Things you have done, or that have happened to you, that you worry might have fucked you up

I haven't been to a real dentist since my dad quit his job at the IRS when I was five. Since then, it was always the Idaho State school of dentistry, which was cheap. Anyway, half the time they did x-rays in the x-ray room, they forgot to put that weird lead blanket on me.

I am pretty sure x-rays are bad for you.

hopefully those two will cancel each other out

oh honey, there isn't enough room in this thread

In teh 80s we had a VCR that you could PROGRAM by SCANNING BAR CODES with a LASER WAND. I would point this thing in my eye for minutes at a time. I'm still 20/20 though.

let's say before the age of 10 for kicks, we know what collllllege does.

when i was maybe 5 i would repeatedly tell my younger brother that we found him in a garbage can so he better behave or my mom would throw him back. it was a good while before my parents caught on to that one. i still feel bad.

I was always the 'weird kid' in school, and in junior high/high school, people would always ask me, "Were you dropped on your head as a child?" Har har. I was thinking about it one day when I was 17, so I asked my mom if I was ever dropped on my head as a child. "Oh yeah," she said. "You fell head-first into a concrete hot tub once. Your cousins dropped you off the balcony, and you landed on your head. You fell off a slide once and landed on the concrete, head first." And about seven other times she listed.

My nurse once was talking to me about the causes of bipolar, and she said research suggests that multiple blows to your head as a child can cause it.

I am pretty sure it's bad to have had so many head injuries before you were even three years old.

My childhood bedroom had a hatch to the attic, which was entirely unfinished and full of exposed fiberglass insulation. I used to hide up there and smoke cigarettes when I was a teenager. Should I expect serious lung problems in my future?

oh honey, there isn't enough room in this thread

I think there is. And that you should at least try. :)

speed

you could ask yahoo answers.

Oh man, friendly ghost, if we start talking about mean inter-sibling acts, I'd be here all the live-long day. I think it made us all close in the end. It's weird to have all these fucked-up memories to laugh at though. "Remember when we got dad's Casull and pointed it at you and convinced you we were going to kill you? "Haha, oh man."

Abbott, so true. :)

Mainly what has made us closer is apologizing to one another, 15 years later, about all this shit.

also lead.

GET THE LEAD OUT

A FAMILY CAN BE TOGETHER FOREVER

Oh, being Mormon for 20 years. That kind of fucked me up. My exMo sister, too.

In teh 80s we had a VCR that you could PROGRAM by SCANNING BAR CODES with a LASER WAND. I would point this thing in my eye for minutes at a time. I'm still 20/20 though.

you probably accidentally performed lasik on yrself.

Having my aunt convince everyone in our pop 400 town that I was a lesbian, at age 12. That made me hate my aunt more than anything.

Staring at the sun for long times every day to see the floating after-images.

This is supposed to be bad for one's vision.

Having to go to an after-kindergarten program for 'special kids' made me feel pretty stupid for a long time, even though I was quite a smart kid. (I had to go for my dexterity & coordination problems.)

Baked in the sun for hours. summer after summer blistered, peeled, blistered, peeled. no sunscreen - baby oil. I am pale and white by nature.

Staring at the sun for long times every day to see the floating after-images.

I used to like to close my eyes and then jam my fingers around against them to see the pretty coloured splodges.

Oh, I did that all the time! I don't think that's bad for you.

I started smoking at age 22. That was pretty foolish.

In teh 80s we had a VCR that you could PROGRAM by SCANNING BAR CODES with a LASER WAND. I would point this thing in my eye for minutes at a time. I'm still 20/20 though.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that was probably not a laser. The barcode scanners that you have to hold right up to the barcode are usually infra-red (I say usually because there may be exceptions). It's the scanners used at supermarket checkouts that have lasers.

as a kid at church, during mass, i would press on my closed eyelids until all sorts of closed-eye hallucinations would occur -- mostly visual noise, flashes of light, colors, and patterns. i was especially interested in how these visual perceptions would then remain, and slowly fade, with the eyes open. also (not at church) i would stick my finger into my eye socket beneath the eye and make it bulge out a little.

I was more reminded of it than horrified at its up-fucking potential, but I do have pretty terrible vision now...

(Though I did then, too. Not too bad during my school years, but as a toddler I remember asking my mother loudly "why does that girl have 4 eyes? why do we have 2 but some people have 4 and occasionally 6?" and being very upset when nobody could answer and everyone was shutting me up. Obviously she didn't, it's just my own were out of focus and I was seeing double. No idea how I managed 6 though!)

