What's the worst you ever hurt yourself as a kid?

1970s, uk, aged around 4 or 5, walking down the stairs carrying a glass when I tripped, Cut my right hand up pretty bad. My mum wrapped my hand in a towel and rushed me to a nearby army base where the medic did an effective but clumsy job of stitching me up - I still have a big scar but no movement damage.

I have no memory of it, but my father certainly does. When he came home from work to find the house with its doors wide open, blood everywhere, and nobody around, he kind of freaked out.

Bike riding in the 80s and jumping ramps, the slope was too high and sent the bike upward so I let go (bad plan) and supermanned myself across the pavement on my chest. I had vertical road rash stripes all down my front.

Tripped and fell while playing basketball on a rough asphalt court skid like 3 ft on my face scrapped and peeled 80% of my face and got grains of asphalt stuck in my face. To the point they couldn't get them all out and took a chunk out of my nose.

Funnily enough, mine's also garden-pot related. I was playing with my sister and our friend and I tripped over and faceplanted into a terracotta pot. It could've been a lot worse because there was a cactus in it, but even as it was I needed six stitches.

I managed to remove at least one nail in all of my limbs through various activities. Some of them are dumber than others, but all of them are silly.

I stepped off a one foot tall wall and fractured one of my foot bones

Ran my index finger down the blade of a pocket knife and nearly cut the tip off. Got a nice big scar and had a bunch of stitches

I went camping with my family, was probably seven or eight years old. There was a sign right next to our camping spot to notify people about something not to do, who knows what the message was in reality but I like to imagine it as "do not bend this sign backwards to use it to catapult rocks you find laying around nearby".

Anyway, while my parents were preoccupied with setting up our tent, my makeshift catapult hit me right by the eye. Thankfully it did not actually injure my eye itself, just huge cuts both above and below the eye, but I had a pretty good talent for screaming at that age regardless of which part of my body was hurting. I remember after an hour or something my parents kept pushing that all the other campers were going to think I was being abused, and then we packed up and left our week-long camping trip a couple hours after arriving.

Mine wasn't really all that bad, but the time that occurs to me involves me at like 5 or 6 years old, snow, a sled, a metal fence post, and a big red bump on my forehead. I hit pretty hard, but I don't think I was concussed or anything.

I don't remember it myself but on the playground I apparently fell off one of those climbing walls with the holes in it and somehow my nose got caught in it and it ripped open or something. So my nose was stitched back on and now one canal is a bit smaller than the other. My mom loves to tell this very bloody story.

Not too bad.

But I was fucking around while trying to learn to ride a bike. Went too fast, hit a bump on a dirt road. Went over the handlebars, slid face first a few feet into a ditch.

Now, like I said, I wasn't badly injured. It was all just scrapes and bruises. But they were deep scrapes from my forehead all the way down one side of my face, then my chest and belly, plus along the inner side of my right arm from trying to stop myself.

Every scrape was filled with dirt and gravel, which had to be picked out. Then it all needed flushing out. So by the time it was all done I was high from endorphins and crying and screaming, looked like a shredder had beaten the shit out of me, and was both throbbing and burning along the entire scraped section.

Then I had to go to school like that lol.

Around primary school, I got two scars on my chin, on the same place, because I did not have the reflex to put my hands in front of me when falling on my face. Both times I fell face-first on a stone floor.

And I once fell over backwards and broke my arm, because I was laughing so hard.

As a teenager I also broke my nose in 38 pieces because of that lack of basic reflexes + causing a traffic accident due to being reckless and stupid.

Kids, don't go over red lights, even if you think there is no car coming. Especially not when it is getting dark and you got headphones with music on.

Was running around with my cousins on pavement wearing flip flops. I was chasing my cousin who ran up stairs and I slipped and hit my face on the side of a stair. To this day, I still have the scar on my lip that my tooth opened up.

When I was 13 I wrapped a fire cracker in tape apart from the end with the fuse (I thought it would be louder that way). It exploded in my hand as I lit it.

My hand was fine because of the tape but the full force of the blast came out the untaped end and shot fragments of paper and black powder right into my face and eyes.

Ended up having to get rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. They basically removed several layers of skin from my face and scraped the debris from my eyeballs. After surgery I couldn't see further than like 10cm from my face and the doctors told me either it would be permanent or I'd be able to see again in a week or so. Luckily it was the latter.

I got extremely lucky and made a full recovery.

