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?