What is the tallest height you fell from, and how badly were you injured, if at all?

I fell, backwards, off of my deck, in the dark, down six stairs.

Two broken ribs, partially torn rotator cuff, large bruises on backs of legs, heavy bleeding from superficial scalp wounds, broken stapes bone, three-hour permanent memory loss…6 days in hospital, 3 in ICU. Residual damage: permanent 70% hearing loss in one ear.

Really? What were you doing on a desk in the dark that close to the stairs!? Thank God you did not break your neck or back…....

I was, stupidly, looking up with a pair of binoculars for a comet…and simply took one step too far backwards.

I was shoveling snow off a roof about 12 years ago, slipped and slid off. Luckily I fell into a snowbank. The height was probably 10 to 12 feet. I suffered no injuries.

Bungee jumped at Wisconsin Dells several years ago, does that count? The day after I went they had to shut down because the cord broke. Swan diving from 100+ feet is not a sure cure for acrophobia. And don’t do it right after an all you can eat breakfast buffet.

Wasn’t injured. Tried to talk them into cutting me loose at the end of the jump so I could land in the airbag.

I fell of the roof of a garage I was building. I’d just laid a half sheet of plywood down about 16 feet up, near the ridge of the roof. I made a mental note to remember the sheet was not yet nailed, then turned right around and stepped on it. It swiveled up and dumped me between two rafters. I missed grabbing them, but by the time I got to the joists, I caught one by the crook of the arm and spun around it, slowing my fall before landing on my back on the concrete slab. Other than raw, red scrapes on the arm, most of the injury was to my pride.

I fell of the school gym outside and landed on the cement standing. My legs gave out and the force switched to my behind, then I parachute rolled ,like in the compact books, and got grass and dirt up my nose. I was stunned and I walked away crying, and very dizzy. Nothing broken, few scrapes, just bloody dirt and grass filled nose. Also I was stunned for 3 hours.

I fell off a swing at its highest point. No damage apart from my ego.

I’ve fallen off the top of a swing set onto my back when I was younger and off a roof a couple times. No injuries. I later jumped down two stairs and ripped the growth plate off the side of my foot. – _ -

When I was about 8 I was climbing in a newly framed house and fell from above what would have been the ceiling into some pipes that was to become a bathroom. I got the breath knocked out of me.

My brother put me in our wagon and pulled me home, a couple of blocks. He went inside and said “Mom, Sissy is dead.” She was really frightened, but I started breathing by then. It was the second time something like that happened.

The first time I was not quite one year old, in an attic workshop with my Dad. I fell to the kitchen floor and my Mom ran in and yelled “Dad, you killed the baby!”

@YARNLADY You’re like a Timex watch, “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

Off of my 16,2 hand mare, riding bareback some years ago. She was spooked by a gunshot and bolted down a boulder strewn hill by a lake.
I threw myself off.
Bad horse crash…dislocated my left shoulder, had to have a pin put in with a chunk of my collar bone as a hinge. lol

Also wracked up my elbow, had a concussion and wrenched my knee.
Bring on the morphine. haha

Fell out of a tree as a kid. There was a wooden toboggan slide by the tree, so I wanted to climb up on one of the branches, and jump off that branch onto the slide. Well I fucked up, sort of slid off the branch while trying to jump. I ended up breaking my arm, and it sucked. The height was about 12 feet or so, at least to the best of my recollection. I also hurt my ass pretty bad, but that didn’t break. lol

I’ve never fallen from a very high point, but I always manage to get hurt anyway. :/

From a top bunk bed: Got the skin of my chin stuck in the cracks of a parquet wood floor, pulled my head up and ripped it wide open. Six stitches.

From a set of bars on a gravel filled playground at elementary school. My mother spent hours picking gravel out of my knees with tweezers.

Off a skateboard when I hit a tiny pebble. The board stopped, I went flying. Got a concussion.

From a fairly low deck we were building, when I stepped backwards onto a board that wasn’t nailed in yet. It dumped me right off the edge, where I fell straddled on top of the circular saw my then-husband was holding. Thank god it wasn’t on, haha! Just black and blue sore legs from that one.

My great grandmother fell out of a second floor window while she was sitting on the sill, cleaning the outside glass. She broke her back, but it mended and she lived for quite a while after that. Tough old bird, she was.

I fell off a swing when I was little and skinned my knee badly. It might have been from 3 feet above the ground?

I can’t think of anything else. I have hurt myself other ways, but I couldn’t really call it falling I don’t think. More like thrown, crashed, bumped. Would “falling” off the monkey bars count if it was because I didn’t complete a gymnastics type maneuver well? In sixth grade I was doing a thing where you spin around a bar and I wound up crashing my mouth onto the bar and chipped my front tooth. Fell off my bike once, no great injury though. I don’t think those count for the Q.

@augustlan In elementary school one of the boys, last name was something like McFarland, his mom fell out of a window backwards while cleaning it and wound up paralyzed.

My most recent fall was with my two youngest grandsons a couple of weeks ago. We were at the Mall to watch a local parade. The boys went up a retaining wall, but when I tried to follow them, I fell about three feet. A woman saw me fall, and rushed over to help. She offered me her hand, but then lost her balance and I fell AGAIN. Thank my lucky stars I wasn’t badly hurt.

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I fell about 15 feet from an extension ladder while dismounting a three phase electrical heater. My face ended up on top of the heater when I landed. I got very lucky and only suffered a 20 stitch wound under my chin, a badly sprained left wrist and some minor bruises and soreness. My wrist is still not the same, but my wounds healed nicely.

