Boo Hoo!: People Open Up About Their "Tis but a scratch!" Moments

Fell off my bike and into some wet gravel when I was 8. No big deal, scraped my knee and got soaked. Played the rest of the day outside and came home for dinner. Went to use the bathroom and when I pulled my jeans off I realized I wasn't soaked from the puddle, it was blood. I had sliced a huge gash in my knee and when I pulled my pants down a flap of skin pulled away and it started bleeding again. My first stitches!

Back in my baseball days, when I was pitching. I completely lost a pitch, and it beaned a guy in the jaw. He throws his bat down, glares at me with the glariest of glares ever glared, SPITS OUT BLOOD, then calmly runs to first base as though nothing happened.

It was terrifyingly bada.

I broke my neck on a huge shorebreak wave and didn't want to leave the beach so I continued swimming and playing volleyball until my friends noticed my neck was swelling up bigger than my head

When I was very young I pulled a tablecloth and managed to dump a freshly boiled pot of tea all over myself. I get rushed to hospital. My skin is red and bubbling. I should be in floods of tears. Instead, I proudly point to my ruined skin and proclaim to the paramedic “I did that”. Over thirty years later and I still have some scars, but I am definitely no longer that hardcore.

I was mountain biking and fell off. I fell down part of the mountain and into a road where I almost got hit by a car. I got up quickly, thanked the driver for not killing me and then got back on the bike - I knew the road would meet up with the trail I was on so I could meet up with my group who hasn't seen me fall. When I got to them, one of them looked at me and was like... What happened. I got off the bike, walked over whilst we waited for the others to catch up and just said I fell off. He then looked down at me and was like what the hell happened? I'm like it's nothing. A few cuts and scratches on my hands and arms, my leg was bleeding from earlier and that was it. Then I looked down and realised I had scratched off half the skin on my leg from falling on the road. Basically a bad case of road burn. From all the adrenaline I hadn't even felt it. They called someone to come and get me from the mountains (I wasn't allowed to continue) and one of the other riders saw my leg and decided they wanted to stop too . I just went to a pharmacy, grabbed some wipes and bandages then we got a drink whilst we waited for everyone else to finish.

I got hit by a car while riding my bicycle, flew through the air, bounced off his windshield breaking his windshield, my helmet and two vertebrae. Then thrown to the ground where my kneecap shattered and bone was sticking out of the skin. And as I lay there in shock (unaware of how badly I was injured) I thought "I might be able to get back on my bike and ride home"

I was a kid visiting family in West Virginia and was playing with some other kids which somehow involved me being in a tree. I got a little cut on my hand and was inconsolable. Ran to the house for my mom to make it better. She put the smallest of bandaids on it.

When I turned around and started walking out of the house she started yelling and I was just looked at her like, “what?” There was a trail of blood coming from the back of my leg. Didn’t even notice.

My first job was as a butcher and I came into work one day with a raging hangover. I sharpened the knives (they were crap ones that went blunt all the time) and immediately proceeded to cut my finger open. I thought nothing of it, went about my shift and when I got home to put a proper dressing on it I found out it was as deep as the bone and I wouldn't get feeling back in the end of it for literally years.

A few years ago, I was sick. not fun, but it was only a bug, I'd be ok in a couple days max. I started to get an unusual pain in my abdomen as the day wore on, but to me it was just a side effect of all the throwing up I'd been doing.

I spent the night in the spare room for 2 reasons - 1. because I was so frikkin' hot and 2. in case I needed to get up, I didn't disturb my partner who would be getting up early for work.

I managed to get an ok night of sleep, with the vomiting having stopped. But I still felt st. When my partner came to see me before he went to work, he asked how I was. I still felt terrible, but it was a tummy bug, I wasn't going to be instantly better. But that sharp pain was still there.

On hearing that I still was in pain, he insisted on taking me to hospital. I didn't think it was at all necessary, but i was too exhausted to argue.

When we got to the hospital, I made dn sure the person at the front desk knew I thought this was a waste of time.

After a lot of prodding and questions about if i was pregnant, it turned out it was my appendix in the process of rupturing.

