My daughter's met up with her school friend, both back from Uni. Her friend's second year at Med school and has been doing some GP shadowing - and had someone in this term with difficulty hearing and a painful ear.
On enquiring, he'd been pressure washing his patio and...... yep. Wondered what it would feel like.
In their defence, though i was a kid at the time. I wondered how long it took an electric cooker ring to heat up to the point i had to snatch my finger off it when set on full.
Lets just say it was pretty damn quick to go from cold to badly burned finger.
Your ring finger presumably?
and had someone in this term with difficulty hearing and a painful ear.
I need to know the context, were they teens/twenties* or old enough to have definitely known better?!😁
* Guessing it was a bloke (come on, we all know it was) and only partially developed frontal lobes etc etc at that age.
Oh, come on, anything is a butt plug if you're brave enough....
Middle aged man apparently. She was so close to bursting out laughing
Seen a photo of someone's finger you did something similar with their jetwasher. It was pretty mangled 🤮
I once got so fascinated by the pretty shadows being cast by my wheel reflectors as they spun, that I rode straight into a parked car at about 20mph.
My local council is overwhelmingly Labour, but my MP is a conservative.
Makes you think.
Had an ex who was an A&E doc who told me how many Willy (not the EastEnders dog) related mishaps she has to deal with was Darwinesq
I've got similar stories from a paramedic friend of mine.
Oh, come on, anything is a butt plug if you’re brave enough…
It's quite amazing how many people walk around the house naked and fall backwards onto things. Seems to happen a lot while hoovering. 😳
I got jet washed in the eye once, Jesus it hurt like hell!
My ex wash jet washing the car at a garage while I was sat in it. Wound down the window a touch to say something, and she turned to speak to me, pointing the jet wash at my face as she did. It was absolutely agony and I could hardly see out of one eye ot was so swollen and watering and we had to wait for ages for it to settle enough for me to drive 15miles home as she couldn't drive.
PM of a GP practice - All our pat enquiries are online, I sometimes get the job of the basic triage that the reception team do (what needs to be seen on the day, what can wait etc etc) and trust me, you would not believe what the public will do to themselves. I have to constantly remind myself that some of these folks are apparently functioning adults with jobs, children...
Best not post this on a small pets forum
Save it for mumsnet
"Just rolled in" on utube
You know in cartoons when someone stands on a garden rake. Well it turns out it really does smack you really hard in the face.
PM of a GP practice – All our pat enquiries are online, I sometimes get the job of the basic triage that the reception team do (what needs to be seen on the day, what can wait etc etc) and trust me, you would not believe what the public will do to themselves. I have to constantly remind myself that some of these folks are apparently functioning adults with jobs, children…
I’ve heard some of them will balance on top of some metal tubes linked to a couple of wheels in an inherently unstable configuration and try to stay on it whilst hurtling down a hill. Apparently some of them try to justify this burden on the state by saying it’s good for both mental and physical health. Grown adults; Behaving like children.
I got jet washed in the eye once, Jesus it hurt like hell!
I had a "mate" at high-school who liked to surprise people by yelling out their name and then throwing a ball at their head so it smacked them in the face. He did it to me once with one of those huge rubber bands from about three feet away. Got me right in the eye. ****ing hilarious, apparently.
Being the creative type as a pre secondary school with sensible parents who didn't let their children play with weapons. I decided it would be good to build a cross bow out of Lego. It worked brilliantly, firing bits of Lego across the room. Until a Lego technic steering wheel got stuck on the elastic band and released itself
That lost half my post. Steering wheel hit me in the eye, trip to the docs, half my face covered in iodine my to my embarrassment
Since this seems an opportunity to fess up to stupid behaviour, I'll join in.
As a fairly small child, I got hold of a packet of Swan Vesta matches, the non-safety type. Had the bright idea of scratching the tip off one with my thumbnail. You can guess the rest... it certainly smarts. Ah well, we learn much by childhood experiences.
On a family holiday (not just my folks and sister, but all 7 aunts plus 23 cousins) I had the amazing idea of trying to walk on water by putting the swim arm bands on my ankles and jumping into the pool.
I nearly drowned and had to be rescued.
My aunts will often remind me 30 odd years later.
