Childhood injuries (as a result of games/playing)

[gbb]

Childhood games got me thinking...
Playing cowboys and indians, we had all the gear, plastic rifles, tassled waistcoats, cowboy hats...we decided one day to play it with out hats pulled over our eyes (like being blind )
I went steaming after someone....and ran head first straight into the corner of a brick wall. Split my head open like a melon

Exploring...we broke into an old bricked up air raid shelter on the airbase. The place was dotted with them. Hacked out enough bricks to squeeze into a pitch black void. Absolutely pitch black. I was stumbling around in this echo'y blackness when...WHAM !! and lighting bolts of light in my eye. I'd stood on a piece of metal which whipped up, rake style straight into my eye. Still got the scar on my eyelid now..40 years later.

Banana Boats...those hulking great swings that sat 6 or 8 people and swung like a fairground ride. I'd stand at one end, grab the rear seat and push, giving it more and more momentum. As it did so, it got higher, you'd still grab the seat, it'd pull you up maybe 10 feet in the air, down again and push as you landed. Keep doing that....till i misjudged it and the iron seat hit my forehead as it passed upwards. Still got the scar...

Spears...we used to make about 5 or 6 foot long spears from Willow i think, and have javelin competitions. Someone'd be at the other end to throw them back..on this day, my brother. I sailed one through the air....it landed just above his knee., and he hobbled about with it still sticking in him. 'We' (me) agreed not to tell mum...you just fell over . 1 week later it was full of puss, mum put a poultice on it and eventually a load of wood splinters came out .

Guy i used to work with was raised in Germany pre WW2. He had some terrific scarring on his hands. I asked him how it happened. They used to play with detonators they put on railway tracks to alert workers or whatever. You know the rest...

 

[Night Train]

At primary school we played trains. Kids hanging onto each others coat tails in a long train racing around the playground being dragged in all directions by the 'engine' at the front.

I was in such a train that decided to zigzag through the RSJs supporting the steel fire escape staircase that went though the playground and I got pulled into one of the RSJ columns. Massive cut on the side of my head and concussion from headbutting the steelwork at full pelt.


My only go on the 'witch's hat' at the park resulted in me being flicked off at speed and as I stood up I was hit under the jaw by the hat on its return swing and then again on the back as I tried to stand up again.

 

[Bman]

The explosives one reminds me of one of mine:

We used to make "penlid bangers" out of caps (tiny explosive charges) for toy guns and old pen lids. Myself and a mate were trying to repair a dud banger, when it went off in our hands! I still remember how it seemed to happen in super slow motion. Luckily neither of us were injured.

 

[fossyant]

Hmmm, had I been young today, my folks would have been under investigation these days. (my mates two lads are always getting injuries - breaks etc from football, they play it everywhere)

I've............


Got run-over by a milk float at the age of 3, I got away with it, my cart thing didn't.

Chasing young sister in dining room round and round the table at about 5, slipped and split my eye lid open on the 'sideboard' - good 1 inch gash - still there today (I'm 41 now). Stitches and some were left in.

Playing with mate at about 7/8 years old, back of his house (on a banking) - old fashioned old washing machine tumbled down (small single tub thing - why did we put it up at the top of the hill ? ) and glanced me on my head..... hurt a fair bit, but carried on playing... shouted to come home, head was itchy, itched it, one hand full of blood, ran home screaming, another 5 stitches in head.

Knocked out cold at school - full concussion and a hospital stay (about 11 or 12) - in playground by a good mate.

I could carry on.......... I was, and still am a night mare................

 

[longers]

We went sliding on the mud on the shore and my cousin complained of a pain in his posterior, my aunt told him to stop faffing and get on with it.
After a couple of hours we went home and washed all the estuary mud off and he ended up having four stitches in his cheek and was lucky not to have caught something nasty.

 

[Night Train]

When my big brother was about 9 he was playing swinging on the living room door standing on the door knobs. one of the bakerlite knobs broke and as he fell down the sharp broken end of the knob gouged into his thigh.
The wound was about 10" long and right down to the bone.

I still remember his friend trying to hold his thigh together as I was trying to work out whether to get the first aid kit or our parents downstairs in the shop. I opted for the parent in the end as, being 7, I could only work plasters and there weren't any big enough.

 

[TheDoctor]

Nuerous scrapes and cuts from various things. The most dramatic was when I managed to scrape most of the skin off my upper arm stacking a 3 speed bike on a skatepark.
I was 18 at the time...
I have since gone round a skatepark on a Brommie, but without injury.
My dad thought I was insane.
That was last summer.

 

[longers]

Knocked out cold at school - full concussion and a hospital stay (about 11 or 12) - in playground by a good mate.

I did this trying to somersault backwards over a bench in the playground. Fail.

And again in the swimming pool. Fail.

I might get third time lucky but am not chancing it.

 

[ColinJ]

Er, I was once idly staring at a woman's bottom from close range and thinking how perfect it was (as you do!), when I noticed something strange just under the skin. With the aid of a magnifying glass, tweezers and a pin, I performed emergency buttock surgery and extracted an inch long splinter.

It turned out that as a young girl she had once played on a damaged wooden playground slide. The result was a bottom's worth of splinters and the humiliation of having to ask her parents to pull them out.

They had missed that one. Wood preservative had stopped it rotting and it had remained there undetected for 35 years!

 

[Ravenbait]

I was banned from playing ball games by our local casualty department when I was about 10, I think.

I've got so many scars the only time I've been beaten in a Lethal Weapon style comparison competition was when I was up against a guy who'd been stabbed seven times.


Sam

 

[XmisterIS]

I came off my mountain bike when I was about 14 straight into a barbed wire fence.

Result? Fence 1 - XmisterIS 0

 

[MrGrumpy]

Hmm back in the day when BMX came to this country hmm 1980 ish I thought I was the bees knees until I got a bit too much air on the table top and cleared the down ramp. Result trip to A&E for stiches into the side of my hip.

 

[Globalti]

We had a games teacher at school who shoved a pal of mine backwards so hard that he staggered into a cast-iron coat hook which snapped, gouging a hole in his scalp. We could see white through the hole, either bone or scalp. Dunno how he got away with that really but it was a private school in the sixties.

 

[subaqua]

pushed thumb into a hole in iron gate , it got stuck so when i pulled it out it ripped all the skin off.

made a "slur" on the ice in the school playground and i went sliding down it , reached the end and stopped abruptly, physics said No and I ended up landing on shoulder and dislocating it. for years i used to be able to pop it in and out as a sick party trick.

playing in old air raid shelters/ ex MOD buildings on Broughton airfield (Hawarden Airport) I jumped down some stairs landed on a plank of wood with a nail sticking through it. Nail went in the bottom of my shoe, threough foot and out other side.

but the award for stupidity goes to my brother, who aged 14 wondered if he could risde his bike with his eyes shut. He hit a parked car and the razor sharp pedal edge hit his calf and sliced it open like a sausage. the o0nly time i ever saw my mum faint from an injury sustained by one of us

 

[dellzeqq]

I endured seven years of pain (sometimes slight, sometimes crippling) and lost my left kneecap as a result of a childhood fall on a garden path. Go figure.

Then again, I've been carted off to hospital six times as a result of (adult) cycling crashes, so perhaps I'm just a bit careless.