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
I had a similar “stupid but lucky” experience where I stuck the ends of a copper wire into the electrical socket. Thankfully I was stupid enough to use one wire and not two, or I wouldn’t be here typing this. Instead, I got severe burns on my hands for a few weeks.
Thinking about it, this and my other comment, I was a majorly stupid kid that should have not lived past my teenage years. I’ve fallen out of trees, been run over by cars (twice), had my face inches from a tractor trailer on an expressway, held at gun point while hitchhiking, caught a forest on fire and put it out with my jacket, stuck down a storm drain, accidentally made mustard gas cleaning the bathroom…
I’m either lucky, cursed, or possibly a cat. 🐱
I was stupid enough to use one wire and not two, or I wouldn’t be here typing this
Well, I was smarter, but, thankfully, still here.
I was maybe 5 years old when one day I decided for some reason that I have to know how the electricity works "first hand". So I took an electrical plug with a wire from dad's tool box. It had two exposed copper ends. I plugged it in the outlet and while trying to inspect the "electricity" flow I, most likely accidentaly, have completed the circuit with my hand.
Interesting how the experience wasn't painful it's just muscles in your body get tense and you literally can't drop the wire or move at all. Thank god my Dad was around and maybe 10 seconds after I got shocked he pulled the plug. I had no serious injuries: just burns, a bit of shock and a lifelong lesson.
P.S. It was a 220V outlet too. But I'm not sure if it's more dangerous than the US ones.
Yeah 220V is more dangerous because it doubles the current going through your body.
I = V / R
I almost killed my Dad and Grampa when I was six.
Grampa came to visit in his RV which had a gas oven. I mindlessly turned knobs as most kids do.
Dad was a smoker back then, and would frequently walk into the RV with a lit cigarette.
Grampa lost his sense of smell years ago so he didn't care.
By some miracle, Mum, who didn't go into the RV unless absolutely necessary (because she hated the smell of cigarettes), walked in and realised the smell wasn't from cigarettes.
Kids sure are stupid.
My thing was to jump off of things using an umbrella. Luckily, I knew enough to increase the height slowly, so I never jumped off of dangerously high levels. Still, I'm really fortunate I didn't hurt myself seriously considering how reckless I was as a child.
I used to do that by jumping off the roof of my parents’ single-story ranch house; minus the umbrella.
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.
just google "TikTok challenge" and you'll have enough material for at least a dozen books.
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.
When I was a teenager, I was riding in the back of my friend's car one day. I was wanting to be less uptight about shit and had delayed putting my seatbelt on. When I did go to put it on, I realized it was caught in the door. So with the intent of not being as uptight and asking my friend to stop for a second so I could open the door and free the seatbelt, I decided to just open it while we were going, pull the belt out, and close it again.
Right as I was reaching for the door handle, friend takes a hard left turn, pushing me hard against the door I was just about to open.
I took a moment to appreciate how close that had gotten to going really bad and that one needs better situational awareness to do something like I had planned before opening the door to get the seatbelt out when I was sure he was just going straight.
Though it would have been kinda funny (albeit in a horrifying kinda way) from their perspective to suddenly have a passenger fall out of the car while it was going.
