I've had a few bumps and bruises over the years
However most memorable for me was

(A) as a 5-6 year old kid, running / playing whilst looking sideways at a friend with my arms fully outstretched I managed to run full bore into a lampost, my outstretched arms went either side of the lampost perfectly - meaning my face took the impact, however, my friend did manage to shout a warning a microsecond before I hit, giving me just enough time for me to turn and and hit it face first - think Hannah and Barberra cartoon stylelee and you have it pretty much perfect.
I split my head in a perfect "v" shape, knocked out a tooth, bust my nose, split my lip and cut my chin - this impact also had the bonus effect of knocking me unconcious for a minute or two. End result, more blood than I'd ever seen in my little life - Eight stictches in my forehead and two in my top lip where my tooth had shot through it. Still have the forehead scars today...

(B)On my raleigh "grifter" - anyone remember them? :-) I went over quite a large jump, made it about 5-6 feet in the air, only to watch in "that" type of horrified slow motion as the front wheel detatched itself from the frame of the bike.
I landed and burried the forks straight into the ground. The bike then stopped, I didn't - straight over the handlebars, the brake lever gouged my leg, which thankfully wasnt that deep. I did however mange to do a perfect face plant onto the ground. 'Twas dirt thankfully, though I did manage to land on some glass, not much glass, just enough to go through my top lip, just under and to the left of my nose and into my gum. End result, lots and lots of blood, 3 stictches and a very, very sore mouth for a week or two.

(C) Finally (and this is the biggie) a car accident on the motorway. I was getting a lift home from work from a mate when we hit a scaffolding plank on the motorway, one of the big thick fuckers with the metal banding round the edges, whilst in the fast lane, doing about 80.
This destroyed both front tyres and rims in an instant. The result being we basically skidded from fastlane into the breakdown lane, clipped the barrier there, then veered back out across the main motorway, fell into a broadside skid, then hit the central reservation (a grass verge about 4-5 high) at about 45 degrees with the front of the car, all whilst still moving a quite a high rate of knots in the initial direction of travel. We proceeded to climb it, dig in and barrelrolled twice along the top of it. We came to rest right side up in the middle lane, rolling backwards off the embankment onto (thankfully) our side of the motorway, about 60-80 metres from where we hit the plank.
I was wearing a seatbelt. My friend (the driver) wasn't. When we were rolling she had been flipped through the window - my passenger side window. She had slammed up against me, breaking all my ribs on my left hand side and caught my left arm in the process and pushed it in front of her as she went out the window, effecticely using it as a battering ram, the result was a 3-4 bone deep lacerations and deep punctured 'holes' packed full of broken glass on my left wrist. Had I not have wearing a decent metal strapped & bodied watch I would have probably lost my hand according to the doctors.
It bled, everywhere, and I mean everywhere. One of the guys who stopped at the scene stopped it with a t-shirt and a tourqinet using his belt. It wasn't arterial or anything just several deep cuts, you know the ones the pink muscle, the purpley bits and the white gleam of bone down in the depths.
End result - Lots of stitches and, rays and about an hour of surgical cleaning beforehand to the glass out. Not a very comfortable time in my life while they were digging around in a hole in your wrist with tweezers pulling out glass and bits of twigs, gravel etc...
I still have the scars, it took me ages to take to wearing a watch again as I didn't like the feel of any pressure on that wrist. Bar chords are a complete bastard now - about twenty minutes of guitar playing now is just about enough for me and my wrist gets very achey in cold weather and has to be strapped. However - apparently chicks dig scars...

Note - The friend in the accident was ok, miraculously every single following car had missed her. She did have several months of hospital treatment for her neck and back injuries and she still cant look over her left shoulder. By all accounts we were both very, very lucky.
The police were on site about 3 minutes after the accident due to other drivers reporting the debris on the motorway and I got my first ever ambulance ride out of the whole experience!
I also got to make 'that' phone call to my folks. "Ummm. Mum - I'm in the hospital, I'm ok - but..."

Note II - I'm an absolute stickler now for seatbelts, not just for me, but everyone in the car wears one or I'm going bloody nowhere.
(uk_viper stopped lurking on, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 14:24, 1 reply)

Grifter!
I had one of them, and the exact same thing happened to me at the age of about ten!!

Except, instead of a gouged leg, I got a gouged nutsack. I wasn't entirely certain, until my first child was conceived (no, wait... until my first child was born and was the spitting image of me) that I hadn't done more serious damage. It had always been at the back of my mind.

Grifters - dangerous bastards!
(weedom, Sat 9 Aug 2008, 2:02, closed)