I was teaching my kid how to nail while doing one of those Home Depot kids projects that can you bring home. I held it up to show him and nailed too hard with the way I was holding it that the nail went through and pierced my left hand at the base of thumb all the way to the muscle.

I promptly told him, “that’s why the correct way to nail is to put it on the ground to do this and do not hold it like that, now daddy needs to go get a bandage real quick.”

I cleaned it, bandaged it, finished the project, and then went to the doctor just in case because it was fairly deep. 🤣

I once fell asleep with a laptop on my lap that had a horrible heat sink and would basically turn itself off every half hour. My legs were crossed when I fell asleep and my heel was right up against the vent… Woke up with the laptop still on. Confused. And then PAIN. It has used my heel as a heat sink. MASSIVE burn, horrible pain, like four inch blister, still have the scar twenty years later. Had to wear flip flops for like a month shudder

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.

Slipped disk from sneezing.

Getting old sucks.

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 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.

Put a rib out of place by dropping a fire extinguisher on myself. I was carrying it cradled in my arms at chest height, big heavy sucker, when I slipped on icy ground and fell flat on my back. I saw the extinguisher seeming to hover in the air and watched it fall towards me like in slow motion. The thought flashed through my mind that it was going to crush my rib cage and I would die right there. Knocked the wind out of me and for the next month or two it hurt to take a really deep breath. A chiropractor said I had a rib out of place - he did some kind of crunch on me and boom, totally fixed. I’ve never had another stereotypical chiropractor cure like that.

I cut the edges of the mouth lips (rightmost and leftmost zones) while shaving my beard about two months ago, and I still get microcuts because since the zone is so flexible, it tears every time I open my mouth.

It’s not even visible, it’s just annoying and painful and not healed yet.

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.

Tried to open a can with a pair of pliers. Got a nasty cut in the right index finger that had to be stitched.

I once twisted a nerve in my shoulder by sitting down wrong in the bus.

Burned my face while breathing fire with Everclear.

I broke my toe on a case of ramen noodles.

I’m in California. If you feel the need for a defensive weapon, the most you can get away with is a plain, wooden cane from a drugstore. Even then, if a cop thinks you don’t need that cane, you’ll get the shit beat out of you and the stick taken away.

Ask me how I know.

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.