Childhood war stories

I had an urge steer the 'tooth stem cell' thread, into a 'stupid childhood accidents' thread, but figured it might be worthy of its own topic. I'll start with a story, not of me, but my little sister; the animal lover.

One of her favorite things, was playing with the chickens (yes...we had chickens), on our farm (yes..an actual farm, with cows, chickens, and hay). Well, most of the time, that was a harmless hobby; she was a tough little girl. Until, that is, her run-in with our new, overly protective, huge-ass Rooster. This rooster didn't like her pawing his hens, and decided to take action, by kung-fu kicking my sister in the face...leaving a gaping hole in her lip (they have seriously sharp spurs!). The wound required several stitches, lots of peroxide, and spawned a deep-set hatred of poultry with my lil sis.

Well, obviously, we couldn't let such a deadly beast exist on our peaceful little farm; so bright and early, the next morning, my dad walked out to the chicken coupe, up to the fence post that this rooster favored, and answered his morning 'c**k-a-doodle-doo' with his own song. A double barrel shotgun blast.

next....

Ouch. Well, my stepfather tried to get the cat and dog to be 'friends', when he was around 7, and almost lost a tear duct.

And I fell from a balcony when I was three, fracturing my skull. It turned out to be a growing fracture, causing a lesion on the left pareital lobe of my brain. I only found out about that a couple of years ago, when I sort of had a migranous episode and ended up lying in a foetal position in the emergency ward for a day, deprived of the power of coherent speech :biggrin:

My dad's parents had a farm (in Libya, horses and sheep mostly). When my dad was 7 he was messing with one of the horses, I don't really remember what he told me he was doing. But anyway, the horse kicked him in the forehead. A full grown horse mind you. There's like a small 'dent' in his forehead to this day. I'm surprised he survived it.

Libya?s children have all sorts of stories: scorpions, horses, lambs ... tin can lids ... anyway, that one is pretty bad ... not to mention my uncle only has one eye ...

I believe he's also been stung by a scorpion twice and rammed by a lamb. Not to mention all the stories of playing football (soccer) with no shoes on ... (wine bottle mysteriously lying on the football field :\ ).

Me and my brother went to a camp over the summer maybe 7 years ago and when we came back our parents informed us that our cat was missing. We were very worried, because although we had found her in the wild, there were and still are a lot of coyotes around here. Anyway my brother went searhing for her through people's backyards and came back with a paw. He said he found it in a ditch with some other parts. We buried our cat's paw in the backyard.

Not exactly tramuatic / horrifying, but - here's a list of all my pets and their very short lives. All of them probably died rather painfully.

• Two birds. Finches, I think. Forgot to feed them while on vacation, they ended up starving to death rather horribly. Buried them in the backyard.
• Tadpoles. Forgot to clean the tank for a few weeks. The poor little buggers suffocated in their own feces. Buried them next to the two birds.
• Mice. They're the kind of little white mice that people did lab experiments on, or fed to snakes. One of them died the first day in the cage. The other died over a few days, poisoning itself by chewing off the plastic of its food dish and nibbling off the paint on the bars. Buried it next to the tadpoles.
• Rabbit. Left it outside accidentally overnight, got dicapitated by local coyotes. Buried it next to the mouse.
• Turtle. Found it near my mailbox kind of randomly. Kept it in wooden pen for a few days before it died of loneliness. It was pretty ferocious at the state - if you tried to pick it up, it would claw your hands frantically. Buried it next to the rabbit.

Kind of unsettling as a young little kid to have everything you touch, to die within a few days. Oh well!

I had a neat little speedometer on my bike and when I first got it I was always checking out my top speeds and trying to see how fast I could go. At that age, couldn't ever get past 17-18 or so, but it was still fun (I was probably in middle school/junior high). One day, I decided to use the straightaway of my street to really test my max speed. I started at the end of my street and started riding straight towards my house (this is a circle drive, with my house at the end on the right side). I kept pedaling furiously, and finally hit 20 when I was almost to the driveway.

Then I realized I should probably stop.

I was headed straight towards the garage door, so I slammed on my brakes at the start of the driveway, swerving to the right and desperately trying to stop. I missed the garage door, but smashed into the house at a 45 degree angle right in the point where the brick met the door frame to the door next to the garage.

