My brother’s the accident-prone one in the family (he crashed his bike at the bottom of a big hill nearby so many times that for a while, the old man who lived there had our home phone number on his fridge even though he’d never met anyone but my bro)
I’ve only once scratched myself with a size-3 needle.
BUT!
I’ve had my moments…
I screwed up my knee in a dogsledding accident.
That’s right. Dogsledding.
Although I do know how to mush, on this particular day, I was a passenger in a sled driven by a man who (I later found out) had never been on a dogsled before in his life. The snow was too deep for easy pulling, and once the sled stopped, with the passengers in the sled, it was too heavy and bogged down and the dogs couldn’t get it going again.
I was sitting at the back of the sled, and couldn’t get out until last.
As soon as I had one foot on the snow, the dogs threw themselves into their harnesses again. A driver with even just a little experience would have anticipated this, and would have been standing on the brake. Instead, the suddenly much lighter sled flew forward, tangling my leg in the rigging. I was yanked off my feet, flipped upside-down, and drug for several feet before someone managed to catch the sled and jump on the brake.
I was OK for the entire half-hour hike back to the main buildings, and then for the hour-long hike to our campsite on the most evil of snowshoes (two days later someone finally figured out that the reason I was having so many issues with my snowshoes was that my bindings were screwed up), and then back to the vans, across the same knee-deep snow (this time without snowshoes because some genius had a theory that we’d probably packed the trail down the first time).
Basically, I was okay as long as I was still moving. But by the time we finished our drive to town for dinner and sightseeing, I could hardly move my leg, let alone put weight on it.
BUT, I’d paid good money for the trip, and I was camping with a bunch of macho guys. So I sucked it up and limped back to the campsite. About every three steps, I punched through the packed-down crust and floundered in the slush-and-powder below. It ranks in the top three most painful experiences of my life.
Next time I go out on a sled, either the musher provides credentials, or I drive. And, I’m sitting in front.