What was the worst falling experience you have ever suffered?

Slid down a small cliff, about 12 feet - landed on my knees and gouged a chunk the size of a nickel out of my left one. I was eleven.

I fell on the ice when attempting to get my mail when I first moved to the mid-west. I hit my head on the ground and laid there stunned for a while.  I slipped on the ice and fell a total of 5 times while living there.  My worst fall was in a supermarket when I tripped over a large bag of pet food.  I received a concussion over that.  It took almost one year to heal from that. 4 trips to emergency it was awful. 




This post was edited by Honey Dew at August 10, 2021 10:23 AM MDT

I was trying to move a sprinkler in my sister's back yard and I slid sideways on the wet grass until my foot hit a dry spot and the force cause me to fracture the bone just above my ankle.  I had to hobble around for six weeks in a heavy, plaster cast.  Not fun.

 

  I guess I haven’t had any/many epic falls on my lifetime, I had to think and think and think and think before settling on this one:

  For over a decade, I have been an avid runner, so obsessed with it that as one example, I’d get up at 5:30 am to join other runners at a 6 am jaunt even on the weekends. I participate in various running events, some of them are training runs. My wife has never been able to join me or even be in the stands because of her work schedule and because I start so early in the morning and because she lacks interest.

  The one day that I convinced my wife! to join me at a local park where I would run its 4-mile perimeter while she walked it was the day I’d fall flat on my keister right in front of her.

  When we left the parking lot together to start our stints, I walked with her for a few moments and then said my goodbyes as I took off running. It was a clear day on a typical San Diego morning, no moisture anywhere in our drought-ravaged landscape. Not twenty yards after I started running, I managed to find the solitary mud puddle for miles around, most likely created by one of the park’s sprinklers the night before. I didn’t see it because I had turned around to wave at her. My lead foot slid sideways in the mud for a second before hitting dry dirt, the first action put me off balance, the second one pitched me head over tea kettle due to my torso being twisted and my hand high in the air as I waved to her. I sensed I was falling and instinctively curled into a tuck-and-roll position to avoid breaking my fall with my hand or hands, which could cause wrist pain or even a broken wrist. My maneuver put my shoulder as the body part that made first contact with the ground, and the combination of my weight, angle of approach, the speed that I was running all caused my momentum to keep me rolling and flipping over about three times, lanky legs high in the air and gangly tall body bouncing like an awkward football. Just as instinctively as protecting fragile parts during the fall, I equally jumped up from the fall and regained my stride, almost as if nothing had happened. I didn’t even conduct a self-inspection for injuries. The entire fall and recovery from the fall only took about two seconds in real time, but felt like slow-motion as they happened.

  My wife, however, having seen the whole show, was doubled over in laughter. After all the years of hearing of my exploits on the running trails and my athletic abilities, her first time joining me began with a slapstick pratfall straight out of the movies. Her high-pitched guffaws drones off into a faraway giggle as I put distance between us, completely embarrassed by my performance. When I rejoined her later, she had a blow-by-blow rendition of how it had looked from her perspective, interlaced with even more unstoppable laughter and with hand gestures to describe the action. I took all of her kidding, more than being physically hurt, I was just put out that she had seen it all. 

~
  

I have had many falls, both as a child and an adult. Only one was serious enough to cause damage. It was two months. ago when I tripped near my backyard fence and my leg scraped against something and ripped the skin open. I went to the ER to get 12 stitches.

I've had six bad, really quite bad falls:  3 on stairs, one on ice, two on a bike.