As a kid our alley in back was where all the neighborhood kids played. We all decided it was race time. Most of us were on bikes but I happened to have my roller blades on.

Important detail is that there was a pretty steep slope from one end of the alley to the bottom before it leveled out halfway down. Of course we start at the top, everyone's getting speed and I'm focused so I don't get the wobbles. I'm actually ahead and it's me a Jorge going neck and neck until I hit a rock at the bottom.

I tucked and rolled (apparently about 5 times) before I land on my back and slide for another 15 feet.

Maybe it was bad enough for the ER but in that day and with my family we treated it at home if it wasn't a broken bone or head wound. So I laid belly down on the couch while my Pops picked gravel out of my back and blotted me with peroxide and anticeptic. Overall it wasn't as bad as some of my brothers' accidents but it looked pretty gnarly.

I could have won dammit

Built a treehut between three trees close to our backyard without realising one of the trees were rotten.

It started as a platform maybe 1.5 meters up when started on the walls.
\ As I stood on one of the edges, the rotten tree opposite me, that corner of the platform broke off.
\ I was pivoted straight into the ground where a plank with a nail stuck halway into it was laying.
\ I fell directly onto the nail which penetrated my right arm at the tricep, maybe 3/4 of the way through the entire arm.

I'm just really happy it didn't hit my head, as that would have been really bad

Let's see...

• Accidentally stapled my thumb before school. Had to remove it before I left.
• Twisted my ankle from jumping off the swings and not landing correctly.
• Braked too hard on a wet, wooden surface on my bike and flew off it (I do mean flew, it was quite a few feet horizontally, and about 2 feet vertically in the air.)
• Playing catch with my father and got hit about an inch from my testicles. Thankfully no damage to them, but it hurt about as bad as you can imagine.

Surprisingly, no bones were broken, and I wasn't an outdoorsy kid either.

To any prospective and new parents stumbling onto this thread: Turn back. NOW.

This thread will give you nightmare fuel. You have been warned.

Broke my elbow twice: one time at like 7 sliding down a hill and one time at like 13 doing a overhead kick playing soccer. Slit the skin of my head open at 8 after being pushed by a classmate against the base of a decorated column. Lot of blood, many stitches.

Hard to rank them. When I was about 9 yrs old and cut of my left index finger with a leather scissor. Or when I flew over the top of a bike, down a steep road, and the asphalt took of all the skin of my right hand, and I got a wound right beneath my nose that still, 35 yrs later, looks like a booger when it's cold. Or maybe when I was climbing around big farm machines and jumped from one to the other, and I slipped, and punched a hole in my shin with a metal corner. The shin didn't break, just got a hole, and it hurt like hell...

There's plenty more. But my guess is my finger, since the doctor messed up the operation, and I had to have 3 surgeries - and it still didn't work properly after that.

I was lucky, my worst childhood injury was breaking a toe on the bottom of a swimming pool I jumped into.

Concussion at an ice skating rink.

Aan a two year old I fell off the couch into a metal table, narrowly missing my eye, but catching my eyebrow on the corner. Still have a small scar in my eyebrow.

As a teen (13-14 ish?) I broke both bones in my forearm. That kinda sucked.

I was playing cricket in the driveway with some neighbour-friends. There were three of us and each took turns to be bowler, batter, and fielder.

As an aside, I was quite a good cricketer when I was young and was eager to show my skills to my friends so when the ball was hit high and far over my head I ran as fast as I could to catch it.

I kept my eyes on the ball, head turned over my shoulder, impossible to see anything in front of me. After a second or three, I looked forward to get my bearings and as soon as I did the back of an old, metal bakkie (pickup truck I suppose) appeared out of nowhere.

I ran straight into it, face first. I remember looking down, through tears, at my hands where the blood pouring out of my mouth and pooling in my hands. The blood was flecked with a curious white substance that I later found out was half of my front tooth reduced to a fine powder.

While chasing around the house I tripped over a bed board and slid my upper lip on a carpet.

A strip of skin down from the base of the nose to my lip was gone. Everyone freaked out about me disfiguring myself.

I picked at it, of course, 25 years later there's no trace of it. Kids heal fast.

I was sheltered I think, considering some other injuries here.

I've always been pretty careful by nature, even as a child. There's some close calls since I was outdoors a lot in the 90's hanging out in the forests and river valley, but nothing really bad happened. So I only have one standout story aside from boring scrapes and knocks from that time.