Was a memorable lesson is physics.
There was a fairly tall fir tree growing on a slope near where I grew up. It was great fun to run down the slope towards it and then jump as high as you could into the branches. These would gentle bounce you back down to the ground and you fell from branch to branch.
Then one of the gang, let's call him WCA, decided it would be a great idea to climb to the top of the tree and jump from up there. It was only about 50-60ft tall so what could possibly go wrong?
It turns out that the branches near the top point upwards more so that instead of cushioning you on the foliage, they roll you back towards the tree trunk where there is no soft foliage, just scratchy little brush wood and a few big, hard branches.
Falling 50 feet through scratching fir branches is an effective way of lacerating the skin across the entire body whilst the big branches you hit will successfully break 5 - 6 ribs. Neither the doctors nor my parents really believed that I was 'just riding along' and hit the tree as I tried to explain the circumstances of the injury.
Sugar soap does not contain sugar, or taste very nice.
I also had a fascination with mums pressure cooker , and desperately wanted to open it whilst it was hissing away. My mum told me a horror story about someone who died to ensure that I didn't. I still want to open one though.
I once put my finger in a light socket to see if it was on.
An ex of mine had a lad that was about 10 from memory. I took him out "mountain biking" and at the bottom of a long hill thought I would amaze him with my knowledge of physics. I said to touch his rear rotor and he promptly grabbed it. Poor little sod had a perfect red imprint of the rotor on his hand instantly.
I very sheepishly had to call his mum to come pick him up as he couldn't hold the handlebar properly. Amazingly we are all still friends and he went on to become an airline pilot.
He doesn't seem to think my physics lesson helped in that achievement at all though which seems a little ungrateful.
Wondered how long it would take WCA to appear on the thread
Our farm yard entrance is about 100 yards up the road from the farmhouse, as young lads me and my brother would often sit on the boot edge with the tailgate up (Subaru estate) legs dangling, one day I thought I could jump out and run in the opposite direction, cue me sitting at the table with my Gramdma and Aunties picking bits of gravel out my face with tweezers for the next hour or so.
At a stag day out quad biking one of the older guys rolled his quad at a simple obstacle at the safety briefing luckily only winding himself
Lost his £50 as he didn't get to participate but it also meant the organisers used the black flag too often but they were ignored. It was great fun taking them to their limits
On a family holiday (not just my folks and sister, but all 7 aunts plus 23 cousins) I had the amazing idea of trying to walk on water by putting the swim arm bands on my ankles and jumping into the pool.
I nearly drowned and had to be rescued.
I did that also. Not to 'walk on water' but because I realised that when trying to swim it was the back half of me that sank the most.
There's a steep cobbled side street near my old house that's sometimes used as a shortcut to the larger road at the bottom from the top road, to save time from driving a bit further around.
Well, one cold and icy morning I was out de-icing my car and I saw someone decide to attempt to drive down it.
'Oh no..' I said under my breath when i noticed them. You guessed it, they lost grip pretty much imediatley and became a passenger as thier car slowly pinballed down, bouncing off several parked cars in the process.
Driver was fine as it was pretty slow, but inevitable. Bet that one was fun filling out the insurance claim form!
Don't put sugary treats in the toaster.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/marks-spencer-hot-cross-buns-toaster-b2521238.html
Don’t put sugary treats in the toaster.
Ha! Place I used to work in the centre of town had a little family cafe just around the corner, so it became a regular thing for people to pop round to buy snacks for mid morning. There were the obvious things like fried egg sandwiches and buns, but microwaved jam donuts were very popular too.
It was very quickly learned how much the centre resembles a thermonuclear reactor. “Ok, just bite the side opposite the hole the jam’s squirted in through…” “Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!” As it squirted out of the hole straight onto your fingers. The blisters took some time to heal… 😖
It was very quickly learned how much the centre resembles a thermonuclear reactor.
Back when I was a student, I had a flatmate who was probably the most talkative person I've ever met, she would just go on for hours (luckily, she had a boyfriend who was the opposite, he would just sit there silently for hours while she nattered on.) Anyway, one evening she came home late and hungry and decided to microwave a boiled egg from the fridge. Of course, when she bit into it, the middle was boiling hot and exploded into her mouth. I had to drive her down to the hospital for emergency attention, her mouth was so badly scalded that she couldn't talk for about a week. Apart from the embarrassment of having done something really stupid, I think the worst thing for her was not being able to talk. Poor thing, the look of misery on her face haunts me to this day.
