People say it’s only funny until someone gets hurt, but my personal experience says otherwise:
It’s only funny until someone gets hurt badly.
Most people will still laugh at someone who has incurred cuts and bruises. (Especially if you did this in a spectacular way. Trip over a rock, maybe not. Trip and stumble down a flight of stairs, arms flailing, without going down, and then wipe out at the very end, likely yes.) Some people will even laugh at broken bones.
Those people are probably not your friends.
I once cut myself on a bagel, which usually earns me weird looks from people I tell.
* * *
“Did she say a bagel?”
“I think she did.”
“Don’t make eye contact. Back away slowly….”
* * *
But I tell people about the Bagel Incident anyway, because it’s my favorite example of everyday objects that are actually quite dangerous in the right hands. Anyone can cut themselves on a knife, but only certain skilled people can cut themselves on a microwave.
The bagel was sliced and toasted, and I was putting cream cheese on it. It rotated against my thumb, giving me what was basically a paper cut. Then I went back to my table (this happened in my college cafeteria) and showed my friends my injury, because you take pride in what you can.
Tasty, but secretly out for blood.
Source: Wikimedia Commons by Alexander Klink.
You laugh at other people’s pain–because you don’t know what else to do, because some else starts laughing first, or because you’re glad it isn’t you that’s in pain.
Do you have any funny stories of self-inflicted injuries?
caitlinsternwrites 
Or maybe you just enjoy someone else’s pain.
I cringe at other people’s scrapes, splinters, and cuts, rendering me near-useless in first aid situations. I can only be brave when I’m the one bleeding, and even then I’m a bit of a wimp.
I don’t find others pain funny, but I do get into some Mr. Bean situations myself. Had an interview recently. Got to the beautiful building in good time, and thinking ahead, went to use the bathroom before the interview. So, went to flush the loo and the handle fell off the turning spindle and into the loo – unflushed. Couldn’t leave a mess so decided if the handles are loose then I could use one from another cubicle, flush it and report seeing a metal handle in a clean loo (cunningly putting the other handle back where it belonged). The other handle was loose so I used it to flush the loo, only to watch the heavy metal handle disappear. Sharp moment of dismay. Reported exactily what happened at reception and went to the interview. Got the interview.
Oh, dear! That sounds like an equipment malfunction, which makes it in no way your fault. I wonder what would have happened if you’d tried a third handle?
Cutting yourself on a bagel sounds like something that would happen to me. It never HAS, of course, but there’s always that next scary bagel, lurking in the breadbox, hungry for blood. It COULD happen. Plenty of similarly strange things HAVE happened around here. I’m just sayin’…..
Thanks for checking out my new blog. I will definitely be visiting here again.
Yes, exactly! You never know what inanimate object is plotting against you.
Personally, I have the most trouble with those vicious table and chair legs. They lie in wait for me, particularly the chairs, thinking to get even for all the times I’ve dragged them away from the table and hoisted my full-figured self up to stand on them. They apparently don’t like being used as ladders, and long for nothing more than to trip me up when I walk by. How they know that trifocal-wearing grannies can’t see their own feet clearly (and thus avoid slamming into things) I’m not sure. But know it they do, and nothing makes a chair leg happier than watching an otherwise dignified personage (me) hopping around on one foot and screaming imprecations to the heavens above. They earn bonus points if a toe gets broken in the process. Mine have racked up LOTS of bonus points. The sorry, sneaking, wretched instruments of pain and torture!!! GAH!!!
Ouch… Chair legs are terribly dangerous. And coffee tables–they have a fondness for toes, too.