This is almost too embarrassing to share. But that has never stopped me before, so why stop now?
Warning: Do not try this at home.
Disclaimer: Weird things involving injuries and bruises used to happen to my sister when she was alive just as often as they happen to me, so I’m blaming genetics.
Okay, here’s what happened:
Crack of doom
I was running late to a doctor’s appointment yesterday and putting on lipstick at a stoplight (don’t judge) when an eyeliner suddenly slipped out of my purse and into the crack of hell space between my driver’s seat and center console. ( I know many of you are judging at this moment because I sound like a nightmare to be on the road with – but please note that this took place at a long stop light and I’m telling myself that makes it better. Stop judging.)
At any rate, retrieving an item from this crack of doom narrow space should be no biggie. Unless you drive Christine my 4Runner. You see, this body style of comes with a hard plastic carpeted shield in the cracks which helps catch things before they fall into this valley of death crevice.
So… I reached down to try to grab the eyeliner before the light changed. In most cars this would be no big deal. It was a tight squeeze, so I took my ring off my right hand. (I know, that should have been a sign right there. Stop judging) I reached back further and felt the eyeliner slip deeper into the abyss. I knew I must abort the mission as the light was about to change.
But my hand was stuck. I’m not talking a little stuck. I am talking all-out eye-stabbing-pain STUCK. The handy shield protector does it’s job so well that it does not let your hand come back up and out after you reach in. It was stuck and I was unable to move it. (Insert very loud profanity repetition here which took place at the same time that I was experiencing that feeling you get when a ring gets stuck on your finger and you think someone may have to cut your finger off to get the ring off.)
The light changed. (Insert more profanity. Was this really happening?) I had no choice but to drive left handed while leaning to the right until I could get to a place where I could pull over and retrieve my hand. I jiggled it and wiggled it and was only rewarded with more eye-stabbing pain, and no sign of it coming loose. I am not kidding you people. This really freaking happened. I could not make this up.
I reached my doctor’s parking lot 5 minutes up the road and started feverishly trying to work my hand out of the vice grip between my seat and the console. I tried moving the seat forward and backward. More wincing pain (I was too freaked out to even curse. What if a fire department was going to have to get involved?) I thought my hand was going to break off down there. I am not kidding. It would have been a bloody mess, but at least I would have made it to my appointment on time and my hand would have been out of there.
Eventually I just had to squint my eyes, go to a happy place, take a deep breath and yank that fucker my arm out of there. As soon as I did, I felt my heartbeat pulsate from my thumb knuckle all the way up to my elbow. I thought about how easily I bruise if you even sneeze in my direction. I could already tell that by the next morning someone would see my arm and report MacGyver for domestic abuse. I pulled myself out of the car holding my arm like a cat that had just been hit by a car.
I made it into the appointment with my pulsating, bluing arm dragging on the floor behind me, banging from wall to wall down the long hall way because at that point I couldn’t feel it anyway. Once home, I received minimal sympathy from my boys but luckily later that evening a friend saw the ensuing bruises and swelling (insert her profanity) and made me ice it and take various anti-swelling medications to help abate the bruising process.
This is only one side.
I am still in pain as I type this. It even hurts to fold laundry if a t-shirt even grazes my hand or wrist. Several bruises have appeared – on each side of my hand and on both sides of my arms. It is super sexy, in a junkie kind of way. A different friend at lunch today saw the bruises up and down my arm and felt too awkward to ask me what happened until I mentioned it. Yes, that bad.
And that, folks, is how Christine my 4Runner humiliated me. And why, my friends, I am a gigantic DORK.
What is the stupidest way you’ve ever injured yourself?
life on wry 
Oh mylanta – thank GOD I am not the only one who’s had a mishap with the crevice from hell!!! You made my day just that more bright! Thank you 🙂
That is hilarious!!! I can’t get your link to work. Do you have a blog?
That does not constitute being a DORK.A DORK has to bring harm to oneself in an innocent well intentioned way When I was younger I played professional baseball. We liked to play practical jokes. I never let my teammates know my home address for fear of an untimely and horrific demise.
When checking in at the Radisson in Ft. Myers (rookie league), I decided to announce my arrival by paying a local kiddie vendor $50 to borrow his cow for an hour. I convinced the maid I lost my key and she let me in to a teammate’s room. I did not know cows had such broad shoulders. After much pushing and yanking (they’re stupid too) I hid upstairs until I heard them acknowledge my hidden return.
Well the cow unloaded on the bed and rug, I had to pay a clean up fee, was disciplined by the team. All that comes with being a DORK. But trying to check into a Radisson with my wife proved embarassing as they informed me I was on a black list. 42 years later I stillhave no privileges. That’s a DORK!!!!
You win for sure! 🙂
Oh my, that looks like it hurt (and still does), but you told the story very well. 🙂 Had me laughing! I’m accident prone, so my list of blunders is too long to mention. You are in good company. Trust me…
Good to know I’m not alone. 🙂
I’m really sorry for you dear I hope you”ll be ok,:D
thank you!