I walked under a pine tree barefoot and stepped on something that mildly hurt. Went back inside and was cleaning my bathroom when I looked in the mirror and saw whole bloody footprints covering the floor behind me in a line down the hall. For a minute I thought I was being haunted or something.

Not me but my teacher, she said that one time when she was in college she was in a classroom and her foot was stuck on something but she just yanked back and was fine but she was looking up the whole time. She got to her dorm and took off her shoe and it was soaked in blood and her foot was stabbed by a loose piece of metal.

I am a bartender in a nightclub. One night while working I was pouring a drink while I reached back with my other hand to open a fridge, and that's when I heard a "pop" and got a huge pain in my back/shoulder area. The pain was pretty bad, but I was sure it was a pulled muscle and there wouldn't be much point in seeing a doctor other than getting meds. So I waited. Fought through the pain which was so bad at times it was making it hard to breathe.

That was a Friday, I called off Saturday and had Sunday Monday, Tuesday off before I went back to work Wednesday, once I biked into work. In all I waited 9 days total before finally deciding to go to the ER.

I had a collapsed lung. called a spontaneous pneumothorax. 20 min after getting to the ER I was put into emergency surgery. I was essentially breathing with only one lung and any major impact to my chest would have collapsed the other and probably killed me.

Got blackout drunk while camping and fell hands first onto the grate that had been over the fire for hours. My wife and friends were all freaking out thinking I definitely had 3rd degree burns. I came out of my blackout in the bathroom with all of them trying to wash my hands in cold water. When all the soot came off...I was somehow completely unharmed. Since then I've been known as The Unburned.

Separated two ribs when I slipped going up a staircase, I went down to radiology at work and got an x ray, looked at it and said ok no breaks and just walked over to the ER and got two big rolls of ace bandages.

Went back to my desk and took off my shirt and tee shirt. Boss walks in and sees the bruises on my chest, then I said no biggie just don't make me laugh, told him what happened, wrapped myself up and went on with life.

When I was in 7th grade I slept over at a friend's place and early that morning we went to go run my paper route, with the plan that afterwards we would get fresh baked donuts from the nearby grocery store and then go back and play Mario Kart all morning. On the way to the grocery store I hit some black ice on my bike, locked up the brakes and flipped over the handlebars when the tires hit dry cement again. I faceplanted into street and had gravel in my gums and cut into my right palm. I brushed it off, we got donuts and played SNES, although I couldn't hold the controller with my right hand, so I kinda just twiddled my fingers over the buttons. Later we made chocolate chip waffles and went back to SNES. When my mom came to pick me up around noon my wrist was swollen to three times its normal size and I could barely move my hand. She took me to the ER where we discovered it was broken. I just dealt with it all morning because...nintendo!

My little sister fell down about 15 steps at our grandma's house when she was a toddler, she got up, giggled and went to go eat some snacks. This other time (still a toddler) she was supposed to be napping, we were in the living room and heard a huge thud.. We ran to the room thinking she'd fell out of the bed. Nope, she somehow managed to pull the TV down (this was the early 2000s, TVs were heavy af) and it fell on top of her. She was laying there in snow angel position and my mom freaked out. When we got the TV off her, she got up and asked for ice. Not to soothe pain but to eat. My little sister was and still is a champ.

When I was a small dumba child, I had a habit of gripping doorframes when walking through the door.

I did not discriminate between the latch side or the hinge side.

Door gets closed and my fingers get crushed in the hinge, to the point where there's a dark purple line across them and a tangible groove. My mom starts completely freaking out over the injury, but I, brave little dumba I was, saw the distress she was in at what had happened, I put on my bravest face (my eyes welling up in tears from the pain) and said, "Don't worry Mommy, it'll heal."

I was right, it did, but still.

I was making a ninja mask. I had a piece of cloth and I was trying to cut the eyeholes out of it using a small steak knife. No, it wasn’t on my face, I wasn’t quite that stupid. But I was holding the cloth and cutting with the knife, the knife slipped and went straight into my pinky finger. I had to actually pull the knife out. It went right beside my joint and stabbed straight through the flesh on my pinky.