As if running into a house on a bike wasn't bad enough, I immediately flew straight forward, catching my crotch right under the handlebars and collapsing in a crumpled heap on the ground next to my bike.

Another fun bike story... Was riding along when my shoelace got caught in the gears - looked down and it came free immediately, but then I looked up and smacked into a parked car. A neighbor witnessed this - He later would tell the story as having seen me riding my bike, waving, and then looking back a moment later to see me sprawled on the ground with my bike next to me, one tire still spinning in the air.

My other fun injuries, though from when I was older... I played baseball up until my freshman year of high school, and spent a lot of time at the batting cage in Beatrice. There were 2 baseball machines, one running considerably faster than the other. I was in the slow one, as it compared best to the pitchers of my age. There was a stiff tailwind, and the balls were the dimpled variety - like large golf balls. Another kid had already been hit that day, but I went in anyway. Midway through one set of 10 pitches, the wind caught a ball and brought it straight in towards me. I stepped out to get out of the way, but in doing so planted myself square up for a crotch shot at about 50-60 mph. I collapsed in a crumpled heap, once again, and it was rather unpleasant.

Another time I fouled one straight up where, by random chance, it hit a round metal crossbeam at just the precise angle to come straight back down and smash into my shoulder, knocking me to the ground and causing me to black out. Eat that, Mr. Spock!

In first grade, playing soccer, I went to kick the ball and my cleats caught on it, causing me to fall headfirst onto the ground. Next thing I knew, the referee who had been all the way at the other end of the field was standing over me. I had pretty severe after effects from days. Even at that age, I was pretty mathematically inclined, and couldn't even do simple addition 2 days later. Crazy.

Not exactly a painful memory, but its rather funny.

Once, a long time ago, I had my computer on the dining-room table. For some reason my sister had nothing better to do than sit next to me and watch whatever I was doing. I was sitting there playing games, when I hear muffled crying, so I look over at her. The table had some sort of cover on it with a string hanging off it. She had actually tied the string around her foot, and couldnt get it loose. It was rather funny, my mum actually left her there for about 20 mins before she undid the knot... which required the use of scissors.

Man those are some bad ones Andrew, don't think I've anything to match.

My worst were probably a couple of rollerblading accidents, both reasonably close to each other (ie. a few months or so apart) and most likely when I was about 13.

In my town there was bugger all places to rollerblade, but we sometimes made do in the library car park as it was near a few of our houses, and was good for not only street hockey practice but we could also shove down rails and ramps on the smooth-ish surface. Anyway, there was a small wall, about a foot high, around the back of the car park, and we occasionally proped a rail up against it and jumped the wall to grind down the rail. Unfortunately, on the other side of the wall was also some sort of big tank thing (not the shooty kind, the storage kind). I decided to go for a royale down the rail, and upon landing on the rail my legs both went vastly quicker than my body, resulting in me going down to the ground back first. That woulda been fine, had there not been a tap sticking out of the tank, with no handle on it. I landed flat on it and it left a pretty big puncture mark, then bounced off and back onto it, leaving a huge long scrape up my back. I was swearing so much my mate was afraid to go and get his mum :biggrin: I lived the next street along, but she insisted on giving me a lift along there regardless, musta been the shortest car ride of my life!

A month or two later we had a small ramp in the car park, and were using it to jump over the wall between the entrance and exit gates of the car park. The wall woulda been about 3 foot tall and about 4 or 5 foot drop on the other side, but it was easy to clear off the small ramp. Getting confident at it and clearing the pavement on the other side, I decided to go for a 180, which was a simple affair as you just jumped the wall and span once you were over it. After everyone had mastered this, I decided to push the boat out and go for a bigger spin, a 360. Still an easy enough spin to manage but it meant starting BEFORE clearing the wall. So 180 degrees into it, I clip my heels off the wall, and land fully on my back on the curb of the pavement on the other side. Apparently I went into some sort of fit though I don't recall it well myself. My mates ran off and got the fireman who lived down the road to make sure I was okay.

