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While cooking dinner tonight I hurt my left hand three times. Yes--three times. First, I jabbed my middle finger on a fork as I was unloading the dishwasher. Then, seconds later, I sliced a neat gash in my ring finger putting a couple of steak knives in the silverware drawer. Finally, to complete the Stupid Injury Trifecta, I knocked a pewter wine stopper off of its hook on the side of the kitchen cabinet and it nailed me right in one of the bones on the back of my hand (yes, that's right: a wine injury). So now I've got two Band-Aids and a nice bruise to show for my kitchen wizardry and I haven't really started cooking anything yet. By the time Beth gets home, I may be bleeding profusely from my ears long before dinner is on the table.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about my proclivity for weird injuries. It happens way more than it really should. I smoke, drink, and eat large quantities of butter, but knowing my luck I'll probably die from a freak household accident involving a wayward cheese grater.

So, in no particular order, here are my Top 10 Bizarre Injuries:

1. Facial Laceration - During the very first softball practice of the year (back when we actually were gung-ho about practicing), I went back on a long drive and promptly ran into the outfield fence. Yes, it was a chain-link fence. So now I've got a permanent (and very noticeable) perfectly diagonal scar just below my nose and just above my upper lip. Thanks Roy. I appreciate it.

2. Pulled Back Muscle - I was out on the deck smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of joe one bright spring morning. I yawned. I stretched. I pulled something. I could barely open the sliding-glass door to get back inside.

3. Puncture Wound, Right Foot - As a wee child, I was running around the house in socks before school one day and I somehow managed to half kick and half step on a #2 pencil (why it was on the floor, I'll never know). It stuck into the side of my foot and to this day you can still see a black lead mark beneath the skin.

4. Pulled Back Muscle II - I was reclining on the couch watching TV and I reached for the remote on the end table next to the couch. Pop! I was laid up for two freakin days. It may have been the first ever recorded instance of Couch Potato Back.

5. Puncture Wound, Left Ear - Okay, maybe this doesn't qualify as an injury, but it certainly was bizarre. Back in the 80's I was talked into get my ear pierced by a girlfriend. Did I go somewhere and have it done? Nope. She did it. She numbed it (well, sorta) with an ice cube and then used a safety pin to make the hole. Fortunately, the hole didn't become infected because she used her cigarette lighter to sterilize the safety pin.

6. Full Body - We used to play street football a lot when I was younger. Problem was, there were a lot of parked cars on our street. See where this is going? Yep, that's right. I went deep and I was looking back at the ball in the air. I never saw that Datsun B210 hatchback.

7. Broken Nail, Left Foot - Yeah, I've mentioned this before. I ran into a 156-year-old guy playing first base and I tore the nail off of my big toe. Fun stuff.

8. Groin - I was out golfing with Barney and we had just finished a hole. I had laid down my pitching wedge on the edge of the green (after making a fantastic up and down, I'm sure) so I went to get it on the way back to the cart. Instead of reaching down and picking it up like a normal person, I stepped on the head of the club in an attempt to pop it up into my hand. It popped up alright. Right into my nuts. If my memory serves me correctly, I do believe I cried.

9. Full Body II - Back in my CVS days when I used to get out on the sales floor and actually do real work, I was once changing the fluorescent light bulbs in the beer cooler. One of the lights was kind of a tight fit so I grabbed it by the end and tried to jam it in the socket. Bzzzzt! I was twitching on the floor for a good 20 seconds.

10. Contusion, Left Breast - In college, I used to have the upper bunk on a bunk bed that I shared with one of my roomies. I didn't have a ladder to get up onto the top bunk and one night (sober, I'm sure) I hoisted myself up and somehow caught my left nipple in between my left hand and the wooden side of the bunk bed. The next morning my nipple was black, bruised, and quite a bit swollen. Seriously, my left tit was a goddamn B-cup for the next week.