Stupidest way I injured myself? One year, I broke my left arm very badly, I was in a cast for about 3 months. When it was finally time to remove the cast, everything was great, except when it was time to get off the “hospital bed thing”. I am short, it was high, I somehow jumped out of it, fell, and broke the other arm. I think it took a good half hour for everybody in the ward to stop laughing, including my own parents.
Oh my gosh, that is an awesome story!
I’m just super clumsy… Glad it amused you 😉
Did you get your arm a get well present? I suggest a new eye liner.
I drew a smiley face on it WITH its new eyeliner.
I was chatting with a colleague in the parking lot outside our office when I went to hop up into the driver’s seat of my 1992 4-Runner.
I misjudged the trajectory I would take, slamming my forehead into the front edge of the door opening. Went rebounding back into the parking lot and on my butt as my work friend just laughed his a** off. Good times. Good times.
I can picture this so well. OUCH. Been there.
You crack me up! I’m so glad I get to call you my friend! 🙂
😉
All I can say is … of course … AND – when did you get a 4Runner??
December. I try to change cars once a year, jk. Read the comment from the mmmmm family about the sign for my new nick name.
Great story, Wry. My list of humiliating experiences would be thicker than Webster’s dictionary. Here’s a fun incident you might enjoy.
We went on vacation with another couple to New Orleans a few years back and rented a two bedroom apt. just off Bourbon St. for four days. The bedrooms were so small you had to turn sideways to work your way between the bed and wall. My wife’s friend, Sarah, banging up her shins over the four days, creating some nasty bruises on her legs. On the way home we stopped to fill up with gas and the girls went to the bathroom. Sarah was overheard complaining about her bruises by another woman in the restroom. My wife commented, “Sarah, if you’d be nicer to James he wouldn’t have to beat you.” The lady came out gas station and glared at me and James, giving us worst “Go to Hell” look you’ve ever seen. My wife confessed to her little prank after we got back and in the van and we laughed about it for miles. It’s a wonder that lady didn’t call the police on James. 🙂
Yikes! Too funny!
Further evidence — beyond global warming and gridlocked freeways — that the invention of the automobile was a mistake. Speaking of mistakes, while I love Toyotas, the crack of doom is clearly what Consumer Reports would label “a design goof.” In my experience there’s no better way to start your morning than by dropping your keys into that crack and spending five minutes trying to fish them back out before you can start the car. If it’s an especially good day, you will spill your coffee in the process.
Absolutely!
This has happened to me so I sympathize, but it wasn’t the worst. The worst was running off a porch in bare feet and catching a boot scrape (cemented into the porch) between the toes. Try explaining the broken toes and nose (from hitting the ground unexpectedly) to the ER nurse.
Ouch!!!
I am accident prone too, and usually running late, so put those 2 things together? and I can totally relate. The worst thing my car ever did to me was to start beeping for no reason! It was so loud I couldn’t think clearly. And I don’t have an alarm, so there was no reason for this. I drove it like that to Pep Boys figuring they would have to fix it or put with that sound! And so they did.
Glad to know I am not alone in my accident proneness.
Oh my gosh, love this. My phone or lipstick always falls down that crack of doom! My stupid injuries almost always consist of me tripping up or falling down stairs. I swear they move as soon as my foot hits them!
My stairs move on me at least once a day.
Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! That looks seriously bruised. There have been many stupid ways I have injured myself from the ridiculous – cycling down a hill on my bike as a kid and wondering what would happen if I tapped the brakes. A visit to casualty and stitches in the forehead is what happens. To the sublime – getting very drunk as a teenager with a group of friends one summer afternoon and deciding it would be extremely fun to play leapfrog. Cue another visit to casualty with mild concussion, 4 broken teeth, a black scab on my chin and 3 weeks on crutches. A few weeks later I started University for the first time and earned myself the wonderful nickname by the deaf friends I met there of ‘carpetburn’ the sign for which is a flat hand rubbed under the chin. I still have this nickname now 20 odd years later 🙂
I am going to make that my friends’ new sign for me. Absolutely love it.
🙂
Ouch. I broke my foot and dislocated my knee doing laundry.
Holy cow…
Holy smokes, that’s an awful set of shiners!! My wife and I call that crack the Seat Monster. The dang thing has swallowed numerous items over the years including lots of tasty fries. Hope the bruises go away quickly. 🙂
Excellent name for it!
Hoping your bruises are vanishing! He’s got a nasty bite aye?
They finally don’t hurt as much today. Still looking sexy though in that junkie kind of way.
Women….well at least you were still able to fold some clothes, right??? LOL!!!
And make dinner! 🙂
Oh my gosh. I hate to laugh because that looks so painful. But your accounting of the story made my diet Pepsi come out my nose. Really, I’m glad you’re okay and they didn’t have to use the jaws of life to free you.
I must say it is a very proud blogging moment – one of my proudest – to make liquid come out of someone’s nose.
Even at your expense 😦
That makes it even better….