when I was a child 5 or 6 years old I used to ride a bicycle without brakes and I go down an steep street to a not very busy street at high speed, only one time I lost control and I was very hurt, right now I realize I could have killed me .... but I was stupid because I kept doing that a couple of times ... :P

[deleted - too much apple juice]

I used to play rugby (for the US folks it's like your eggball but we use a gumshield instead of full body armor and a helmet)

Anyway long story short. I was a bit stupid got a heavy tackle and landed badly. Now this is the stupid thing, even though in a lot of pain I carried on. Found out later that I cracked a disc in my back. 15 years later I had issues with my back and found out that with correct treatment at the time it could have been avoided.

And even now 18 years after the initial injury it's still giving me trouble and I know now it always will.

Might be a bit of a bad example but was stupid. Also explains why I like to call eggball sissy ball or pussy ball. I understand why it's the way it is but even after injury I still agree with rugby as it is and think US football is for pussies

But how do you get the kids into your van, then?

Thank you F4LL0UT. Some nut in here is going to think you are being serious. :P

And I'm gonna whack him if he gives you trouble. That's how good a friend I am.

I was on this school trip. I was doing pull ups on one of the bunk beds. My hands slipped and my shin smashed against the wood edge of the lower bunk bed, splitting the skin and flesh down to the bone, which I saw when I pulled up my jeans and looked at it. Then the people in A&E stapled my leg together.

None of these are after the age of joining secondary school (11~12).

- Before I began school properly I had to go to a sort of pre-school because both my parents worked full time. The school had an in door climbing frame that could be brought out during "rainy days" play time. I remember getting to the top of it with a friend and the head nun gave us both a firm scolding and told us to get down at the end of the play time.
The problem was I was scared of how high up I was and I just held on tight and burst into tears. I had to be rescued by a very understanding janitor who talked me into letting go of the bars so I could be carried down.
I have no idea how long I was up there, but I remember that they put these plastic sheets over the top rungs after that.

- Another friend and I got onto the top of their parents garage when we were little and were running about on the roof pretending we were planes or something, when my friend fell through the roof into the garage. I leapt off the side to get help and miraculously did not break a thing when I landed.

- When I was little there were underpasses for pedestrians to use to cross the roads, I do not see many of them now days.
Anyway, they had railings that went around the perimeter to stop you falling in. I do not know why, but I decided to jump the railings, even more stupid was I jumped at the point with the longest drop.
Thankfully I fell more then 8 feet, basically face first and except for a little bruising and not feeling too good. I walked away fairly unscathed from the stupidity.

- I remember loosing the upper skin from my nose. I do not remember how, but I lost from the tip up to where my eyebrows are when I slid along something. The activity is a little removed, but the comments I got from family I still remember.

- I also split my head open when I fell out of bed after breaking off the bed-side that kept me from rolling out of the bed! Completely my own fault and doing.

- I tore my chin open racing along in the ice. I lost my balance with the ice and when I hit the pavement I still so much forwards momentum that I tore my chin open on the unevenness of the pavement. It was not pretty. And I looked like an utter plank for about three weeks after that too.

- I use to have to walk to school with friends and their parents, and then be picked up from school by my mother or my aunty who would walk me home. The problem was I use to like sneaking out and going home alone. I felt like a big boy, even though I was still not.
- I remember being shot at as I walked alone to school one day. That was the stupid thing, as I was meant to go with others.
It was only something weak like an air rifle, but it put a hole through my bag, my book and my lunch box.
I remember being so scare when I heard what I thought was a gun shot and then felt something nudge my bag. I was so scared I raced all the way to school. Where my teacher told me if I had been shot then I would be dead, so it could not have happened.
I do not remember her being any nicer about it once she made me empty my bag and I took out my book. I remember there was a jagged hole going right through my sticker book and being sad that the stickers were ruined.
I remember there being a lot of fuss. My parents made an absolute fuss about it being my fault for not waiting for others and why I should listen and do what I am told.
My parents decided it was time to move and we moved less then 6 months later.

- I fell over a fence and although not deeply, I managed to slice part of my arm with the top of the fence. Looking back I am shocked that I remember there being so little blood, but so much pain.

