The clumsy thread for clumsy people - The Bear and Badger

The Daddy

Not so much clumsiness as heroism on my part this.Â Cycling home from work, and there's a boy of about 11 walking in the road.Â It's a downhill bit I normally go quite fast down, but seeing the youngster I keep it steady.Â He sees me coming and promptly heads towards the pavement, so I speed up significantly.

Then the little fuckwhit decides to run out into the road in front of me.Â

Realising that standard braking wouldn't do the job, I jammed the front disc brake on as hard as possible in an act of sacrificial evasiveness.Â As I sailed over the handlebars and landed on the road, I managed to kick the bike to the side, leaving young dick-face unscathed.

It turns out he'd dropped a quid, which rolled into the road.Â Should've run the twat over.Â He actually offered me the quid by way of an apology - ha! I'm not falling for that one, see you in court!Â Was quite lucky to get away with just a sprained wrist and some slightly fucked-up gears as I was not wearing a helmet at the time.

Lessons learned: Wear a helmet, run small chilren over.

RamSteelwood

i once rode my bike straight into the open garage as a kid...except that actually the 'up and over' door wasn't fully open, it was just open enough that bottom edge was at exactly the same height as the forehead of a bicycling child!
so technically the bike rode itself into the garage. Â i got stopped rather abruptly at the entrance to aforementioned garage and deposited on the concrete driveway in a rather crude and upside down way.

Roujin

Many of these yarns are not about people being clumsy.Â

[6]

[Deleted User]

A was putting up a shelf the other day and knocked the drill on the floor. I did the classic "save with foot" moron manoeuvre, thankfully it landed flat, hurt like hell but would have been a lot worse ifÂ it landed drill bit down onto my foot.

I have performed the same manoeuvre with kitchen knives several times, I will end up with only one foot, I'm sure of it.

Fentonizer

Roujin wrote:

Many of these yarns are not about people being clumsy.Â

[6]

Wikipedia wrote:

Accident-proneness, also known as clumsiness, is the conception that some people might have predisposition, or that they might be more likely to suffer accidents, such as car crashes and industrial injuries, than other people.

Fentonizer

Liveinadive wrote:

I did the classic "save with foot" moron manoeuvre

Why the fuck do we do this? I've saved maybe one or two glasses from possibly breaking, but the pain of trying this with other things far outweighs those "successes."

Roujin

Kitchen knives (with the exception of the meat cleaver and possibly some fuck off big meat knives) tend to want to fall with their handle first due to the distribution of weight between handle and blade (even if the handle is not heavier than the blade, it has a larger concentration of mass at the end of the handle than the knife blade does at the tip).

Now I'm not saying you can use that as en excuse to try keepy ups next time you knock a knife off a counter, but it may help you understand why you have avoided (and are likely to continue to avoid) having a kitchen knife go point down into your foot.

adored

Last time we had a knife related near-accident was when the gf knocked the big 'chef's knife' off the kitchen worktop.

Was brand new and razor sharp at the time, landed between us, point first, and stuck in the kitchen floor with the sort of thud and twang that you'd normally expect to be added by a sound effects dept when someone throws a knife into a tree.

Would've been at east a couple of whoever's toes it we hadn't been so lucky.

Sasukekun

I used to work in a kitchen, and some custard I had done in the microwave had finished, when removing the bowl from microwave, I dropped it. Stupidly, considering it contained boiling hot custard, I attempted to catch it. Custard as hot as lava all over my hand...not nice. I had giant blisters all over my hand as a result.
Couldn't work the rest of my shift, but still got paid for it all. (painful) Result.

[Deleted User]

Remember seeing someone in a supermarket drop a bottle of vodka, it BOUNCED up to knee height then landed on the floor again exploding into a million pieces lol.

mk64

LarryDavid wrote:

When I was about ten I did that thing kids like to do at the swimming baths and legged it straight out of the changing rooms and did a big running bomb into the pool to announce my presence. I didn't even look and half way through realised I was going to land right on top of a fat woman who was doing her daily exercises.Â

Her look of surprise and horror as she realised her quiet, relaxing swim was about to be torpedoed by a ten year old child catapulting himself straight at her is ingrained in my mind. Sort of a very quick switch from "ah, what a lovely day for a swim" look of content to a horrified "oh shit! that stupid kid's going to land right on meeeeeeee!". Luckily her hefty size broke my fall leaving me relatively uninjured (and her, thankfully).Â

I apologised obviously, because she was quite rightly slightly pissed off about it and then kept my head down for a stern talking to from the lifeguard.

Secretly, I thought it was hilarious as did most of the pool who saw it.

LOL

Webbins

If the missus was a forumite she'd tell you the tale of a few weeks ago, how she witnessed an unhelmeted cyclist appear at speed from a side street and fly straight over the bonnet of an onrushing car.Â The unprotected cyclist cartwheeled in the air and took the full landing on his head.Â As the missus was the first to react, she spent the next 15 minutes literally holding this guy's head together until the paramedics turned up.Â The police rang her later that afternoon to inform her he was dead.Â Whether you are a crazy cyclist that rushes out of side streets straight into traffic or the most conscientious of bicycle users, wear a fucking helmet.

[Deleted User]

Webbins wrote:

If the missus was a forumite she'd tell you the tale of a few weeks ago, how she witnessed an unhelmeted cyclist appear at speed from a side street and fly straight over the bonnet of an onrushing car.Â

Was igor driving?

three1ne

Christ, that was a way to end my uncontrollable fits of giggles Webbins. But worthy advice.