Decided to install a friend's new washing machine for her while she was out, nice surprise to come home to a job already done. Neither her boyfriend nor I knew where the stopcock was so we decided that if we the put the two washing machines next to each other, and swapped the hose over really quickly not that much water would come out.
In reality about that much (holds finger and thumb apart to demonstrate the depth of water on the kitchen floor) came out, it's quite tricky to get a hose spraying mains pressure water out of it to attach to another washing machine.
andrewh
Free Member
Decided to install a friend’s new washing machine for her while she was out, nice surprise to come home to a job already done. Neither her boyfriend nor I knew where the stopcock was so we decided that if we the put the two washing machines next to each other, and swapped the hose over really quickly not that much water would come out.In reality about that much (holds finger and thumb apart to demonstrate the depth of water on the kitchen floor) came out, it’s quite tricky to get a hose spraying mains pressure water out of it to attach to another washing machine.
I actually find that story beautiful in it's optimism!
The washing up bowl we had positioned between the two machines to catch the inevitable spillage was overwhelmed somewhat more quickly than we anticipated, roughly in the first second to a second and a half I would guess
A nasty cub camp incident back in the late 70s. We used to cook on fires and also put the used tins on them too, presumably to burn the paper off them and make them easier to squash up.
Anyway one lad had put an old tin of treacle on with the lid on and then had taken it out to smash it up with a hammer. Got some really nasty burns on his face from red hot liquid treacle the splattered out.
In a similar vein me and my brother went to cook a tin of spaghetti on a fire on the tin. He didn't put a hole in it, so before long it exploded and showered us in spaghetti 😂 luckily we were unharmed 😁
We also played stupid game like get under the duvet before I can hit you with a dart 😄😂 I can still remember him being too slow and the dart hanging out his ribs 😂 luckily no real damage.
Anyone used to play 'knacker stretch'? Where you threw a sheath knife near each others feet to see if they could keep stretching to it?
We did no end of ridiculously stupid things when we were kids in the 70/80s out all day and all over the place. Was great!
I decided it would be good to build a cross bow out of Lego
Yeah.... I made myself a crossbow one school holidays, out of bits I found in the garage. Plastic curtain rail and a bungee cord mounted to a bit of 1" x 2", bolt made out of bamboo with some flights from an old dart.
The first test fire sent the bamboo-bolt clean-through a fence panel (albeit a cheap one). I was equally overjoyed and horrified - rather hastily took it to bits and returned the components to the garage.
Anyone used to play ‘knacker stretch’? Where you threw a sheath knife near each others feet to see if they could keep stretching to it?
Yes, we used to play that. We had a file that we stole from the engineering class with the handle pulled off instead of a knife. All was good until some idiot impaled his mate's foot with it. Teachers are such killjoys.
I made myself a crossbow one school holidays
We made scotch arrows, only using real arrows. Take the pile (point) off to leave basically a pencil-sharpenered wooden point, cut a notch behind the fletchings, bit of knotted string and off we go. From an elevated position in the park we were clearing the length a football pitch when as if by magic the groundskeeper appeared demanding to know where we'd hidden the bow.
Throwing arrows! Yeh we made them too with a stick or bit of bamboo and a bit of roof lead on the front to add weight and seeing how far we could chuck them on the park behind our houses. Reminds me I got a visit from the police because by some miracle I managed to hit an 'incomer ' friend on his eye socket. Total accident, but the 'incomer' family obviously didn't appreciate the local kids deadly games when he went home with a big cut and bruise next to his eye.🙄 I think the copper just told me to be more careful.
Reminds me with the knacker stretch.... We looked after each other! When one mate got the sheath knife in his foot another mate took a manky old plaster off a cut he had somewhere to put on the foot for him! All fixed 😂
Did youse put stones in snow balls too just for giggles? 😂
Me and a friend used to play a game in his dads garden.. we'd take turns with the air rifle, five pellets each or whatever and then swap, whilst the other one had a square of MDF or something which was a shield to avoid getting hit by said pellets.