There is probably another thread for that digression.

also, i had a severe throat infection a couple years ago for which my doctor prescribed a heavy dose of steroids and a powerful course of antibiotics. after the infection went away, i was left with a hard node of tissue around-about the glandular area on the neck. i had an x-ray and the lumpy thing didn't even show up in the x-ray, and it hasn't changed size or anything since it first showed up. my doctor says it is probably scar-tissue built up because of the steroid treatment. still, i am convinced at times that it is a harbinger of a cancerous death.

Abbott, I also had a crazy, rumor-spreading aunt. In addition to lesbian, I was also on drugs and probably a satanist!

http://penguincentral.com/pics/gallery/fun/eyeball.jpg

for many years as a kid & teenager did a lot of how deep in the diving pool can you go down to and how long can you stay there and hold yr breath + withstand the high-pitched pressure whine

this thread is amazing in being a perfect hybrid of LOL/o_O/:(

so yeah my other answer is:
birth control pills from age 16-29

i'm so happy suppressing childhood memories, why stop now?

Oh shit we made asbestos angels.

What can bc pills do to you rrrob? I have been on them that long too

Surprised no-one has yet mentioned listening to loud music on headphones for hours and hours. VERY LOUD.

^^^, except it's playing lots of drums without wearing earplugs.

also staring at a computer screen all day every day with my glasses on

That is bad for you ?!?!?!?!

uh-oh

maybe that's why my eyes have been wacky lately

I think I need to see eye doc again

i suspect it is bad

haha was just thinking abt the loud music thing today as i was riding to work and finding the high winds really discombobulating - i think b/c wind sound goes right inside yr ears and is so loud + i have lost some of my higher frequencies for real and so ambient noise has become more and more hard to deal with. so wind sound, yeah, whoa.

i don't really know taht bc pills fuck you up after many years or anything, it is just a worry - i mean, they're always talking abt how safe they are but then how women over 35 probably shouldn't be on them o_O - like what happens at the magical age of 35?? anyway i went off them a few years ago though.

Increased risk of blood clots, I think. I know they did that to my mom, whose legs basically look like a Stephen King made-for-TV movie.

I see my hideous future before me, in her. My sisters and I will look at our feet for new veins and fret about how we'll soon have crazy hideous legs.

i just take issue with how medical science establishes cut-off dates for everyone as if everyone is totally the same. but that is my big issue with medicine. probably my big issue with everything.

supposedly 'eye strain' as an actual eye problem does not exist

what about broken eyes?

xpost - the whole BC pills over 35 is merely a guideline, not a hard-and-fast cutoff, unless you're a smoker.

My feet are so veiny but it never bothered me until my sister was like "OMG WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FOOT?!" But you can basically see my veins everywhere though because my skin is tranparent.

like if someone smashes your eyeball? thatd probably suck a lot

glasses or no basically comes down to genetics i think, though staring directly into the sun for long periods every day is probably not a good idea, i actually try to avoid staring into the sun whenever possible, which is almost always, & ive yet to need glasses

But you can basically see my veins everywhere though because my skin is tranparent.

same, i'm pretty much translucent.

Maybe I should look into getting an IUD tho

I could c+p about 7-10 of these comments and put ^^THIS^^ beneath them. That suggests that either we are all going to be fucked up, or that so far we have not gotten EXTREME! So get this: I used to point the Nintendo Zapper Gun at my sister and CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK, even though she told me not to. I fucked you up, sis!

I'm getting an IUD in three weeks!

That was supposed to be funny, not snarky, btw.

My sister and I used to lick the tops of 9-volt batteries way too much.

man i do tons of horrible things to myself but ive never come close to doing anything yet listed on this thread

like im pretty sure yr not even being sarcastic about licking batteries ZS

Your cousins dropped you off the balcony, and you landed on your head.

are these the same puppy killing cousins? or do I have my stories mixed up?

did anyone else used to bust open thermometers to play with the mercury? LIQUID FUCKING METAL!!! that was some T-2 shit in the early 80s for me.

as a kid at church, during mass, i would press on my closed eyelids until all sorts of closed-eye hallucinations would occur

omg haha I used to do this too

I BLAME CHRIST

When I was in first through third grade, I had a walkman and two tapes, a Weird Al one and Ride the Lightning. I used to blast the Metallica one at nearly full volume constantly, then when my ears hurt, I would assume it was because they didn't have enough wax in them, then shove crayons into my ears to fix that. It hurt a lot and my tinnitus is pretty bad.

