Saturday morning while the wife and i were getting ready to leave to the old house to load up the horse trailer again to move more stuff to town the two girls head outside to play. well the wife had just gotten out of the shower and i had just gotten in when all of the sudden the oldest(11) comes a shouting and a hollering that the youngest(8) needs help NOW. well i manage to get some clothes on faster than the wife and head out the door first. and all i hear is screaming coming from down by the shed since we couldnt make sence of what the oldest was trying to say was wrong i didnt know what to expect. well it seems the girls were bouncing the basket ball back and forth on the concrete slab and it got away from one of them and went into the neighbors yard the youngest kicked off her shoes and proceeded to climb the 4ft chain link fence(ignoring a perfectly good gate 10 feet away) well she jumped down onto a board and did a damn fine job of getting a nail stuck in her foot. well after i figured out the problem i hop the fence cause she wasnt going to let me out of her sight to go around and use the gate. i make a single attempt to remove the board from her foot at which point she let the everyone in 4 blocks know she had a problem so i say the hell with it, yell up to the wife who is coming out of the house to go get the car and bring it around to the alley. i pick the youngest up at which point she latches ahold of the board so it doesnt wiggle and screams if someone even gets close to touching it and carry her out to the alley. all the while the oldest i darn near freaking out worse than the youngest. so Darla and i place the injured one in the back seat of the car and send them up to the ER. i than proceed to go and get properly dressed and than take the oldest up to the ER with me to see just how much damage had been done. turns out she had managed to get it jammed in there a good inch. after checking to make sure nothing appeared to be seriously hurt i held her leg and foot, the wife held he shoulders and the doc yanked the board off at which point the whole hospital found out she was hurting. nothing major was hurt other than her ego. a soak in an antibacterial, a check to make sure her shots were up to date and out the door we went.

think we will convince her to stop taking her shoes off outside anymore?

Nope, never happen, take it from me, I learn everything the hard way, except reloading. Les

I've had my kids get their worst injuries in the living, litterally feet away from me. One a 911 call, the other emergency room visit, emergency surgery and 4 days in the hospital recovering.

There's lots of ways to learn things, and the hardest thing for a parent is watching their kids learn things the hard way.

yeah cant really say i havent been ther done that either though a nail a full inch in the foot beats my record of a half inch. i fell out of more trees than i can count, got road rash on my bike so bad that i hit my head hard enough to cause hallucinations, sliced open my chin on the spring on a trampoline, my knees are a maze of scars.

if nothing else it added some excitement to a lazy saturday. the neighbors werent home though, had to tell them the next day bout the incident. they were darn near more worried about the incident than anyone.

I walked out of the house one day to my mom calling, "put your shoes on". BArefoot I went. I lost the end of a toe that day and now I can only count to nineteen and a third. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Some things are learned the hard way, but once learned can make future decisions better.
Good lesson: "... stop taking (your) shoes off outside..." Shoes are made to protect your feet.
Another good lesson: Don't climb over a fence. It was put there to keep you out.
Thankfully, the injury was minor, altho painful. It could have been much worse. I know of a similar incident where the kid landed on a garden stake that was hidden by weeds and was impaled through the abdomen. Eventually recovered, but it was a bad injury.

My sister went out in bare feet at the cottage and cut her foot on a buck saw. Trip to the ER, tetanus shot, bandage etc, etc. The doctor told her to wear her shoes. So the next day she went outside with one shoe on.....






and cut her other foot.





Some kids just NEED to learn the hard way.

I was wearing shoes when I jumped the fence into the neighbors yard and nailed a board to my foot. No ER I didn't want the shot so Mom never knew.

I jumped from out of our tree house when I was a kid. I drove a nail *THROUGH* my foot. In the bottom, sticking out the arch. My friends took turns piggy backing me home. By the time my mom got home, got a hold of the doctor, then drove me to his office, I had red streaks up to my hip. We left the doctor's office for Children's Hospital. I was laid up for two weeks. The worst (or best) part was watching the doctor run one of those long Q-tip thingies through my foot.

I didn't learn from that experience. My kids seem to be outgrowing that stuff. Me, I'll spend my entire life learning things the hard way...

Did the same thing chadwimc, except for the infection part. I've put around 4 nails through my foot over the years. One jumping out of the treehouse (went right through my shoe, foot, and through the top of the shoe too. I just pulled it out and limped into the house) another jumping out of the back of the truck at the dump after unloading. Also shot a nail across the back of my left hand under all the tendons with an air nailer. That one smarted the most and required the most attention.

As far as kids getting into trouble, tell me about it. I just went through that with a curious 2 year old and an exhaust pipe...


SS

I forget what comedian it was.... but their line was something like:

"The first 3 years of parenting are just a continuous suicide watch!!"

A lot of truth in that one. For boys, I think it's longer than 3 years.

No matter how bad we got hurt,(4 brothers) my dad would always say "Nowhere near your heart."

Glad I don't have kids.I was always afraid they would turn out like me.

Somehow my daughter managed to the 4 days in the hospital, I'd always expected the boys the ones to be the ones to get it.

It seems when stuff gets left on the floor around the house, my feet are the ones to find em, might could be the size 13. Anyhoo, I can assure you that finding a sewing needle with your foot, and the eye end no less is a painful lesson. The eye end might not be sharp, but you can still drive it into your foot a good ways.

I leaned up against the arm of a couch once when I was a kid and there happened to be a needle stuck in it. The eye end went 1/2 in into my knee next to the kneecap. Then the cartilage and muscles locked up,so we had to pull it out with pliers.

argh.
i feel y'all's pain.
got my own stoopid injuries, and those of my daughter and two boys, too.
we were on a first-name basis with the ER folks there for a while ...