A Chronicle of Injuries

Wow. I have been injured *a lot*. There's more that didn't make this list because they aren't sufficiently cringe inducing.

Straight Razor Fingers

I shave with a straight razor. It's actually a pretty safe shave, as long as you maintain control of the blade. But I've gotten lazy or been stupid a few times. Number one lesson of shaving with a straight razor: don't take your eye off the blade. Number two lesson: Don't put the blade in your eye.

Seriously though, when shaving your face you have to be careful not to wiggle and go sideways. That'll give you a fine little cut looks meaner than it actually hurts.

Twice though, I've let the blade out of my sight, and was careless. Both times I was holding my right (razor) hand idle, and doing something with my left (free) hand. My finger hit the blade and got sliced up pretty well. It's crazy because it doesn't even hurt at first, they're so sharp people use the hanging hair test to make sure it's shaving ready. So sharp it'll slip between the scales and sever a human hair under the hair's own weight.

I came close one other time and left a shallow cut in my thumbnail. They can be really bad too, because your skin offers very little resistance and if you're making a swift motion you can end up with a really nasty cut.

Electronic Dissection

Another unfortunate encounter I had with an exacto knife: I was dissecting an electronic connector to figure out how it was wired. The knife slipped and cut through my thumb from the (looking top down) right side of the knuckle through to the top middle. Realizing that I'd just sliced open my thumb, I popped it in my mouth to keep from bleeding on the carpet. Then I ran to the sink and put my finger under cold running water. It bled like crazy. Holding the now separate pieces of meat together, it finally clotted and healed up. Here's the scar.

Home Room Mechanical Pencil

One of my classmates and I were messing around with our mechanical pencils. He ended up stabbing the top of my hand and dragging the pencil about two inches *through* my skin. You can see the scar running vertically between my first and second knuckle.

Pepper Power

When I was in 7th grade, I was a member of 4H. I was at some 4H meeting and picked up these red/green peppers that were about 1" long x 1/3" diameter. They packed a wallop for their size. Anyway, I took these to school for some reason and about 4 of us ended up getting pepper juice on our fingers. Thinking nothing of it we went about our, until we rubbed our eyes. One by one, each of us had to excuse ourselves to go to the water fountain and flush our eyes with copious amounts of water.

Exactos and Idiots
When I was in 5th grade, we had a project to build a vertical maze, the goal of which was to cause a marble to fall as slow as possible. Ours was actually really cool, but it was unintentionally sabotaged. It needed to be reset between runs, and someone ran a marble through it without our knowledge, so on the live run it didn't go nearly as slowly as it could have. Anyway, while we building the thing we had 6th graders helping us. I went to go break a stick across my knee and one of the girls helping us reached out her hand to stop me from breaking the stick... she was holding an Exacto knife. Sliced through the top of my fingers on the way down. I didn't end up with any scars out of that one though.

Rose Garden Fall

When I was maybe 10 I was riding my bike up to a friend's door, and next to the sidewalk they had a good sized rose garden. Anyway, something happened and I accidentally tipped over into the rose bushes. Rose bushes do not mess around. My mom was picking thorns out of my skin for probably an hour or more.

Dog House Destruction

My grandmother had an old dog house (no dog anymore) and I was tearing it apart. I went to kick off one of the boards, and a mean rusty old nail went right through my shoe into the bottom of my foot. Tetanus shots ensued.

Pencil in the Palm

Summer school before 7th grade, a girl accidentally stabbed my hand with a pencil. Over a decade later, there's still a little chunk of graphite embedded in my hand.

Setting my Arm

In 5th grade, I was at a skating rink on those goddamn quad skates. I think I'd been using inline skates my entire life except maybe a handful of cases, and this was when inline skates were banned from the rink. I tried to take a turn too hard, went down and broke my arm. Ice and one "incident report" later, we were off to the hospital for x-rays and a cast. Bad news? They needed to set my elbow I think it was. The doctor pulled out the biggest goddamn needle I'd ever seen, luckily that was just to load up a 20cc syringe (which is a big syringe by the way) with what I imagine was probably lidocaine or some other local anesthetic. They get me good and ready, because it was probably going to hurt like a bitch. I swear it sounded like a gunshot.

Toni's Toenail

Ok, last one. My ex-wife had an ingrown toenail once. We took her to the podiatrist, who advised it be cut out. He started out by injecting lidocaine all around her toe. Then he proceeded to separate the nail from the nailbed with some sharp-ish instrument. Cut the nail, burned the cuticle and for the icing on the cake? Took a pair of scissors and cut off a 1/4"x1/2" chunk of "proud flesh". NOPE.