Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents (23 page)

M
Y OLD VIRGINNY HOME

An elderly North Carolina woman arrived at the ER saying she had green vines growing in her “virginny,” as she quaintly called it. An exam and a few X-rays confirmed her story: It was a vine, and it had sprouted…out of a potato. The woman explained that her uterus had prolapsed, or fallen out (a condition not uncommon in elderly women), so she’d popped in a potato to hold it up—and forgotten about it.

VERY BAD KITTY

A panicked woman brought her unconscious boyfriend into the ER and explained that she’d found him lying in the bathtub. Doctors noted a large lump on the man’s head…and some curious scratches on his scrotum. As they were trying to determine what happened, the man woke up and told his story: He’d been cleaning his tub in the nude, and while kneeling to scrub the drain, he didn’t realize that his swaying testicles had drawn the attention of his cat. The cat pounced, and the man jumped in pain…then hit his head on the tiles and knocked himself out.

SAY WHAT?

In August 2003, Valdemar Lopes de Moraes of Monte Claros, Brazil, walked into a medical clinic to get treated for an earache. A few hours later he walked out—with a vasectomy. What happened? The nurses called “
Aldemar
” (for a vasectomy), and Valdemar thought he’d been called. “The strangest thing,” said the clinic manager, “is that he asked no questions when the doctor started preparations in the area which had so little to do with his ear. He later explained that he thought it was an ear inflammation that got down to his testicles.”

LOVE MACHINE

In a 1991 issue of the journal
Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality
, a urologist from West Chester, Pennsylvania, wrote about an ER patient he’d treated for a lacerated and swollen scrotum. At a checkup appointment, the man admitted how he’d gotten the injury: He’d been pleasuring himself by holding his genitals against the canvas belt on a piece of industrial equipment at his machine shop (during his lunch hour, because otherwise it would have been weird). He pressed against it too hard. It gets worse: He tried to close the wound himself…with an industrial staple gun.

A
couple filed a claim for a new phone after they lost theirs while on a cruise ship. They had dropped the phone into the ocean, they said, while trying to take a photo of themselves attempting to reenact Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s “I’m the king of the world!” scene from the film
Titanic
.

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A woman from Liverpool, England, filed for a new phone because, she said, hers had a crack in it. After discovering that her boyfriend was cheating on her, she explained, she threw the phone at his head. He ducked—and the phone hit a wall and broke.

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A woman from Bristol, England, filed a claim to have the cost of a new BlackBerry Bold 9900 reimbursed because she had worn out the phone’s vibrator function with, uh, intimate use.

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A construction worker applied for a replacement phone when his fell out of his back pocket just as he was sitting down…“on the loo.” Unfortunately, he didn’t notice…and went about his business, so to speak. He didn’t know the phone was missing from his pocket until he saw it in the toilet bowl.

W
ayne Coyne is the front man of the Flaming Lips, a popular arty rock band. They’ve done a lot of kooky things over the years, including releasing a four-album set designed to be played all at once, and performing onstage encased in a bubble. But in November 2012, Coyne was flying out of Oklahoma City (his hometown) to Houston, Texas, when he was stopped at a security checkpoint. An X-ray scan alerted officials to contraband inside his luggage. Drugs? Guns? Nope—a grenade. When questioned by NSA workers Coyne said he had taken it from a party in Arkansas a week earlier but that it was not a live grenade and that it was painted gold. In other words it was a piece of art and he took it because he thought it was interesting.

The TSA wasn’t going to take any chances. They detained Coyne…and shut down the Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City for several hours. By the time all was clear, hundreds of people had missed their flights. Coyne posted an apology on Twitter along with a picture of himself in the airport flashing a peace sign.

A
fter William Bonner, 36, awoke in the intensive care unit,
he told police officers that his face had been burned by some thugs at a bar in Augusta, Georgia. The surveillance video told a different story: Bonner’s friends had burned his face. He told them to. He even bet them that he would let them do it. His buddy poured a shot of rum on Bonner’s head and tried to light it. It wouldn’t light, so he tried again. That did the trick. Bonner’s world went up in flames as he screamed and ran wildly around the bar. His friends laughed and called him “Ghost Rider.” Once they realized he was in serious trouble, they called an ambulance.

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When Johnny Knoxville set himself on fire
on the MTV show
Jackass
(he was roasted on a rotisserie spit), he was shown first putting on a flame-retardant suit. A message was displayed onscreen in big letters that informed viewers Knoxville was wearing a flame-retardant suit. He said, “I am wearing a flame-retardant suit. Do not try this at home.” Within days of the episode’s airing, at least two preteen boys did try it at home. Neither wore a flame-retardant suit. Both received severe burns. One of the burned boys even
appeared on
Good Morning America
just so he could blame Johnny Knoxville for giving him the idea.

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Poor Gary Allen Banning.
He made the all-too-common mistake of accidentally taking a swig from a jar of gasoline and then lighting a cigarette. He was 43.

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Christine Mecca, 51, of Ford City, Pennsylvania, accidentally lit herself on fire
at a gas station. At the hospital, Mecca first blamed the flames on a lit cigarette, but then confessed to what really happened: She told police she had accidentally set herself on fire while trying to set fire to a letter from her boss informing her that she had been fired.