Share your greatest achievements!

The other day, I cross-threaded a cap on a pill bottle. 

I stuck a sharpened stick through my left hand. 
 

A few weeks later, I stuck a ball point pen through my left hand. 
 

Same hole. 

David S. Wallens said:

The other day, I cross-threaded a cap on a pill bottle. 

Those must be some really good pills!

So far, one of my worst was getting a temporary rorschach test tattoo on my leg when I spilled miracle paint on my pants.  (this is similar to POR15).  Thankfully, it was going into fall, so I wasn't going to wear shorts anytime soon.

Once I stood on the back frame of my friend's go-kart to get a ride down the street (we were 17).  So the guy floors it, I'm throw off in a standing position and my legs had to keep up running at 20mph.  Which I was doing. Until this damn telephone pole jumped up in front of me.   My trajectory would have had my head bashing into the pole.  I had the presence of mind to realize this would be bad and used my hands to push away.  But my left arm ended up being the pivot point and my right hand doing the pushing away.     The pain was not horrible but I definitely was losing the ability to move my arm.    I drove home.  My arm started swelling up.   I told my dad and he asked me what happened.   I told him and he tells me I told you not to hang around with that kid.  I said I need to go to the emergency room.   He told me too bad, its not my problem.     My grandpa overheard the conversation and told me he would bring me.     (Grandpa was and always will be my hero). 

Anyway it turned out I had a split of whats called the radial head.    So I had a cast on my left arm, I'm left handed, school work became a problem because we wrote everything back then, I went to Senior Prom with the cast on my arm,  and my dad sued the kid's parents for my medical bills.

My first house was bought with a Rural Development mortgage, which had a whole list of requirements that needed to be completed shortly after closing. One issue was there could be no peeling paint. 
 

This was an old home, with double hung wood frame windows & storm windows over the outside. Unfortunately the peeling paint was on the outside of the double hung window, but underneath the storm window. These windows had been repainted multiple times, and I couldn't figure out any way to get them open from the inside. So I was left with the option of removing the storm window from the outside. 
 

All was going well as I removed the screws around the storm window & started gently prying the frame loose. Until the top pane of the storm window cracked diagonally & fell out, like a guillotine, striking my right wrist. 

Interestingly, blood actually does spurt out like they show on horror movies. 

I got the Bowling High Handicap Score in Summer School PE.

Still not sure if I was being made fun of or not.

I once managed to back my then girlfriend's (now wife's) car into the only tree in the middle of an empty grass field.

I dumped my giant craftsman socket set all over my lawn. couple hundred pieces. Yesterday i decided to finally reorganize it, as it had been sitting in a bucket. 

I got 3/4 way through the sort and replace and dumped it all over my living room floor.

David S. Wallens said:

The other day, I cross-threaded a cap on a pill bottle. 

Child proof cap?

Colin Wood said:

I once managed to back my then girlfriend's (now wife's) car into the only tree in the middle of an empty grass field.

When I was 7 or 8 my dad let me drive the tractor after he was done mowing, in the big 1+ acre empty field. I followed his lines, until it came time to go around the only tree in that part of the yard. I managed to slice into it with the output side of the deck in such a way that we had to pull the tractor out with the truck. 

Same tree, about 10 years later. I was mad about something, so I took my baseball bat out to smash things to maybe feel better. Smacked the tree, and the bat bounced back right into my forehead. There's still a little lump there now, 20 years later. 

Sure, I'll give a third one. When I was around 4 I put my hand flat on an orange burner on the stove. Not 6 months later, I was reaching to get something off the counter, put the same hand on the same burner. In my defense it wasn't orange that time, but it was still hot I found out. 

Between times touching the burner, I also touched the top of the wood burner. While it was in use. With the same hand. 

I'm kinda surprised I have any feeling in my left hand at all as an adult.

Recently? 

- Putting the valve cover back on the S2000 after replacing spark plug grommets and valve cover gasket. I was on a work call and not paying 100% attention to what I was doing. I've done this task 100s of times between race car and my time as a Honda tech. I grabbed a ignition coil bolt instead of a valve cover bolt and it snapped off into the cam cap stem in sticks into. 

- I failed at backing it out with a left handed bit and snapped off the carbon steel extractor bit into it as well. 

- Remove valve cover, go through the tedious task of loosening the 20 cam cap bolts in sequence as to not damage the valve train by just removing one cam cap bolt, remove the cap bolt/stem with the carnage it it, put the new one in, go through the tightening sequence, as I go to torque the last one, it snaps off in the head. 

- By some miracle it wasn't a clean snap and I was able to get all of it out. I'm not waiting for a complete replacement of cam cap bolts along with a new torque wrench. 

- All of this could have been avoided had I just you know, paid attention and put the right bolt in the right hole. 

