X is for... X-rays!

Ok, so X is a tricky letter to try and fit in to any topic. I don't play the xylophone; I am neither xanthocomic (meaning yellow haired) nor do I suffer from xanthocyanopsy (a form of colour-blindness, where you only see blue and yellow). So I am falling back on a classic choice for X - X-rays.

I have a peculiar habit for injuring myself in embarrassing ways. Rather oddly, I don't have photos of any of the times I have ended up in hospital for ridiculous reasons, so this post is going to be word-heavy, I'm afraid.

When I was 11, I broke my wrist. Not so unusual, you might think, kids break bones all the time. But most of them do it while being terribly exciting and adventurous; they crash their BMX bike or fall out of a tree. Me, I broke my wrist in a drama class at school, in the midst of improvising a play about some aliens who had kidnapped the King's daughters. I was Chief Alien, and we'd put a chair on top of some rickety old wooden shelves to act as our spaceship. It wasn't so bad, at first, because I didn't really have to explain it to the school nurse. But then I had to tell my Dad what had happened; he took me to the hospital and I had to explain it to the receptionist, the triage nurse, the doctor, the radiographer, another doctor and the person who put my plaster cast on my arm.

Worst of all, I then had to explain my broken arm to my Mum when she came home from work to find me already home, watching Neighbours and eating my packed lunch!

In the sixth form, I ended up in casualty on Red Nose Day, because I'd injured my hip kicking a football across the school field. Of course, because the theme of Red Nose Day that year was Pants to Poverty, I was wearing a rather fetching pair of red furry pants over my jeans, which made getting them off for the x-ray even more uncomfortable!

My crowning achievement, in the world of silly injuries, has to be back in 2002, when I needed stitches after sitting on what we believe to have been a corkscrew. We were at a LRP event, and we'd just chucked our rucksacks full of kit inside our two man dome tent before dashing off to help other people put up their tents. When I went back into the tent to get something, I just threw myself in and landed on the bags. All I felt was the tiniest prick, as if I'd sat on a twig or something and it had just poked me. But when I investigated, my hand came out red to the knuckles with blood! Talk about scary! Turns out I had a cut on my bottom about 1cm wide and about 1cm deep, and it bled for ages before the first aiders were able to get it under control. Off I went to casualty to get it stitched up! All I can say is I am very grateful it was before the game had started, and I wasn't already in kit and painted green.

I did wind up in hospital days after the corkscrew incident as well, with nasty burns to my thumbs following a cooking oil incident in our kitchen. It was not a good week to be me! I think the nurse in the uni health centre felt quite sorry for me when I toddled in to get my stitch removed, with one hand strapped up in a plastic bag and the other one heavily bandaged.

Touch wood, I haven't done anything particularly stupid or painful for a while now. Hopefully it was just a youthful clumsiness that I have outgrown!

Have you guys ever done something as stupid (or even more stupid) than my injuries?