Manly Guide to Hurting Yourself

Not all injuries are created equal. Stubbing your toe naturally elicits less sympathy than having your foot bitten off by a rogue emu, while sustaining a paper cut earns less respect than lodging your entire upper torso in the whirling blades of a riding lawnmower. Keeping track of the boast-worthiness of a given injury can be a tiresome and complicated task, which is why I’ve gone through the trouble of compiling a list of respectable injuries for you. Through careful comparisons, these shining examples of poor decision making can help you assess whether or not you deserve to brag about your own unorthodox accident, like getting stuck by a meteor in the lower abdomen. The answer is yes, but only if the alleged space rock is larger than the one that killed the dinosaurs. Crying and mass extinction are both signs of weakness. The following mishaps are ranked on a scale of ascending awesomeness, with highest level denoting an unambiguously lethal injury that warrants the attention of the federal government and possibly the use of a Band-Aid.

If they could fly, emus would gladly wipe out mankind. Fortunately for humanity, selective screening prevents emus from boarding any commercial airliner that they could potentially hijack. (Photo courtesy of http://photos.nczoo.org/gallery/259491/1/10451231)

Pain Level 1: Shot Glass to the Eye Socket

It’s not really a party until somebody goes blind. Drinking until you lose your visual faculties takes patience, but arguing with someone until they make you lose an eye takes only a topic of conversation and a high velocity shot glass. To achieve this injury, try starting a debate about the existential merits of Thoreau’s Walden and Pokémon trading cards. It won’t be long before your can no longer claim that your ocular nerve is shot glass-free.

Pain Level 2: Enraged Bison to the Shin

There are many ways to enjoy an afternoon at Yellowstone National Park. Hitting a bison with a wiffleball bat is one of them. Oddly enough, annoying a temperamental animal fifteen times your size can lead to negative consequences, the most likely of which is a 2,000-pound bison charging you at over thirty miles per hour. Your natural reaction will be to carefully deflect the animal with the boney surface of your lower leg, but unlike harassing bison with plastic bats, this is a bad idea. The next time you terrorize nature, wear a shin guard.

Fancy karate kicks will always lose to nature’s furry juggernaut, but nature’s furry juggernaut always loses to volcanoes. Karate, bison, lava is far more effective than rock, paper, scissors for the purposes of settling disputes. (Photo courtesy of http://www.ownbyphotography.com/Bison.jpg)

Pain Level 3: Sport Utility Vehicle to the Inner Ear

A true Native American warrior can put his ear to group and hear an approaching horseman miles away. You can achieve the same effect on the freeway, but with significantly different results. Don’t be discouraged if you face unexpected challenges. Even Sitting Bull would have trouble dislodging a Ford Explorer from his ear canal. If the problem doesn’t clear up on it’s own, try using a Q-tip.

Pain Level 4: Bear Trap to the Pancreas

I’m not sure what the pancreas does, but I know one thing that it doesn’t do, and that’s get out of bear traps. Just how the bear trap made it inside you body in the first place is matter for speculation, but it’s hard to complain when you probably didn’t even know you had a pancreas in the first place. For that reason, I recommend waiting this one out. Eventually, the bear trap will get tired and go home or fall apart from rust.

Pain Level 5: Space Shuttle to the Left Testicle

In recent years, NASA has been inconsistent to say the least. It’s launches are often delayed, and the crews of its spacecraft habitually end up at unexpected destinations, like scattered across fields of fiery wreckage. With that kind track record, your groin is just as likely of a reentry target as Cape Canaveral. The next time you watch a televised shuttle launch, be sure to cross your legs.

Given the extreme temperatures of shuttle reentry, it’s best to clean up spacecraft-on-crotch collisions with oven mitts and possibly some aloe. (Photo courtesy of http://www.harperintl.com/images/advceram.jpg)

It’s hard to rank injuries in order of painfulness because I have personally experienced only a few of the accidents mentioned on the list, but it can safely be assumed that the collision of a massive airborne vehicle with your reproductive organs is at least in contention for the title of second most respectable injury ever inflicted upon a human being. The most painful mishap in human history isn’t on the list because it’s now technically impossible to replace someone’s bidet with a prehistoric wolverine.