I made it to twelve years of age before I stepped on a log at a survival camp heading back from canoeing in a pond with a lady friend I met at camp. The log turned out to be hollow and full of bees suddenly very angry with me. Got about ~20 stings on the leg that went through the log since I was wearing shorts. A few up my shirt as I fled screaming profanity.

They were on me instantly, but didn't chase me very far thankfully. I don't react to stings much so it wasn't sore for very long. Or I don't remember the pain well because I was still swooning from getting my first smooch on said pond canoe ride....which might explain why I stepped on said log without looking too close. I'm sure there would've been bees around it. ¯(ツ)_/¯

I once tried to jump over a big garbage container that was, ehhm.. how do i put it? It was sort of under ground, but with no roof next to a staircase. (It was build in a small hill, sort of) But i missed it and fell into it. My whole back was one big scraping wound. Very painful for weeks :(

Came off my bike when I was about 6 or 7, scratched my elbow...not stitches bad but bad enough. Still got the scar.

Take your pick:

3 years old I took a corner to fast at Mervins and almost took out my right eye on a glass shelf, 2 stitches.

6 years old I tried to do a backwards wheelie on my bike by jamming my foot in the front fork… while going down hill and carrying a load of oranges in my shirt. Went right over the handlebars, came to a stop on my chin. 13 stitches.

[…] I really wanted a broken arm, so people could sign my cast, but I never quite managed to break anything.

Tried to stop a garage door of close up and broke my arm.

Absolutely lame, but age 12 I remember the worst most intense pain I ever felt was sitting on my own thumb after pulling a wooden stool towards me - crushed it right on the edge corner and it was so intense.

Way more painful than the time I got a drawing pin (thumbtack) half embedded in my heel, impaled my wrist on a set square, or winded myself falling chest-first off a skateboard.

I've been pretty lucky/sensible

My parents had a caravan when I was like 4 years old. Ran into it full speed, hit my head hard. I had an anger attack because blood was coming out of my head, my parents got a heart attack because of all the blood.

Another one would be when I found out I needed glasses. At school, at the gym class, we were playing around as a warming up.

I ran after a ball, and hit one of those horizontal bars you can do tricks on. Full speed, nose first. That hurt for a couple of days. Spent the rest of the class holding my nose closed because I was bleeding a lot.

I broke my wrist sledding in the winter. Because I grew up in a rural area I had to wait 8 hours for a surgeon to come to the hospital I went to.

Made an awkward turn while playing and had a knee subluxation. Brief agony until I "popped" it back in and insisted I was fine. Limped around for the rest of the day, hurt for the rest of the week. For several years after, it would randomly happen again, though less severe, quicker to recover, and less frequent between incidents. Didn't bother to get it checked out since I heard any significant knee surgery would take me out of commission for some months. I'm still not sure if I'm completely over it yet. God forbid it happens to me on the stairs

A flowerpot fell on my head when I was little, on my forehead.
The thing is, I don’t remember this ever happening. There’s a photo of me with a giant bandage, and I still have a scar in the form of some dented skin. But I can’t recall anything from that time.
Maybe it’s because I was like 2 or 3 years old or something. But I find it a little bit unsettling that my memory is a blank.

I've probably hurt myself worse, but one memory that stands out is me crawling around in a bush, getting my pants stuck and then losing my grip so I turn upside down with my head in a bunch of stinging nettles.

When I was 8 I tried to climb a cupboard, like 1 or 2 meters tall, fell on my back, had one of those fiction moments when time is too slow and I had to experience double pain, I couldn't speak, move, and it was hard to breath.

Parents told me I'm the cause of all their problems.

Worst I hurt myself: Older, much larger cousin broke my leg by landing on it in a bouncy castle.

Injury that pissed me off the most: At 13, I loved jiujitsu and rock climbing above all else. At my last jiujitsu class before going to California to, among other things, go bouldering in Joshua Tree, I sliced my heel badly on the metal bottom of the dojo door that had about an inch and a half of clearance from the floor.

Shoes in general, let alone those super-tight climbing shoes, were out of the question for two weeks. I'm still mad. Of all the ways I could've got hurt, it was the fucking door on the way out that took me down.

Went over a jump in my bike (not motorized). Got a nice amount of air time. Lost the bike. Bike went side ways. I was spread eagle over the bike. My nuts hit the something hard.

My chest hit the handle bars. Caved the chest a bit.