I pulled the knife out and blood was just pouring out of me, which was weird to me at the time. I didn’t realize a pinky would bleed that much. The worst part is, I was home alone. It didn’t really hurt that badly, strange as it may seem. It was honestly no worse than a regular cut, pain wise.

Anyway the blood was coming out at a rate which I had never before seen. I went to the bathroom and wrapped like 7 band aids around it and then took some masking tape and wrapped that around all the band aids. I was like, surely that’ll stop the bleeding. I said fk the ninja mask and sat on my couch watching tv for a bit, then noticed the tape was starting to slide off. I’d bled through it and all the band aids in maybe 5 minutes max. So I got some paper towels and decided to hold pressure on it but the cut wasn’t very symmetrical. I couldn’t figure out how to get the skin back together. I did the best I could and bled through a bunch of paper towels and finally was like, fk I think I’m gonna have to call 911.

So I called 911. They came out and by the time they got there I was feeling rather weak. There was blood all over my sinks (bathroom and kitchen) and some on the floor. They transported me to the hospital and gave me stitches. Healed up good as new in a couple weeks.

Doctor said I was lucky I didn’t sever any tendons. My mom came to the ER to take me home. It was kind of an awkward ride. She bched at me some for being too old to be doing this kind of st.

The kicker is, I really was too old to be having accidents like that. You’re probably picturing a 10 or 11 year old kid. Yeah, no. I was 19.

A couple weeks ago, I stepped on an ant hill and got a bunch of ant bites on my ankles. 3-4 days later, the itching was unbearable. I wasn't sleeping, my legs were swollen, and no amount of benadryl or antihistamine cream was helping the itching. I finally went to a clinic to get a shot or whatever, because I clearly having some sort of allergic reaction. It was a staph infection that had spread from my ankles up to my knees. I would have died if this 1920 instead of 2020. I was on antibiotics for 10 days, and now several weeks later, the dead skin from the infection is still flaking off.

I got hit by a car my freshman year of high school. I went flying and lost consciousness for a split second when I hit the ground(thank god for a helmet). When I came to, people were all around me asking if I was ok, and what happened etc. I was like “oh yea, I’m good. I’m gonna just get back on my bike and go now.” But didn’t really move. Then people started asking me to call an ambulance and my mom etc. I was like “why? I’m good.” I even told my mom on the phone I was still gonna bike home.but as I was saying that, the people around me had started to move one of my legs and I watched as my foot proceeded to NOT move. I had broken both bones in my leg completely in half and part of my ankle.

Just pure adrenaline and shock. I also vividly remember thinking “huh this is what it feels like to get hit by a car”. Also the leg wasn’t setting right(probably from movement) and the doctor decided to put me on laughing gas as he tried to crack my bones back into place. Was in a stupor laughing as I felt my bones grind.

Back in high school, trying to film a zombie movie. Was going to “bounce” off a plate glass window, didn’t bounce. Fell through and stood straight back up. When I fell through the window, I cut my stomach open, my colon and stomach both fell out of my body while I caught and looked up at my friends bleeding out.

My friends also helped me catch it all as it fell, waited 20 minutes for an ambulance and a 45 minute ride to the hospital, awake the whole way there. One 8 hour surgery and 4 blood transfusions later, I’m still here 8 years later pain free as of two years ago, very thankful for modern day medicine and doctors for saving me Was in shock, but alas “tis but a scratch!” still here today

Absolutely shattered my wrist. Pulverized a couple carpels into dust. Fractured my scaphoid bone and flipped it 180°.

Spent 2 days trying to convince myself it was but a simple sprain. When I finally went to a doctor they rushed me into emergency surgery. Later found out the doctors couldn’t believe I wasn’t incapacitated by pain. Whoops.

When I was younger, like really young, I had escaped from the house and at the time my dad was just about to drive to work. I had managed to get just behind the wheel of the car and got ran over, got rushed to hospital and at around midnight parents got a call from hospital because I was running around the place like a lunatic waking all the other kids up and basically I got away with a car tire mark and that's it.

One of my students. I had impressed upon them that there would be no late work unless hooked up to tubes in the hospital. It was their research paper final, pre-digital submission days.