When I was around 2 years old or so, I'm told, a neighbour of mine who was around 10 was spinning me around real fast, and I slipped and managed to smash my head into the edge of a metal workbench. I had around half an inch of metal in my head for a few minutes, but they got it out and stitched me up. Still have the scar :/.

Had a funny incident with a skateboard (actually, a plank with wheels). The wheels locked up while I was heading for a wall and trying to stop. So I flew off and hit the wall with my full body. Nothing happened though.

Fell off my cycle while I was learning and landed in a pit which was being dug for a manhole. Nothing happened but it was pretty hilarious.

Swallowed a penny when I was like 2 and couldn't breathe for a minute or two. Was also dropped when I was 2 at a funny angle and I broke one of my ribs. The doctors said nothing was wrong at the time, but at this time we're quite sure it was broken considering the bottom rib does a little "Z" kind of bend although it just looks like an extra ab to most people glancing. Many, many skateboard/biking/rollerblading wipeouts.

Had some idiot wrestle me to the ground last year and I hit a metal doorframe splitting my scalp open. Don't think I've ever seen that much blood, funny thing was that I was the only calm one. Holding my head and telling the others to "get me a f**king towel or something, can't you see I'm bleeding profusely?" Left a blood trail in the carpet at school that is still there to this day. (I went from one section on the 2nd floor, all the way across the school, down some stairs and backtracked a bit to student services.)

Great stories. Good to know I wasn't the only danger prone kid, out there. Aight...I talked about my sister and the rooster, now I'll drop a story or two of my own.

I had the usual bike/skateboard catastrophies. Tearing layers of skin off was nothing back then. My most memorable accidents, however, were from sheer stupidity.

• The handcuff incident:

I used to fancy myself some sort of escape artist, as a kid. I climbed a tree once, about 15/20 feet high, and handcuffed myself to a wrist sized limb. Then, I threw the keys down to my sister, as to make the escape more daring. Well...it was fall, and the ground was covered with leaves and pine needles in this thicket of woods...so needelss to say, when my sister 'missed' the key I threw, it was lost forever. I don't exactly remember how I planned to escape the hancuffs in the first place. What I do remember, is that the only way to get out of the tree, was to hang from the limb, and bounce up and down until it broke; freeing the handcuffs and me. But it wasn't that simple..it wasn't dry wood, so it didn't just break, it split and left me dangling from handcuffs until I could split it the rest of the way. By that time, the handcuffs had peeled nearly all my skin off of my wrist, up to the hand. And I still had the fall to look forward to.

• The ice pick incident:

As well as a master escape artist, I was also a master of the martial arts, and a proficient weapon specialist. This is why I stood on that chilly morning, on the top of this massive sand pile out by our barn, ice pick in hand, preparing to perform my 'triple spin, roundhouse, ice-pick of death, finishing move'. My chi must have wavered for a split second as I began the maneuver, because it ended with me landing on the ground, stabbing this ice-pick, full force, under my knee-cap. I still remember my initial thought (before I realized what had just happened)... "this is sand, why am I having to fight to pull this ice-pick out". Then I opened my eyes, yanked, saw the blood, passed out, and woke minutes later with family members cutting my pants off in the yard. How embarrassing.

I was 4 years old, with my mother in a JC Penny's clothing store, and was walking along behind her while she was pushing my baby sister in a stroller. Suddenly, a man walking the opposite direction just picked me up. He just kept on walking, holding me in his arms. I can still remember his laugh. I was shocked speechless and all I could do was to stare at my mom walking away, totally unaware. Luckily, my mom glanced back at me, and about the same moment the guy noticed I was just staring back there. He got nervous, looked back, saw my mother looking our way, and then he dropped me and took off down the escalator which was only a few steps away...

...That's how I was kidnapped for about 10 seconds.

This isn't so much of a "Look at how stupid I was a child" story as much as it's a "Damn, I suck at life" story.

Regardless, I used to be pretty into BMX biking, and was fairly decent at doing ground-tricks/basic jumps and whatnot. Then, I tried to do a bunny hop one day, and as I extended my arm to pull up, I heard this disgusting sloshy/grinding/popping sound from my left arm. I basically fell off my bike because it hurt so much, and managed to ride home with one arm (the left arm was cradled against my chest). It hurt to move it, it hurt to think about it, it just plain hurt.