Here's another DOH! moment. We purchased a junkyard engine for the Champcar. We also take the head off to inspect things. Well someone put some serious cash into the engine as it was an H22 with mid-wet Darton sleeves and 12:1 pistons in it, sitting in a junkyard Prelude that we got for $600. Not thinking, I ordered a headgasket to match the piston size but not the type of sleeves. Start the car and coolant is pouring into all 4 combustion chambers. Apparently you need a special head gasket for that type of sleeve on those engines. No damage was done but an easily avoidable issue. 

I dumped my motorcycle. Mangled the shifter. Rode it home shifting jockey style.

Making my better half happy?

I've been slacking on the car stuff. I have an unhealthy desire to get a truck and do something ridiculous. 

I just banged my knee off a hand rail killing a spotted lantern fly. Knights of Columbus that hurt! 

When I was 18 or 19 I put a tube of super glue in my front pocket and managed to glue my pocket to my upper thigh and sack.  I had to very, very carefully trim the pocket off of my body, and because I was young, broke, and really liked that pair of pants, I continued wearing them for years with a big hole in one pocket.

When I told my dad about what I had done I thought he was going to die laughing.  Turns out he had done the exact same thing when he was young.

Clearing my yard (ignored for decades by the very old PO) pulling up saplings, whacking weeds and trying to smooth things out, I had a few beers.

Peed in the woods.

Got Poison Ivy where no one wants it!!   It was a long 2 week healing process, she wouldn't even hug me =~ (

After reading the title but not the subsequent posts, I figured that I could answer the question with two words: my marriage.

If we're looking for a continuation of avoidable self inflicted injuries, that's going to be a longer list. I'll pick one, not sure it was avoidable.

First, some background.

We were in winter training at the former Ben White Raceway in Orlando. I was working as a groom, caring for a pair of three year old stud colts.

The pacing colt was brother to multiple fast horses, all of whom had to be gelded as yearlings as they were too dangerous to be handled. This colt wasn't as bad, but you still had to be really cautious around him.

The trotting colt was a handful, but while he might hurt you playing around, he wasn't mean. I was his groom the year before, and we really liked each other.

The pacing colt had picked up a bad habit of digging holes in his stall. The floor of the stalls were a thick layer of red clay, with sawdust for bedding. I prided myself on how clean I kept my stalls, so after he had stopped the digging for a couple of weeks, I stripped all of the sawdust and dirt out of the stall (multiple heavy wheelbarrow loads), including the 3 foot deep trenches the colt had dug. The trenches were filled in with the red clay one extemely heavy wheelbarrow load at a time, followed by multiple loads of fresh sawdust. This took hours, used up nearly all of my midday break, and I was really stiff and sore by the end.

I had a little time left before afternoon feed time, so I ran out for some lunch, and made the mistake of parking in front of my stalls to eat. This was a  change in routine, since normally I would park there and get out of the car for feed time. Since I pulled up and stayed in the car, the pacing colt got frustrated, and dug a massive hole in the front of his stall.

When I got out of my car and saw the damage, I decided I better just take care of the other colt first. I went around and opened the other colt's gate, hooking it open with a bungee. He would always come at me, playing around and trying to bite me when I would first come into the stall, so I had to keep all of my focus on him. Because of that, I didn't notice the three foot hole he had also dug inside the door until I fell into it. Now I'm on the ground, face down with my head about two feet off the floor, and with the horse over top of me.

Multiple thoughts of what might happen next flashed through my mind. I could get bitten, trampled or kicked, and my horse could get loose, and end up injured or dead if he got out on the highway.

He is coming fast, I'm barely above the level of his feet, and he's diving in to get a bite of me, probably my face. My first reaction was to protect myself, so I turned sideways, hooked my right hand in his halter, and came up with a left uppercut so hard that I backed him up into the stall. I broke my hand, and figured I got off lucky.

I was honest about how it happened, and the people on the track understood, but anyone else reacted like I was beating up a puppy.

I've punched myself in the face more than random fights.

1. Pulling weeds I was walking and stepped on a rake wracking that handle into my head. 

2. Rear drum brakes and springs using the wrong tool it slipped punching my fist full force into my face.  Engineer coworker thought the story was so funny at lunch he went and bought me the right tool.  

3. Drinking and I tried weed (LOL) for the first time we were running and chasing each other at the Gravelrama campground and I ran my nose onto my buddies big lifted truck tailgate.  Swore off drinking Yukon Jack that day.

Datsun310Guy said:

I've punched myself in the face ....

First Auto-X in a 914, lost it, couldn't find wheel center, grabbed 2 o'clock and whipped it in the right direction.

Worked, car was fine, I couldn't finish as my eyes were watering from slapping myself in th nuts!