[JerryW235]

I have a couple that in retrospect are pretty funny. The first is, as a struggling grad student in the late 70's, I would do some auto repair work to make some extra money. Was doing some work for a friend, dent, rust and paint repair on a Fiat X 1/9. Primed and painted it with lacquer, using his OLD electric hand held paint sprayer, that shot out sparks along with the paint. Foolishly, I didn't think anything of it when I was painting, big mistake. Went to clean it by spraying thinner through it and it exploded. I got up calling for help, saw the skin on my arm literally burning and looking like it's dripping off. Did the old stop, drop, and roll, and got the fire on me out. Grabbed a nearby garden hose and put out the burning sprayer. My friend comes out of the house and saw what happened, and said he'd take me to the hospital. We go in the house, his wife gets some clean towels and we wrap and soak my arm in cool water. He said he was going to change clothes, and be right back. Twenty minutes goes by and he finally returns, and his hair is wet. I ask him where the hell he'd been, and the response was along the lines, of "Well, I had to take a shower first." Wound up with 2nd and 3rd degree burns on part of my right arm, and leg.

The second good one was in the early 90's. Leaned a 10 ft step ladder, on a deck, up against the house to climb up and blow leaves off the roof and out of the gutters. Started the blower, climbed up the ladder, put the blower on the roof, and the ladder slipped out from under me. (A few weeks before, I had cleaned and stained the deck, and it was still a little slippery.) I went down backwards, put my hands out to break the fall, and my right hand landed on one of the ladder rungs and broke my wrist. I'm laying on the deck and I hear the blower running, and a "scratching" sound. The blower was running, vibrating, and sliding down the roof. I look up and see it slide off the roof, heading straight for me. It lands on my chest, still running. I get up screaming, "Call 911". My wife's parents were visiting, and her mom comes running through the open sliding door. However, the screen is closed, so she goes right through the screen. Our 4 year old son comes out, sees me holding my wrist, and hears me screaming in pain. He asks me if it hurts, I said yes, and he goes back in the house and comes out with his teddy bear, and gives it to me to comfort me. Unfortunately teddy did not have any Morphine on him. But it was certainly a nice gesture.

So my wife calls 911, and the ambulance comes. They load me in, and one of the staff says they're not familiar with the area, and asks what hospital do I want to go to. I tell them, and they know where it is and take off out of the neighborhood. At the first major intersection, they turn right, I ask where are you going, you're going the wrong way, go left. We could have gotten there, but there would have been about 20 lights to go through. I told them to go the other way, with an expressway exit right at the hospital. Wound up with a really bad broken wrist, it took 5 hours of surgery, a bone graft, plates, screws, and external fixator to put it back together.

I wake up in the hospital room, arm suspended from the ceiling or some contraption, a huge bandage and cast covering my forearm up to my elbow. I didn't know if I still had a hand or forearm at that point. Doctor comes in and goes over what they did, reassures me I still had a hand and would make pretty much a full recovery. I ask him if I'd be able to play tennis, he said sure, my wife breaks out laughing, as I've never played tennis.