Oh, and Meth-ball. Wed get a football or whatever, wrapt it tightly in whatever absorbant material we could find, drench it in meths and set it on fire.
Then kick it at each other. I don't recall there being any rules to that game other than trying not to get burned.
Snowballs - there was a pile of coke for the HEATING! in the corner of the playground (still on town gas until equivalent of P5) Lumps of that were put in the snowballs.
My primary school was some old Victorian thing with an open roofed toilet block in the middle of the playground (honestly I'm only 54!)
Anyway a few friends decided the fun thing would be to collect up empty crisp packets, take them in the toilets (big porcelain wall to pee against) and fill them with pee, fling them up over the walls shouting bombs away 😂😂😂
Cue a special assembly where they were all lined up and caned in front of the school. A proper whippy bamboo cane too. Ouch!
One of the apprentices in my year was off sick for a week then came back with an eye patch and some visible scratches on the face. Corneal abrasion apparently, could have lost the eye. Turns out he was screwing a bass box into his boot and using the screwdriver for extra leverage, when it slipped. *twice*. I'd like to believe the eye was the second time. But I'm probably wrong 🙂
I did the 'How hot is the fag lighter' in my folks car. Stunk the car out with burnt finger and flung the lighter. Mad panic to find said red hot lighter, then flung open all the doors whilst my mum was in the shop, so the car didn't stink of burnt flesh.
This is reminding me of loads of stupid things...
Chicken burns/scratches? I didn't do it but remember the craze maybe 1980 for scratching the back of your hand until the skin was scraped off and bled. What the **** was that all about?
Also mid '80s hyperventilating, then holding your breath and crouching down and a mate pressed on your chest and you passed out.
We made french arrows with explosive tips fabricated out of crushed Swan Vestas match heads. Filled a felt tip pen lid with the crushed match heads and then gently inserted a cut down match wrapped in the striking material from the side of the box. Attach to french arrow and launch. Fantastic!
Until my mate decided that it would be fun to launch into a mass of schoolboys leaving the local railway station. Christ knows what might have happened if it had hit someone.
My stepdad was brought up in Manchester during the Blitz. He used to collect the misfired bullets that he found.
His party trick was to remove the bullet from the cartridge and replace it with a bolt. He'd then place it upright inside the local public toilets in Salford? Hiding in the brick built cubicle he would reach over the top and drop a brick onto the bolt and BANG the thing would ricochet around the public toilet. Mental!
Later on in life he gained a PhD in chemistry and worked for a number of Blue Chip organisations.
He was always pyrotechnic mad and between us we blew up so much stuff in rural Essex in the mid seventies when sacks of fertiliser were easy to get, as was weedkiller.
Local to home were a number of WW2 airfields. One in particular had loads of ammunition in the ground that was brought to the surface whenever the place was ploughed. We must have collected hundreds of .5 and .303 rounds, many still intact.
It's possible for a 14 y.o. to pull the projectile out with care, empty the propellant and then put the cartridge into a vice. It's just as easy to hit the percussion cap with a nail and hammer.
How am I still alive? 😂
I'm now the union H&S rep too.
One of my university house mates (who may now be a professor) once got a little too curious as to what it would feel like to put his finger in the end of my stick blender. Having previously checked to see if he could use it to trim his beard. No alcohol was involved.
The cut to the end of his finger wasn’t too bad but unfortunately he had/has a habit of fainting if he sees blood. When he saw his finger he blacked out, smashed his face into the kitchen cabinets above the bench then fell backwards and cracked his head on the table behind him. Took longer for his face and concussion to recover than his finger did.
Can't believe nobody has mentioned filling crisp packets with Acetylene when learning oxy-accetylene welding as aprentices. Then sliding them beneath someone in the adjacent arc welder bay that was busy arc welding. Soon enough some spatter would land on the bag and ignite it.
Or filling a long drain pipe with a Oxy + A mix. Cling film or similar over the end. Same.
Instructors ran out the office and went apeship when it made the bang and blew stuff over.
Did youse put stones in snow balls too just for giggles? 😂
Yeah. But only for throwing them at pensioners.