- A friend and I were taking turns on my bike going back and forth up the road and I hit a hole in the road. I was thrown off balance and bounced over the roadside wall into a cemetery.
Like a rubber ball I kind of bounced back, but my cycle helmet did not.

- We also use to play football and being stupid I remember running after the ball as it went shooting across the towns main road. I raced after without looking and passed almost magically in front of a car without being killed.
A few weeks later a class mate was nearly killed in the same sort of thing.

I was just a stupid kid back then, but these are the moments I really realise just how close I was at times to being killed when I did not think about things.

Not so much the stupidity of the thing, kids trip all the time, but the timing of it. When I was 2, we lived in Austin, Texas. My parents were both working, my mother as a reporter for the Austin paper. Because both work, I was in a pre-school care facility in a park very close to the campus of UT:A. One day, coming out of the day-care facility to wait for my mom, I tripped and put a gash in my forehead (needed 4 stitches when it was finally taken care of). My mother, when she saw me that afternoon, paniced. Why? It wasn't that big a cut. Mom is not a panicer. Well, I guess I should tell you what else happened that day. Christopher Whitman startedthat day by killing his wife and his mother. Then he took an astonishing number of guns with ammunition to the top of the University Tower and began shooting people. He killed 16 people (a 17th died later of wounds) before he was killed. Since mom was working for the paper and had been spending all day working the phone on that story, when she saw me, because the facility was blocks from the tower, she thought that I had been grazed by a stray bullet. I still have the scar on my forehead.

Sitting in a circle, talking? that reminds me so much of a "Birthday Party" I went to and a lot of the cool kids were involved. Eventually over time, someone had to take a "potty break" and the moment they left "the circle", everyone started talking about them -and viciously.

I was afraid to get up and pee, because I didn't know what they'd say about me.

That is totally insane and incredibly lucky at the same time. Wow.

As for me I can't think of anything specific right now aside from surfing the asphalt with my chest after some stupid bicycle maneuvers; or breaking my arm from falling backwards off a friend's shoulders; or running and face-plating with a small bottle in my mouth.

Wow, that's pretty darn lucky, my parents had this wickedly insane driveway that twisted down to the street. I tried to skateboard down it once, the wheels hit an imperfect part of the pavement at the bottom (like a chunk of rock) and I ended up flying in the air and luckily landing in the grass of our neighbor's yard.

Was it luck or divne intervention?

A couple which could have ended very badly (my guardian angel must have worked overtime). I think these all happened when I was something like 6-10 years old.

1. One winter, I wanted to try the thing you always see in cartoons, ie. diving into a powdery pile of snow head on. Too bad the snow was much thicker (harder) than I had though, so it was almost like I would have landed on my head on concrete. I hurt my neck somewhat, but I didn't go to doctor or anything, or even tell my parents. I am pretty sure it may have caused some permanent damage to my neck, but apparently nothing too serious as I am still here, neck working.

2. One summer, we were running out of a house with my sister, and my sister slammed the glass door just before me (it was a metal frame door with two big windows). I apparently tried to do some kind of double jumping kick to open the door, because next thing I knew I was lying on the ground, glass all over me, legs through the door window.

I later noticed that the glass had made several long cuts to my jeans, but no cuts whatsoever to me. Some months later I became very anxious of this incident when they showed some US documentary on the TV about these exact kind of accidents, people crashing through windows and getting lethal cuts from the glass (and what kind of unbreakable and safe glasses were being developed to fight this problem). At that point I understood how extremely lucky I had apparently been, I can't believe I didn't get even a single cut from the glass (even though my jeans did, several). Maybe it was then the thick jeans which saved me from getting some deep cuts to arteries in my thighs.

3. At the back of our house, there was a big tall pile of wood with a tarpaulin on it. For some reason I started pulling the tarpaulin away from below. What I didn't know was that there was a rather big log of wood on top of the tarpaulin, apparently to keep it in place from wind etc. The falling log barely missed my head, but hit my thigh instead. It hurt somewhat for the rest of the day, but nothing permanent.