed an empty 5 gallon metal paint bucket on the the 2nd step from the top so that I could reach some shiny object. The paint bucket was my chair and stool. My parents had painted it red and my mom made a nice blue cushion for it. I used it for everything and would lug it all over the house. This was back when such things were made from metal and were sturdy.

    I grew up in an old farmhouse that my parents never finished renovating. It was torn apart in various ways until we sold the property 30 years later. The upstairs had been partially renovated into one big room. The ceiling was sloped and so the edges, especially next to the stairwell, were used for storage. 3 yo me spied something shiny in a pile of tools and stuff and wanted a closer look.

    Having lugged it over and placed it, I triumphantly climbed on and reached for the object. Of course the paint bucket was wider than the steps. Victory was snatched from me. I still remember the sun coming through the windows illuminating some dust I had kicked up on my way to the stairs. And then i went down the stairs. The bucket and I took turns being on top. All. The. Way. Down.

    I am sure my mom thought I was a goner. The noise must have been horrible. Thumping and clanging all the way down. When I hit the closed and latched door at the bottom, it popped open and I fell down the last step to the floor with a mighty crash on the floor and then the metal bucket bouncing a few times and smacking the wall. Again, I remember sunlight. And my mom freaking out. I don't remember any blood, broken bones, or medical attention.

    I never saw the shiny object again. I searched for it for a few years. I have no clue what it was.

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
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    A LSD Steakhouse somewhere in the Wasatch
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    13,234
    Quote Originally Posted by Boissal View Post
    My list is too long to even try to sort through but an incident last fall is worth mentioning: after pruning the chokecherry tree and saving the biggest branches for firewood I started loading the green trash can with the smaller branches. After 20 minutes of carefully breaking them so they wouldn't take too much room I got tired of it and started slamming armfuls of long branches in there then pushing them in with a rake. When the trash got full I climbed in and jumped on the branches to compact them. On the last round of loading/compacting one of my feet punched through a layer of branches in the corner and sank. It threw me off balance and I took a slow-motion fall with 1 leg buried to the knee in the can. I managed to curl up a bit so when I landed in the wheehbarrow next to the can I just slammed in the flat bottom instead of braking myself on the edge. The wheelbarrow fell to its side, I hit the ground, and the trash can fell on my other leg and dumped a bunch of branches on me for good measure. Once I extracted myself from the wreck I looked up to see Ms Boissal barely holding her shit together, she'd been calling me for a few minutes but I had really good noise cancelling headphones on. She said she could see the incident coming from a mile away and almost ran in to get her phone and document...
    2 drops
    is what we used to say fore the lol
    im sure its in the unsmarts thread
    I haz a metal coffee press now
    don't stir the glass ones with metal hard
    as to not scald the jewels
    "When the child was a child it waited patiently for the first snow and it still does"- Van "The Man" Morrison
    "I find I have already had my reward, in the doing of the thing" - Buzz Holmstrom
    "THIS IS WHAT WE DO"-AML -ski on in eternal peace
    "I have posted in here but haven't read it carefully with my trusty PoliAsshat antenna on."-DipshitDanno

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
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    Denver-ish
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    963
    Closing the very heavy tank commander's hatch of an M1A1 while hauling ass across the Mojave, tank pitched forward, my elbow hit the lip of the hatch and my right wrist/forearm imitated a (very poorly lubricated) piston.

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
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    I can still smell Poutine.
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    24,506
    Quote Originally Posted by Smoova View Post
    Closing the very heavy tank commander's hatch of an M1A1 while hauling ass across the Mojave, tank pitched forward, my elbow hit the lip of the hatch and my right wrist/forearm imitated a (very poorly lubricated) piston.
    Fuck.

  24. #24
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    50 miles E of Paradise
    Posts
    15,568
    Sorry if this is one of the Unsmart Things threads already

    When I was about 6, maybe 8, I got up early to fly a kite my parents gave me. Only string I could find was decorative stuff with some tinsel in it.
    Got out in the wet morning grass and launched my kite.
    Then I hung it over the power line (this is the old days before buried utilities)
    Watched little poofs of blue fire dance down the string
    And explode just in front of my hands with a pretty loud crack
    All of my appendages went numb and I fell backwards
    Don’t know how long I lay there before feeling returned, but it was more than just a minute- remember my clothes were wet from the dew
    Had blisters on each side of every joint on all of my fingers and toes

  25. #25
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
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    I can still smell Poutine.
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    24,506
    Damn. That sounds worse than pissing on the electric fence. Which I did once by accident.

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