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

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

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.

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.

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

Climbed a tree, tried to jump to the next tree. Failed. Fortunately, I snagged a wasp nest on the way down. Nothing broken, anaphylaxis. Not breathing sucks. (I lived.)

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 :(

Slipped getting out of the bath when I was about 12. My foot hit one of the metal poles supporting the sink, with my little toe going one side and the rest of my foot the other. My foot tore on impact, leaving my little toe hanging off.

I bandaged it up, and kept changing the bandage when it was soaked through with blood and it eventually stopped bleeding. I have a scar on my foot, but other than that no lasting damage.

I was 11 or so, on holiday, went horseback riding wearing shorts and thin socks. They set up my stirrups too low and as I held on to the saddle for dear life, one stirrup kept bouncing on my ankle for the entire afternoon.

My thighs chafed pretty bad, and I got an open wound on my ankle about the size of those souvenir pressed oval coins. I don’t know what my dad was thinking, but he treated my wound with some cream and then wrapped my whole calf in plastic wrap every day for about a week.

The wound turned into an ulcer, I couldn’t walk without limping. I had all these little pockets of pus on the edges which my dad had me squeeze to try and make them smaller. It did nothing except be painful.

I eventually went home to my mom - a nurse - who took one look at my leg and rushed me to a doctor.

The doctor then proceeded to vigorously clean my wound before dressing it. It felt like hot barbed wire, that really sucked.

I still have the oval scar on my ankle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Launched the biggest rock I could lift with my little 6 year old arms above my head for reasons unknown. I don’t remember the rest, but my dad took me to the ER and was really nervous because he thought they’d accuse him of violence or something. He just turned around for five seconds and I was a stupid kid throwing rocks at tin cans for fun.

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.