-xpost-

I have licked the batteries, it's true. Also,

Oh, being Mormon Pentecostal for 20 18 years. That kind of fucked me up. My exMo sister, too.

i would press on my closed eyelids until all sorts of closed-eye hallucinations would occur -- mostly visual noise, flashes of light, colors, and patterns

Surprised no-one has yet mentioned listening to loud music on headphones for hours and hours. VERY LOUD.

except it's playing lots of drums without wearing earplugs.

^^THIS^^

I've done about 50 trips on el es dee.... after I stopped I spent a couple of years with mild but constant visual disturbances, which can still manifest itself when I'm really tired.

my wife and I were worried our babies would come equipped with glow-in-the-dark tentacles.

are these the same puppy killing cousins? or do I have my stories mixed up?

The very same!

It was was kittens, tho.

so essentially they tried to kill you, too

my wife and I were worried our babies would come equipped with glow-in-the-dark tentacles.

luckily they just have 3rd eyes

Staring at the sun for long times every day to see the floating after-images.

I did this as a kid (though not "every day"), and have worried about long-term effects too.

This is supposed to be bad for one's vision.

It depends. Looking at the sun through telescopes and binoculars can be dangerous, though the most famous victim, Galileo, probably went blind from glaucoma, and was actually relatively prudent about his observations (he made most of them at sunset).

If you think about it, though, humans wouldn't have survived long if we couldn't handle a moderate amount of staring at the sun. Generally speaking our eyes are actually pretty good at dealing with sunlight as long as they aren't tricked by eclipses, non-UV-protected sunglasses, etc. If your pupils don't think there's much light, that's when you can get seriously fucked up from other wavelengths. It's hard to imagine how many people lost a lot of their vision from eclipses in the millennia before we realized this stuff. Let alone more recently, since binoculars + eclipse = instant retinal damage without additional protection.

These days I worry more about the times I put my head really, really close to the TV as a kid, to look at the little dots.

Oh that's just good, innocent fun. Epiphany: Cosby's sweaters are actually made of tiny red, blue and green rectangles.

kitten killin' kousins

aka the kkk

probably if i worried about all the things that might've fucked me up at some point, i wld die much sooner than if i didn't worry. that is my logic. and that i am doing things that perhaps counteract the earlier fucking up things. also we are all going to die!

kittens :(

It's not worry for me, so much as like, "Huh." That's kind of my reaction to everything.

when i was about 5, i was walking home from school and about to cross a sidestreet on a busy road. i looked back to make sure no cars were turning, and the car right at the corner had no indicator on so i stepped out. car DID turn and ran over my foot.

the lady stopped and asked if i was okay, but i was so shocked (and my first instinct was that it was ME who was in trouble) that i just ran home. and didn't tell anybody.

not sure what damage it caused, but while i walk neutrally on my left foot, i severely underpronate on my right (the one that was injured).

underpronate

^ new favorite word

now forming band called the underpronators

maybe superhard underpronators

i already front a band called mike marshall & his pronators

I worry about all this crap more and more the older I get, which is probably gonna kill me sooner just from the stress as rrrobyn says.

poor kittys. :(

BC pills longterm supposed to have cancer connection too with the blood clots issue. IUD (copper I think) is supposed to help combat uteran cancer?

maybe you should stop frontin deeznuts

Okay chicago kevin should not have played with mercury

me and my little sister used to love these cola flavoured sweets that looked just like ball bearings, they were actually silver. then they got banned in the early 90s because they had some dodgy ingredient that was a carcinogen or something.

I also played with lead a fair amount, Grandpa's fishing weights.

as a kid at church, during mass, i would press on my closed eyelids until all sorts of closed-eye hallucinations would occur -- mostly visual noise, flashes of light, colors, and patterns. i was especially interested in how these visual perceptions would then remain, and slowly fade, with the eyes open.

i did this all the time at church! our church had skylights right above the altar, too, so it really intensified the crazy patterns/lights!

me and my little sister used to love these cola flavoured sweets that looked just like ball bearings, they were actually silver. then they got banned in the early 90s because they had some dodgy ingredient that was a carcinogen or something.

oh shit, i remember these - i loved them, too. i had no idea they got banned!

very early exposure to (and subsequent obsession with) porn has definitely fucked me up

you don't say.

Okay chicago kevin should not have played with mercury

-- robertwolf8080, Monday, August 18, 2008 5:53 PM (Monday, August 18, 2008 5:53 PM) Bookmark Link

yeah, later in life when i was doing safety/abatement work we were decommissioning a research lab and had to read up on mercury exposure i was all o_O

Wait - cola balls are banned for real? I mean, I remember freaking my parents out when I'd pretend they were actual ball bearings and then I'd eat them, but I thought their popularity just died. Wait, they're actually still for sale in my local shopping centre!