Around 11 years old or so. I wanted to make one of those soccer balls with a rubber band.
But I had no rubber band. Or a way to properly fixate anything to a ball.
So I took some nylon string for kites, tied it around a 2cm nail and stuck the nail into the valve of a soccer ball.
Tied the end of the string to myself, kicked the ball, the string made “twang”, and the ball rolled off.
I was annoyed that it didn’t work. So I followed the string from the end that was tied to myself… and found out the nail was stuck a cm or so into my upper arm.
Pulled it out and it didn’t really bleed much or anything. Never told my parents about this.
I was very stupid and very lucky that day
Someone should put together a book about nearly-fatal stupid kid stories.
The summer I was 9, my younger sister and I were home alone, and I was playing on our open front door, hanging from it and swinging. It had a window with curtains hanging from a rod. The rod was attached to the door by these metal hooks on either side. When I dropped off, I knocked the curtain rod off and ripped the inside of my wrist open vertically about 2 inches. As I held my gushing wrist, my sister and I walked around the neighborhood trying to find an adult; eventually, we did, and I got a visit to the emergency room, some stitches, and a wicked scar. The doctor said if it’d caught me a half inch to the right, I would have torn out along an artery and I’d have bled out before we got help.
I have a similar story, I was planning on making homemade paper with my sister by blending up newspapers in our blender. Except, I was too stupid to figure out how to open the blender lid, which was held on with a suction, which is opened with a button. I eventually got it open by forcing the lid open by holding it upside down and forcing down with my left hand. The blade fell out and sliced my wrist open horizontally, at first I didn’t realize until I looked down and saw blood gushing onto the floor. I told my sister to help and get our grandma who lived on the property but in a different building. Eventually we got to the ER and they gave me a bandage, but refused to give me stitches without my mom being there (I don’t know why they did that it was stupid). Eventually my mom left work, she’s a nurse, and gave me liquid stitches. She said she didn’t do normal stitches is because I just barely missed an artery and it was exposed to the air, and she didn’t want to risk poking it with a needle. I do wish I had normal stitches done though because the wound kept opening when I went to school, causing the scar to get pretty big.
Sweet story! Speaking of scars, though, they can be pretty cool. I had my appendix out when I was young, and in an era when the cosmetic side wasn’t as advanced. As a result, as a young man I had a disproportionately large, ugly-looking scar on my abdomen, and I took to telling girls who asked about it that I’d gotten it from a knife fight. Which was kinda technically true.
I won’t say it got me laid, because by the time women were in a situation to ask about the scar, that train was usually already in motion, but it was a good story.