College freshman had been given a ridiculously fast car by parents who’d also chosen a ridiculous acid green color. His car stood out. Another kid in class sees on his way to class, said ridiculous car smashed and ambulance at side of road. He stops and approaches. Child owner of ridiculous car is being loaded into ambulance on stretcher and sees other student. Yells, my research paper! Front seat! Get it to her! He did so and submitted the blood smudged, bedraggled document.

Dude comes to pick it up a week and a half later. In a wheelchair, cuz he broke one leg, sprained the other ankle, and sprained a wrist. He has been for 20 years my gold standard.

When I was a teenager I got jumped by a hoodlum trying to mug me. I was just walking along and they snuck up behind me and cracked me in the spine with an iron bar. Somehow the blow, instead of being painful, just went completely numb.So I turned around and said "what the fk was that?" - I''ll never forget the look of fear on the guys face - he just dropped the bar and ran.

Still get a weird numb spot on my back from time to time.

I ran into the top of a door frame- did the whole cartoon head outside, legs flying inside and then falling on my back. Head hurt a tiny bit so I covered my forehead with my hand with some pressure for a minute. When I removed my hand and tried to get up, my friends who were crowded over me collectively gasped. Turns out I had split my forehead skin open and they could see the bone. I literally wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t been so freaked out.

Couldn’t feel a thing. Got 5 stitches and a small scar near my hairline.

Rolled my car. Got out of the car bewildered and in shock, noticing a kink in my neck. As someone who constantly cracks my knuckles/back/neck, my instinct was just “ah, I’m not hurt, thank God. Just need to crack my neck and I’ll be fine.”

Before I finished processing that train of thought I was held down in c-spine by the person behind me who had watched my crash (luckily he was an off-duty firefighter).

I had broken 3 vertebrae in my neck, I just couldn’t tell it yet from the adrenaline and shock. Required full surgery to fuse together with bone from my hip & plates/screws. Had there not been someone behind me and had I proceeded with my “‘tis but a scratch” instincts I’d be paralyzed or dead.

When I was in elementary school we used to play this game at recess where we would try and see how many people we could fit in the tube slide without the person at the bottom falling out.

When it came to be my turn to be "The person at the bottom" I thought I was being smart by bracing my hands against the wall of the slide. Next kid came sliding down and his foot hit the perfect spot on my hand and dislocated my thumb at the second joint.

Other kids laughing that I could only hold one kid in when I held my hand up and smiled and said "watch how fast I can make my thumb grow" and pulled it back into place with a loud pop. One of the kids freaked out and told me and I got sent home for the day but I felt like the coolest 4th grader there ever was for not freaking out when my bone wasn't where it should've been.

When I was 10, I was a gymnast and we were practicing a bunch of tumbling passes for a “show” we were putting on for kids in a summer camp who were coming to use our gym one day. For the show, we had the lights down and were only using a spot light. Well one of the girls did a tumbling pass and landed weirdly. She got up and hobbled to the back of the line and when it was her turn again, she tried to run and immediately fell and got up and tried again and the same thing happened. Then the poor girl behind her casually said, “your bone is sticking out.” The lights came on and sure enough, the girl’s shin bone (maybe?) was protruding from her shin. She didn’t realize it and had still been trying to tumble but her leg just simply didn’t work.

I actually saw a few bones just sticking out of my fellow gymnasts now that I think about it

I have this scar on my finger shaped like a Nike swoosh because I was dumb/drunk and decided to punch a pint glass.

This was back when I was in college living at one of the dorms and it ended up slicing my finger really badly, like I mean there was a flap of skin that came up. Went to the bathroom and ran it under water, but it just kept bleeding. I didn't know what to do and was too drunk to try to deal with it, so I just wrapped my hand in a towel and tried to go to sleep.

Woke up to knocking at my door and it ended up being security. He followed a trail of blood from the bathroom to my room and wanted to make sure I was alright. I told him I was fine and just had a cut, but he demanded to see it. After I showed him my finger he was like, "Come on, you gotta go to the hospital." Dude was a real bro and drove me there even though it was like 3am. Saw a doctor and he had to give me a bunch of stitches. He said I was very lucky because if it was just a tiny bit deeper I would have probably had done permanent damage and lost mobility of the finger.