The next day, it felt better- much better in fact. It got to the point where about 3 days later, I felt no pain in it. But, there was an odd side-effect- Whenever I would move my arm from a bent position to a straight position, it would pop. And I'm not talking once or twice, but SEVERAL times. I think I counted up to 8 one time. It was amazing. I went around and showed my friends my weirdness, and they thought I was cool (I was like 14, gimme a break).

Then, a few weeks later- the pain came back. With a vengence. It got to the point where I couldn't move my arm without feeling pain. It was terrible. We finally went to a doctor.

He told me that I had a very rare little disorder- what had happened was a small part of my bone had actually died, and had disconnected from the rest of the tissue, and had lodged itself into the cartilidge of my elbow. Hooray. We had surgery about a week later to remove the dead bone.

So- now I have this lovely little hole in my elbow, can't lift too much with it, have a wickid 2 inch scar, and have gone down in some medical books as the youngest person to have ever been afflicted with whatever-it-was-called (it normally afflicts middle aged people who are fairly active- the only reason the doc could give me for it happenening to me was "Just plain bad luck.") 2 points for Monqui's stupid body for creativity, I suppose.

My first roper experience;

When I was about 5, there was a rope hanging from the roof in our country house (I guess my father hung it there for exercising). I took a chair and put it about 4 or 5 meters from the rope origin, climbed on it, and tried a Tarzan swing. I didn't realize the heavy steel door was only 3 meters far, and I hadn't studied pendulum theory at that age... Bang! crash, blood, stiches etc... I wasn't very bright when I was a kid. Fortunately, things have gone a little better now. But I guess Finger's handcuff story still wins the "dumbest childhood exploit" contest :smile:

not that i'm complaining, but i've always seemed to be prone to narrowly avoiding serious injury/death in silly accidents.

the most recent was when a transit van came hurtling round a corner on the wrong side of the road. it was around 6.30am, and it had been raining slightly. i was on my bike [peddle] going to work, and as soon as i seen him coming, i knew he was hitting me. everything went that slow-mo way, and i remember thinking that i wasn't going to let it hit me to the right. this would have taken me under his off-side front wheel, 'cause he hadn't quite straightened up after the corner. by the time he hit me, he must have slowed a little. i managed to time the impact perfectly, and flicked the handlebars 90 degrees so as not to catch my legs on the way over. i think this must have caused my whole body to twist, coz when i hit his windscreen it was with the back of my left shoulder. this put me into a roll that took me off to the left of the van, swinging me into an upright position as i hit the ground. i stood there, unharmed, in complete amazement, staring the bastard in the eyes.

amongst others have been kicking a home made firework that became a pipebomb as soon as it landed in a horizontal position.in fact, as soon as i kicked it i realised i had made a huge f**king error, and managed to turn away from it before it landed. that was the loudest noise i think i've ever heard. the blast knocked me forwards a few paces. as lumps of stuff were falling around me, i remember thinking that some people get their legs bitten of by sharks without feeling it, so maybe thats why i couldnt feel any pain. but no, i was completely unscathed again. i swear there was an angel standing behind me that day.

http://www.darwinawards.com/ is dedicated to people who removed themselves from the gene pool in some of the stupidest ways. like the guy that slept with a loaded handgun next to his bed. he got a phone call at 3.00am one morning. he woke up, grabbed his gun by mistake, put it to his ear and blew his brains out.

http://www.darwinawards.com/ is dedicated to people who removed themselves from the gene pool in some of the stupidest ways. like the guy that slept with a loaded handgun next to his bed. he got a phone call at 3.00am one morning. he woke up, grabbed his gun by mistake, put it to his ear and blew his brains out.

Or the guy who had a blown fuse in his headlights so he used a bullet to complete the circuit, some time later the bullet went off and shot him in the crotch ... he's alive, but he's completely 'sterile' now

Crono said:

http://www.darwinawards.com/ is dedicated to people who removed themselves from the gene pool in some of the stupidest ways. like the guy that slept with a loaded handgun next to his bed. he got a phone call at 3.00am one morning. he woke up, grabbed his gun by mistake, put it to his ear and blew his brains out.

Or the guy who had a blown fuse in his headlights so he used a bullet to complete the circuit, some time later the bullet went off and shot him in the crotch ... he's alive, but he's completely 'sterile' now

That was on some myth busting show, they proved that to be impossible.

it depends on how hot your fuse gets and on the bullet they used.

In any case, he's gotten a darwin award and claims that's what happened.

Its not impossibly to ignight a bullet, given enough heat. I could do the calculations, but I'm too lazy

Ok, some of these stories are making me cringe in pain.

Both of my tales involve the wonderful sport of soccer:

Back when I played in a rec soccer league, nearly every single game I would manage to injure another player through sheer accident. I was bigger, stronger, and faster than most of the kids out there, and whenever there would be contact the other kid would end up on the ground. It was never anything serious, just bruises and the like, and the kid would get back up after a stoppage and return to play. I quickly developed a reputation, and some guys who had played against or with me for years would either avoid me or outplay me with superior ballhandling. However, this one time we were playing a team from a different town, and in the midst of play the ball landed right in between me and this kid that was half my size. We both ran at each other and tried to kick the ball away before the other could. We managed to reach and kick the ball at the same time. I was apparently much stronger than the other kid, as I managed to kick through his kick, sending the ball forward and him backwards and in the air. He did a half flip, landed on the ground in a heap, and screamed in pain. He had to be carted off the field with a broken ankle. The parents on the sidelines yelled at the ref when they gave the ball to us, as it was a completely legal play. :biggrin:

The second story was from High School when I was playing indoor soccer. One of my teammates was running back to get a ball that had been kicked past him. I called him off the ball so I could kick it, but at the last second he decided to kick the ball to pass it back to someone else. He popped the ball up and hit me straight in the head. I ended up knocked to the ground with a newly broken pair of glasses, but I got up dazed and rejoined the game. During the game whenever I would try and cut I would end up just toppling over, and after a few minutes of watching me fall the coach took me out. I think I got a slight concussion from the kick since I lost all sense of balance. You could see the seams from the soccer ball imprinted on my forehead for a week.

Good stories all, I'll try and think up one myself to add in later.

I can't touch a single one of these, because, to my everlasting dismay, I don't get wounded that often. Probably the nastiest one I ever got was when playing street hockey, and, after dodging about ten sticks to the face, my teammate raises his arms in triumph after scoring a goal and hits me flat in the forehead. There was a huge ass welt on my head, it was pretty awesome.

About the guy who picked up the gun instead of the phone - I'd say its not entirely natural to try and pull a trigger on what you think is a phone, but that's just me.

Orph (or Dr. Brasso) has a pretty entertaining story (though not from childhood) about nailing his hand to a building. The best I've ever done is run my left handlebar of my bike into a bush, causing it to stop and me to keep going over the front of it.
I've run into my share of sliding glass doors though. Those things hurt! Oh yeah, I've also got a bad knee thanks to a crowdsurfing incident two years ago.

Painfull stories guys, my turn

Me mum me brother and me used to take our 3 horses to our friends paddock to chew it out a bit. Coz I was just a youngun, it was my job to open and close the gate. This one time our youngest horse deciced he'll run through, you know for the sake of it. On his way through, he hit the gate at a very fast canter. The gate then proceeded to swing towards me at high speed and hit me above me left temple.

Thats what im told. What i remember is clearly seeing me mums yellow-ish jumper completely red, back and front.

And then there was this one time, up a tree, i snapped the 2 bigger ligaments in me right knee, and tore (or was that damaged) the smallest one. i had lots of fun climbin down

Orph has a pretty entertaining story (though not from childhood) about nailing his hand to a building.

...Wasn't Brasso the one who nailed his hand to a building? ... or did Orph do it too?

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...Wasn't Brasso the one who nailed his hand to a building? ... or did Orph do it too?
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Where is Dr.brasso?? haven't seen any posts from him in a long time.

Crap, it was, wasn't it. Hell, I don't remember.

I have had all my fingers (no thumbs) broken or sprained at least once mainly because I was very clumsy when I was younger, but one was broken when I was standing next to a jungle gym and a kid jumped off it and somehow his foot hit my finger and broke it, another was broken when I was going to catch my little sister comig down a slide but missed and my finger got broken from her foot.