Tales Of Younger Me Suffering Absurd Amounts Of Pain - A Miniseries: Part 1

Age: I can't really remember, but it was when my friends and I considered nose-picking and marker-eating to be competitive sports.

The injury: Just a stupid amount of blood loss.

The story: When I was really little, my parents used to dump me off at a daycare everyday - the reason being that my parents had absurd work schedules and couldn't really let their pudgy little toddler waddle around the house on his own. One particular day, my mom had come surprisingly early to pick me up, and I, ever the rambunctious little boy, was more than eager to get going. I bade a hurried farewell to my friends (which consisted of some weird Russian army brat and another kid with, like, 6 different speech impediments) and rushed out to my mom's car. As I was getting in, she said "I need to go inside the daycare and talk to one of the grown-ups for a little bit. You just stay here, ok?" I mumbled an agreement, not really paying attention to what she was saying, and it wasn't until after she was already inside that I realized I was stuck in her car alone.

Now, I've never claimed to be all that bright (considering the fact that every linked word in this sentence leads to another story about my functional-retardation). But even for someone as deprived of common sense as me, I was an exceptionally stupid child, and as such, I was possessed of an attention span that could be measured in microseconds and an unshakable fascination with the inner workings of my nose. After processing the possibility of having to sit still for an extended period of time, I promptly buried my finger into one of my nostrils and staged a small reenactment of the Gold Rush.

Ladies.

I was having the time of my life, when all of a suddenly, I felt a sharp pain somewhere deep within my nasal passage. I was about to write it off as some strange finger-induced phantom pain, except when I extricated my finger from my nose, blood started gushing out of my face. It was like a mix between a fire hose and that scene from The Shining, and the closest I've ever come to bleeding that much since then was...well, this.

Being the little dumbass that I was, it never occurred to me that I should unbuckle my seat belt and take my bleeding outside. Instead, upon seeing the sheer quantity of blood that I was spilling, I had a bit of a panic attack and started crying. I was rocking back and forth, trapped by my seat belt like a rabbit caught in a snare, and the front of my shirt had turned a surprisingly vibrant shade of red. I sat in my mom's car bleeding all over myself for a good 5 minutes before she finally came back. At first she started panicking, as any competent mother would when their only begotten son is drenched in blood. However, once she saw that my nose was the source of it all, she looked at me with what I can only describe as a weird mix of disappointment and complete befuddlement at my total incompetence as a human being. 

I've gotten that look a lot since then.