Around 13-14 I was outside the front of my house playing on a mates bike. Standing up on the bike I decided to try and be the fastest cyclist ever and in the process my right foot slipped forward off the pedal, my body fell back into the seat and my right ankle fell into the front gear/cog and sliced itself open. I had dark socks on that covered the cut so I wasnt sure how bad the injury was although I could see a lot of dampness in my sock. Cue full tears. Cue an older teenager on his paper round laughing and saying "cut yourself?!". "Yes" I thought. Ran back into the house where Mummy had just returned from Nanna's. Cue immediate panic by Mum. Dad drove to hospital, me in the back with mother. I uttered the amazing line..

"Why has this happened to me, im a good boy, I eat all my dinners".Â

Dad reminds me of that every now and again.

Skerret

Liveinadive wrote:

Was igor driving?

I'm sure he hit him at the prescribed speed which his insurance company will confirm.

Tempy

three1ne wrote:

"Why has this happened to me, im a good boy, I eat all my dinners"

Oh god. Wonderful.

Also, cue not que.

Carbon_Altered

You know that common video on you've been framed, the one where some idiot walks into a plane glass door, we've all done that, right?

In the last instance (for it has happened more than once) we were on holiday, and the porter had just shown us round our room and onto the balcony. Upon returning to the room I walk properly head first into the door. Initial reaction was that I'd broken my nose as I was seeing stars and it hurt like buggery, but luckily it was ok. Just about managed to style it out in front of the porter while my missus near pissed herself laughing.

It left a near perfect smear in the shape of my face/forehead/nose on the door that the cleaners never seemed to spot, or the missus told to leave there as a monument to my stupidity.

Sasukekun

@Carbon
I used to work in a shop and a woman did that on one of or doors when one was closed by a young scaly. The print of her face was amazing.

equinox_code

Kicked myself in the balls really hard whilst trying to sit down. Not sure how I managed it, but fucking hell it hurt.

Elmlea

I'm astonished that people don't wear helmets when cycling. Â I used to race mountain bikes in my youth, and when I was first getting into it, the helmet I had was a relatively cheap one so it didn't ventilate terribly well, was a bit large, etc etc, so not always comfy to wear. Â

One day, I was zipping down a path in the local country park, when my front wheel caught a drainage channel at exactly the right angle and snagged in it. Â It immediately bent through 90 degrees and smashed to bits, and I went sailing onwards. Â I landed head first, rolled over and felt a bit dazed and surprised. Â Then I realised that I had landed on the edge of an exposed stone, with a sharp edge like a house brick. Â Luckily, I hadn't landed full force on it, but I landed hard enough for it to actually break my helmet into 3 or 4 bits.

Called my parents who took me to hospital. Â Had a mild concussion but nothing serious other than bruising, but the doc was pretty certain I'd have been dead like you read about if my head had taken the impact the helmet had.

Went to the bike shop 2 or 3 days later to have my bike repaired (thankfully it was a cheap wheelset), and at the same time splurged my teenage savings on a Â£149.99 (a lot of money in 1996) helmet that was much more comfortable, cool and pleasant to wear, so I'd never be tempted to go out without it.

Paul the sparky

Fuck me Webbins.

Coopers Green

Seriously. Wear a fucking lid.Â

Makes me feel like shouting at kids and couriers when I see them not wearing a helmet.

Lord_Griff

One of these kplsthnx

metagonzo

I also used to race mountain bikes (very casually). At my local, several decades ago (the malvern hills classic) I had an epic spill on warmup day.
On a trail I had ridden many, many times I hit a root sequence that sent me over the bars at a good 25mph (this was back in the day when many bikes, mine included, had no suspension). A faceplant onto the gravel surface saw my mouth just over 10mm wider than it should have been and a dice sized piece of gravel embedded in my cheek.
My helmet broke into 3 pieces (to be fair it was just a polystyrene bowl with a Lycra cover on it) but I maintain it saved the day.

One of the organisers drove me to the local cottage hospital for an horrific experience consisting of anaesthetic free stitching and a pair of medical pliers to remove the gravel. I'll be taking that to the grave.
The only high point was that, for some reason the organiser had bought a turquoise Vauxhal Frontera with a white leather interior. It was not so white when I got out to say the least. The moral of this story is that if you buyÂ a turquoise Vauxhal Frontera with a white leather interior, eventually something bad will happen to you.

On a more on topic (ie; clumsy buffoon) note; I just this second had a "save with foot" moment with a tin of chopped tomatoes. I'm now on the sofa with a frozen ciabatta balanced on my big toe.

[Deleted User]

Glad (in a way) it's not just me being a spaz and launching my foot under dangerous stuff.

Kow

I crashed my bicycle into a horse in Holland and fell into a canal. I wasn't wearing a helmet.

Also, I pulled a muscle in my chest while sleeping last week and it still hurts.

regmcfly

Absolutely drunk one night at Uni, staggering home, walking up to Townhead in Glasgow. Saw a little wall, as I walked through a block of flats, and thought 'I'll go over that.' Then I realised it was a bit more of a drop on the other side.Â

So I thought 'okay, I'll do this carefully.'

By the time I'm full stretch hanging off the other side of the wall and still not touching the ground, I'm a bit worried, and the only thing left for it is to drop backwards off the wall.Â

So I land, and fall backwards. I get up and continue on my way home.

Police car comes round and tells me to wait where I am. I think 'fuck.'

Turns out my head is split open at the back and I'm bleeding pretty awesomely. Ambulance comes, and I apologise to everyone in the ambulance for wasting their time.Â

7 staples in my head and they think I've broken my foot (I hadn't) and that's the end of that.

Kow

The lesson is never listen to the police.

Elmlea

Kow wrote:

I crashed my bicycle into a horse in Holland and fell into a canal. I wasn't wearing a helmet.

And that's why you died.

regmcfly

Kow wrote:

The lesson is never listen to the police.

I could have just gone home and been happy.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories