I slipped a disk and pinched a nerve in my neck by sitting up to get out of bed.

Fell off a tram on my 16th birthday and sprained my ankle. I didn’t realize, so I went into the local river “for fun” and I conveniently forgot to take my clothes off. So I come home, and the next day everyone thinks I tried to kill myself. I don’t think they believe the real story, even now.

I shattered my ankle, separated my tibia and fibula, and broke a different part of my fibula. All in one moment. How, you ask? By stepping outside. My dog pulled too hard on her leash and I stumbled and twisted my ankle in just the right way. Got a fancy Maisonneuve fracture that had to be surgically fixed.

Slipped disk from sneezing.

Getting old sucks.

-freshman In Collage

• walk downhill to get food from cafeteria
• Winter in Alaska = ice city
• Spontaneous dancing
• Broken wrist.

I broke my toe on a case of ramen noodles.

I was working with my hands on something and socked myself in the nuts. I think I was deburring a piece of hardened steel and the scraper slipped. It wasn’t full wind up and swing but my fist with the scraper had a lot of pressure in and behind it.

I’ve got plenty of scars and this incident didn’t leave one. Not physically. My testicles ache now thinking back on it. Makes me wonder if Mike Tyson ever punched himself in the nuths.

I once torn my left shoulder’s rotator cuff. How? By jumping while extending my right arm to touch the ceiling 🤣

Many, many moons ago. I rode my Big Wheel standing up, no hands, down hill.

Ended up crashing into a fire hydrant. Ouch. At least a broken right arm from what I remember.

I was cutting a cardboard box up with a box cutter, holding the box steady with my off hand while pushing the blade downward through the cardboard. I realized that my hand was below the blade and therefore there was a risk I’d cut myself if the blade suddenly moved more quickly through the cardboard than anticipated. Safety first! So I stopped cutting, leaving the blade in the cardboard, and lifted my hand to grip the cardboard above where I was cutting instead.

Slammed my thumb right into the blade as I moved my hand, peeling a nasty slice of skin off. Took a lot of stitches to tack it back in place, still have a scar from that.

In college, my roommate decided to make jello shots in these little shot glasses we had. He and his buddies finished them off and stacked the empty glasses in the room. Ass of a roommate refused to clean them out, so they sat for a little more than a week, at which point I was sick of them enough to clean them myself.

The jello had crystallized around the rim of the glasses, cementing them together, and as I twisted a couple of them apart the crystallized jello sliced into my hand.

My wife still taunts me sometimes for getting cut by jello.

I was camping as a child, and sitting on my dad’s knee around the camp fire. I tucked my knees and arms into my shirt.
My dad let go of me to scratch his head, and I, trapped within my shirt, rolled off his knee and onto a tree root.

Broke my collar bone.
Had to canoe out of the campsite the next day.

On day 3 of a meth bender, non-stop looking at and Photoshopping porn, paralyzed my ulnar nerve by the way my arm was resting on the armrest. Yes, I sat there that long in the same position. Couldn’t feel my pinkie and ring finger for a couple of years. No, I haven’t done meth in 20 years.

Sliced my forearm open trying to make a small scratch to do a blood brother thing with my gf. My god, I barely got it to stop bleeding. Now I have what looks like a suicide scar. In other news, I was top-tier at sharpening pocket knives back then.

Hit a brick wall, head on, driving my motorcycle drunk, on an unfamiliar street, at night, wearing dark goggles. The bike exploded into fragments, I got a light concussion.

Broke my femur, most crippling injury to date. Knew my motorcycle brakes were far too worn, drove it anyway. Lady slammed her brakes, guy in front of me did same, I tried to do the same, rammed him from behind.

Using a non-locking pocket knife to trim a washer hose. It folded and cut me to the bone, had to have surgery to repair the extensor tendon. Also using a non-locking pocket knife to work on my motorcycle throttle cable, you guessed it, it folded and cut me to the bone. Have had nerve damage in that fingertip since.

Riding my BMX as a kid, decided to try an endo. Slammed the front brakes at speed with predictable results. Knee hit the asphalt to hard it mashed the skin off. Still got the scar, which matches the one on my other knee from swinging over a lava rock.

Got diverticulitis, 3 times, most painful events of my life. Spent years shitting too hard, developed diverticulosis (little tears/pouches in your intestine that catch food and get infected). Surgery fixed it!

Popped a lung after a night of rigorous sex. Yes, I smoked cigarettes and weed. Also, had a lawn service where I inhaled dust all day. Maybe not so much on me though. Doc said it was common among young men and I had two friends blow a lung in those years.

Lately, my feet have been all fucked up from working at Lowe’s (I rage quit BTW). Got some new shoes at the thrift, like walking on clouds. Apparently been wearing a size too small for years.

Bruised/broken my ribs several times, broke my right arm twice, countless broken toes and fingers, and perhaps more than the one concussion described above. At this point in the story I’ve stopped counting scars.

I can keep going. No idea how I survived my 20s without permanent injury or prison time.

Burned my face while breathing fire with Everclear.

i can still see scars from where a plumbers snake designed for a toilet embedded itself in my hand. it was a short snake with a metal sleeve with a slight angle in it for help getting around the toilet trap.

the widened part at the end of the snake got stuck in the sleeve and in an effort to unstick it my friend put tension on the snake while i held the sleeve. well, the snake broke free, and in such a force and fashion that it ripped the sleeve from my hands and in milliseconds had turned and screwed itself into the fleshy part of my palm by my thumb. it was in and out, looking like a loch ness monster photo.

there was still pressure on it and the only reason it stopped was due to the skin being pinched when it got to the snake part that was coiled tightly. we were probably around 12 years old, there was no pain at first because it happened instantaneously, just the pulling on the skin. i yelled out to my parents. “emergency room!” and we walked into the living room. my dad was on the phone and immediately said he had to go and hung up. he then told my friend to start untwisting the snake and the poor guy nearly passed out, weak at the knees, and told my mom he thought she had better do it. he handed it off then booked it outside and ran home.

this is when i experienced the first pain. my mom in her panicked state started to turn the snake clockwise adding more tension and trying to pierce another hole in my palm. i screamed, my dad screamed, as he was on the floor with me stabilizing my hand and the end of the snake. we both screamed out “wrong way!” and my mom just kept saying sorry over and over. she began unscrewing but the skin pinched in the snake was now preventing it from being extracted. eventually there was enough force applied to break free from my skin and I can still remember the feeling of the tip going in and out of my flesh. it didn’t hurt, it was just an odd sensation.

i didn’t know or expect it at the time but the real pain hadn’t begun yet. we drove to the emergency room (called it) and the doctor there had some concerns, primarily that this oily metal that had been in contact with a toilet clog had been inside my body, not once but eleven times. he didn’t want to risk more damage by incising each puncture to debride them, so instead my hand was soaked in a bowl of iodine for a while. then they came back and scrubbed my palm with a toothbrush for what seemed like forever. they repeated this process every 15 minutes for three hours. my palm was nearly scrubbed raw and there was still a little black dot on each wound. i had to grip the bedrail with my other hand while i clenched my teeth in agony every time the nurse came back. it was the most pain i had experienced in my life to that point.

eventually my dad convinced them it was under the skin and they weren’t going to make any more progress and it was time for me to go home. i think i was given some antibiotics and sent on my way. it took about three months for the last black spot to work its way to the surface and now i just have faint white spots and a white line scar where it scratched at the end. that’s been 30 years ago.