First ever self inflicted DIY fail...
Trying to drill sideways aged about 11 and with zero parental supervision. The drill bit ended up tangled in my pants and cutting my thigh.
Most upsetting injury, holding onto a gatepost at primary school when someone unexpectedly jumped on the steel gate, swung on it, slammed it against the railings behind and the hinge side 'crimped' the end of my finger off. A blunt edge, through the finger.
Luckily, it was hanging off by the skin on the other side so I could find it and it could be stitched back on, but it still annoys me now, well over a decade later. Guitar strings dig into the bone harder than they do on the others. And seeing your finger hanging off with blood spewing everywhere at that age is a memorable experience. The adrenaline rush from it was absolutely fearsome. It felt like I was dreaming.
That was someone else's DIY fail, and I should have really made a compo claim for that. I don't think the lad that did it even got told off for swinging on the gates.
Reminds me of that episode of Bottom, where Richard Richard has his finger cut off and later you see him with it back on at some ridiculous angle with a white bandage wrapped around it.
Also makes me very well aware of the extra caution that needs taking around kids. "What if they get hold of a screwdriver and try undoing .... e.g. earth bonding... needs hiding".
Getting injured at young age helps develop character. I now handle things to do with chemistry that the students and regular staff at universities are worried about or not allowed to touch, things the explode on contact with the air or rot your brain to mush in microscopic quantities.
These last few days I've been stripping the bathroom. I was using a big hammer drill to chisel off the tiles / lath and ceiling and a crowbar to get the rest down. There is a 30 amp breaker 6mm cable in the ceiling that used to go to an electric shower, which not only didn't work for years, but has been off the wall for years. I flicked all the breakers in the line off and got going. Everyone knew I was working on that. Because the drill creates a massive amount of noise and there was around a metric ton of sh1te coming out in a continuous stream of buckets. I went blacker than a black guy in about an hour from the soot under the plaster from the old coal fires.
I came back from a sandwich, looked at the pull cord, and the light was back on. I was genuinely quite lost for words. Someone had flicked all the breakers back on. AND, the breaker connected to something extremely dangerous that hadn't even been used for at least 5 years. The breaker is also labeled 'Shower' and there has only ever been a shower in that room. Simple logic, john is in that room, it says shower on here, he's hammering through the ceiling where that cable is, I don't even need it on... but I'll flick it on anyway.
I now put adhesive stickers over the box covers with "LEAVE!" on them in red board marker, and an A3 note in read pen saying "DO NOT TOUCH ANY OF THIS!" under that (A3 covers all the switches). So they need to tear the sticker to even get the box open, where they find another red pen note. I've even put tape over the switches under that.
Not all kids are small.
"FINGERS!"