His party trick was to remove the bullet from the cartridge and replace it with a bolt. He’d then place it upright inside the local public toilets in Salford? Hiding in the brick built cubicle he would reach over the top and drop a brick onto the bolt and BANG the thing would ricochet around the public toilet.
A similar thing is to take two bolts and a nut.
Screw the nut to the end of one bolt, then in the cavity you fill with black powder out a Hilti nailgun. You then screw the other bolt on and very carefully tighten
Then launch into the air and run for cover.
On a side note I once thought of a quicker way to get the gunpowder out a hilti cartridge. I decided sawing it with a hacksaw would be a quicker option. Needless to say that didnt end well and i got blown off my chair when it went off.
I'm going to remind you lot of this the next time we have a Sur-ron thread 😂
We used to play chucking darts at each other in the garden. The aim was not to hit each other, just to get it as close as possible into the ground and jump out of the way. This game stopped for good when my brother ended up with a dart stuck in his kneecap 🤣
Me and a friend used to play a game in his dads garden.. we’d take turns with the air rifle, five pellets each or whatever and then swap, whilst the other one had a square of MDF or something which was a shield to avoid getting hit by said pellets.
We did something similar with barley corns. One of you had the rifle. On Go you would break the rifle and try to load a barley corn and shoot your friend while they bolted as fast as possible. If you didn't hit them it was their turn to shoot.
I still have a scar from attempting to stab a tree with my first penknife in 1984. I'd only just got it after weeks of pestering my parents so had to hide my finger (wrapped in toilet paper) until it healed.
Chicken burns/scratches? I didn’t do it but remember the craze maybe 1980 for scratching the back of your hand until the skin was scraped off and bled. What the **** was that all about?
There was a thing in the 1980s where you took a match, blew it out and then stuck it perpendicular to the back of your hand. I still have a very faint scar mark.
Also mid ’80s hyperventilating, then holding your breath and crouching down and a mate pressed on your chest and you passed out.
There was a resurgence of that with the TikTok generation, wasn't there?
he had/has a habit of fainting if he sees blood.
Years back I worked with a guy like that, he once fainted because we'd been merely talking about blood. We were in an office as he was walking past the window a couple of minutes later and blacked out mid-stride. He went down like a dropped plank, vertical to horizontal like Del Boy through the bar only face first. We initially thought he was screwing about, until we saw how much blood comes out of a broken nose.
We used to play chucking darts at each other in the garden. The aim was not to hit each other, just to get it as close as possible into the ground and jump out of the way. This game stopped for good when my brother ended up with a dart stuck in his kneecap 🤣
I came up with the jolly wheeze of surreptitiously unscrewing the body from a dart, then throwing the harmless shaft & flight at someone to shit them up. I stopped doing it when someone retaliated one day, impaling a fully intact dart in my leg.
So many good memories here. A friend and I took out a neighbours greenhouse with a Diablo catapult and some orange peel! Those things were mad. Anyone else do the setting fire to a plastic bag and seeing who dare let it drip on them?
Dripping burning plastic bag? Yup! But iirc it was more about the weird noise it made as it dripped into water.
We were always making little fires (loved in the country) and stealing bread or sausages from home to cook on them.
Building sites were fun places to hang around We used to play chicken with a front loading skip. You close the skip door and would all stand with your toes over the line made my the lowered door. Someone would pull the retaining pin out causing the door to drop and the last person to jump back would win ! Obvs one winner got a trip to A&E .
The barley corn rifle thing reminds me...
Someone had a Gat gun, little air pistol thing. One day we decided that it would be great to sit someone on the roundabout with it, spin them round fast with their eyes closed,we'd all space ourselves around the roundabout and then they'd randomly count down and fire the gun and we'd have to duck.
They had very little power and it seems to be fun with it hitting jeans or jacket if anything, until someone got clipped on the neck. They started crying and we all panicked and thought we'd better stop 😂
Re. Sur-rons... this is all good healthy clean character building childhood fun, not illegal motorbiking on the roads taunting the police 🙄😉 oh... er... someone might have had a knackered old scrambler we took to the old shale heaps at one point 🤔😂
snip...and then put the cartridge into a vice.
