outside looking for more corn cobs | Let's see.....
-As a little kid I went on a sharpening spree, sharpening everything I could find on a sharpening stone. Cut my finger pretty bad when a chisel slipped and gouged my finger. That was 20+ years ago, and I can still see the scar with my arm completely stretched out. Mom wanted stitches, but I talked her out of it with dad's help.
-Before I cut my finger (don't remember exactly how long before), Dad was helping be practice catching a baseball in the yard. He threw the ball up (pop fly) and it happened to go directly between me and the sun. I saw it just before it caught me in the mouth. No teeth lost, but had a pretty bad cut on my lip that took stitches.
-A few years later I rode head long on my bike into a Radio Flyer wagon loaded with rocks and asphalt chips. I landed chest first in the wagon. Had bruises for a whole from that one.
-Then when I learned to weld, I was doing some oxy-acetylene work on the ground, when I decided to take a break. I flipped my rod around so the hot end was facing away from me and it caught my leg. Luckily it was hot enough to cauterize the boo-bo so it didn't bleed. That took weeks to heal because it was in the crease of my knee.
-Sometime later I had a HUGE ball of slag (like, bowling ball size, it felt like) from an arc welder go up over my helmet, past my hat (which was on backwards to prevent this from happening), and down inside my shirt. I heard it sizzle the hair as it rolled down my back. when it hit my waist, it stuck due to my belt, so it sat there and smouldered. I jumped up which instantly pressed the glowing ball of molten metal harder into my back. By the time I got to an area I could drop my pants, the metal had cooled and stuck pretty deep in my back. It may still be there to this day for all I know.
-we had an old A/C wd that I was hauling seed to the field with when it died in the barnyard. It was a little piece of rust in the fuel bowl, again. So I cleaned it out, got it all back together and reached over to hit the starter. Now we had converted this tractor to 12v, but it was still a 6v starter (didn't take long to start). Sometimes the rust had a brother flake that you couldn't get to until you cranked a little bit, so I didn't bother to get in the seat this time. Unfortunately that was not the case, the engine started immediately, and I realized 4 things:
1. I forgot to leave the hand clutch disengaged
2. I forgot to leave the shifter in neutral
3. I had left the throttle just more than half way open
4. Being in front of the L rear tire trapped between the tractor frame on the R and a gravity wagon on the L is not a good thing when the tractor starts moving.
All of this I realized in about .00002 seconds and started running. I finally got clear of the wagon and tractor, then had to catch it before it ran through the neighbor's garage 150 feet away. I was extremely careful about neutral, clutches, and closing throttles after that.
-I was messing with old model air plane engines one time, spinning them with my finger because I didn't have an electric starter. well, one engine was particularly hard to start and took a lot of hand spinning to get it going. I'd been at it for a while when it finally caught and died. Unfortunately, it caught once more just as I stuck my finger out to the prop to spin it again. The prop smacked 3 of my fingers in it's arc, cutting 2 of them. I probably should have had a stitch or two in one of the fingers, but it was late in the evening and I had a bunch of stuff to do the next day.
-One summer I worked in a foundry that made grey iron & ductile castings. On the shake & break out line I ended up pouring glowing sand down my arm where it collected in the crook of my elbow. That was a nasty burn. It didn't heal at all that summer because it was constantly being broke open. Every evening I'd clean it real good so it didn't get infected, but it wasn't until school started up again and I could baby that arm that it finally healed. It didn't scar which really surprised me, but it itches when I get exceptionally sweaty or get a good sunburn on that spot.
-Lately I lit my pants on fire while welding. It was the smell of burning denim that alerted me that something was wrong. Thank God for good boots.
A boss I used to work for embedded a utility knife blade completely up to the handle in his knee while putting in some carpet. He used a towel and duct tape to stop the blood and finished the day. Every time he used the kicker, though, he said he thought just chopping the leg off so he had a good enough to be taken to the hospital. His rule was, if it's not disabling, you finish out the day. And that went for everybody, including himself.
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It's never good when...