I might know someone who did this with a .22 rimfire cartridge to get the bullet out. Clamping a cartridge rim in a vice didn't, on that occasion, ignite anything. The penny dropped part way through and it wasn't continued!
Many of the above^^
Those "throwing arrows" we used to call them Dutch Arrows. My dad sold rivets, so we had loads of long sharp points to embed into the end of the arrows (the rivet fitted nicely into the bamboo, with the long pointy part sticking out as an excellent point.) Not me, but my little brother had been making one and I heard him screaming. Looked out the window and he had one of the points right through his middle finger. Luckily in the build process rather than the throwing.
My fun trip was when my big bro and his mates found a car wheel in the woods. They decided it would be fun to roll it down a bank, off the bridge and into the stream below. I thought the most excitement would be had standing at the bridge and watch it hit the water... they rolled... wheel hit me full on and I joined the wheel in it's glorious flight off the bridge into the water 10 or so feet below. Just badly winded as far as I remember. But I still have nightmares about wheels rolling towards me... arrGH!
(note, we weren't of voting age!)
wheel hit me full on and I joined the wheel in it’s glorious flight off the bridge into the water 10 or so feet below.
That happened to a mate of mine.
Only it was in the middle lane of the M62 and it hit him full in the chest, on a motorcycle.
Only it was in the middle lane of the M62 and it hit him full in the chest, on a motorcycle.
They really shouldn't be allowed on motorcycles.
Ahh stupid things, I have a very long list.
One of my friends dad had an air pistol. His dad went out to we decided to play space invaders in the back garden. We moved left and right whilst my friend shot at us. - note - air pistols hurt, don't do this.
Climbing buildings regularly which I look at today and think WTF was I thinking.
Mainly though I spent a lot of time trying to blow myself up with gas cartridges and fires. I used to like making things go boom!
in the middle lane of the M62 and it hit him full in the chest, on a motorcycle.
I think I saw it "Caught on Dashcam"! Happens surprisingly frequently on there. Including this poor sod: .
Had an ex who was an A&E doc who told me how many Willy (not the EastEnders dog) related mishaps she has to deal with was Darwinesq.
I spent a couple of years at an agricultural college which had a working dairy farm. At least one ambulance was called because a student had looked at the milking apparatus and thought, 'Well hello!'.
All this makes my racing (bike and foot)round the scaffolding on building sites in the seventies sound very run of the mill
Christ, that YouTube link above leads to some scary moments
There were a couple of scrapyards near where I lived as a nipper. The foolish owners put up signs stating ‘Danger’ and ‘No Children Allowed’ and then wondered why they spent a ridiculous amount of time chasing and yelling at kids! Those signs basically read ‘Welcome’ and ‘Amazing stuff this way’ to me and my friends.
I fondly recall me and my brother making man traps in the local woods after watching First Blood. Some of them were genuinely dangerous and I have no idea how one of us or a random stranger didn’t get injured.
I think I saw it “Caught on Dashcam”! Happens surprisingly frequently on there.
TBF, I expect speed differential played a part. Ie, whilst no doubt a shock to the system, it's less of an impact being hit doing 70mph by an object doing 60mph in the same direction. He said he kept it upright but it knocked the wind out of him and he wobbled to the hard shoulder to recover.
At least one ambulance was called because a student had looked at the milking apparatus and thought, ‘Well hello!’.
Automatic, and it doesn't stop until it has 3 liters.
Death stars.
We used to liberate the glass fibre tiles from our swimming pool roof . Snap them into 4 pieces with really sharp , jagged edges. These were about 10in square roughly. These were then frisbee'd either more or less straight up and the prevailing wind would determine the downward trajectory and hapless victim. Or for more extra danger , launched at full speed across the school playing field at head height.
Sometimes shouting "incoming"as a warning, sometimes not. Cue loads of school kids diving for cover to avoid being decapitated by squares of fibre glass.
Warlingham county secondary school circa 1985.
Chalk bombing trains
Breaking into the porn print works
Air pistol duels
School fight with Riddles down
Nearly killing Mr Latham with a huge water bomb
Draining the central heating to ensure sledging time
Drill chuck roulette
Filling the lab sinks with gas
Alcoholic anonymous were asked to host a special assembly
Fun times