I had a close call on top of a slanted roof with ice on top while trying to replace a faulty motor on a large fan for a water cooling unit. I fell on the ice and kept sliding towards the edge of the roof, stabbing my screwdriver into the ice likely saved my life. Most places I work at now require you to wear a harness, but there are still some very bad companies out there that don’t give a shit about their workers.

Never fallen, but I loved jumping off rooves when I was a kid, the higher the more kudos.
Nothing fucking skyscraperish obviously, mainly school buildings & always where the landing site was grassed.
Looking back, the highest must have been around 20/25 feet, my pals & I would inspire ourselves to ever greater heights out of sheer will to win.
None of us were ever injured as we developed a rolling landing to cushion the impact.

I was working on the house rain gutters and placed my 5 foot ladder on top of a picnic table so I could reach. Of course, the picnic table rolled throwing me and the ladder to the ground.
I hit flat and was stunned for about 30 minutes. All my senses were affected. I can still remember the smell. It was like nothing I have ever experienced in the real world.
There were no other significant injuries.

Over the years I’ve taken lots of nasty tumbles. Two that immediately come to mind… While changing a lightbulb, I fell backards off a high stepstool, hitting the small of my back on the edge of a bookcase. I lay on the floor for a long time, absolutely certain I had broken my back, but turned out there were no aftereffects other than an ugly black and blue mark. And I took a nasty fall in England a few years ago, hitting the bone above my eye on the stone base of column. Needed sticthes, but the worst part was the strep infection that followed.

Oh yes, and there was the time when, as very young boys, my cousin and I jumped off a second floor balcony, with a sheet as our “parachute.” A sprained ankle and many parental lectures followed that little escapade.

I fell down a 12-foot flight of concrete steps, in the rain. Bounced on my ass on every step all the way down and when I reached the bottom I was paralysed from the hips down. Small fracture in my lowest sacral vertebra, the paralysis was due to bruising of the spinal cord, it wore off later the same day and I was able to walk. Couldn’t sit down for a week though. I still get pain in that part of my back occasionally.

I don’t think I’ve fallen from any high places except for stairs. I once was thrown off a scooter, though and I probably fell 3 meters in the air in the middle of a roundabout. I hurt my knees pretty bad for a couple of weeks, but nothing serious.

I don’t think I’ve ever fallen very far. But is it still a fall if you jump? I have a funny story.

When I was a kid, my sister and I used to play Plecostomus. This was a game that we found wildly fun; it went like so: you put a bean bag chair at the bottom of the stairs, you climb 3 or 4 stairs up, and you jump down onto the bean bag while yelling “PLECOSTOMUS!” I can’t have been older than 3 or 4, my sister is 4 years older.

I remember it like yesterday. She went to the bathroom. I was growing weary of this boring game. I wanted to do something exciting and impressive. I climbed to the top stair. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself arcing beautifully, like a gazelle, down the entire staircase onto the bean bag chair. I remember overriding powerful instincts that were telling me not to do it. My subconscious understood physics much better than my childish conscious mind.

“PLECOSTOM-OW!!!”

I landed on my butt a few stairs down from the top. Bruised my tailbone really badly, but no breakage. I was lucky I still had my squishy kid bones.

I fell, about 7 foot, out of a tree and broke my arm when I was 8 years old.

I fell 18 feet off a climbing wall because of an inattentive belay partner. Luckily, the crash pads work pretty well. But there was a funny Wile E. Coyote ‘poof’ of chalk powder (not that I appreciated it at the time, but it’s funny in retrospect).

I fell from the ladder trying to clean cob webs from the windows in the garage. Not that far of a fall but I smashed my tailbone into the concrete and blacked out for a moment. I could hardly even walk and just sort of crawled into bed to sleep off the pain. I felt better after that nap though so I guess I didn’t break anything.

@ETpro I missed grabbing them, but by the time I got to the joists, I caught one by the crook of the arm and spun around it, slowing my fall before landing on my back on the concrete slab. What height was left once you spun off the joist?

@talljasperman I fell of the school gym outside and landed on the cement standing.
You were up there for what? And no one noticed you were there?

@YARNLADY When I was about 8 I was climbing in a newly framed house and fell from above what would have been the ceiling into some pipes that was to become a bathroom.
How did your brother get you down off the pipes?

@Coloma I threw myself off.
Bad horse crash…dislocated my left shoulder, had to have a pin put in with a chunk of my collar bone as a hinge. Lol
I am not a horse person but I read in a horse training book that the safest place on a runaway horse is on its back if there is no danger of traffic. And if possible get the horse to keep running and direct him/her uphill to tire them out or turn them into tighter and tighter circles until they have to stop.

@Paradox25 I had a close call on top of a slanted roof with ice on top while trying to replace a faulty motor on a large fan for a water cooling unit. I fell on the ice and kept sliding towards the edge of the roof, stabbing my screwdriver into the ice likely saved my life.
Channeling your inner James Bond? :-)

@LuckyGuy I can still remember the smell. It was like nothing I have ever experienced in the real world.
Errrr….the smell of your spleen rupturing maybe? 8-o

@downtide Small fracture in my lowest sacral vertebra, the paralysis was due to bruising of the spinal cord, it wore off later the same day and I was able to walk.
Four words: “Dodge a bullet there!”

@Hypocrisy_Central The pipes were on the floor of the soon-to-be bathroom.

@Hypocrisy_Central Trust me it wasn’t nothing fancy, nor what you’re likely envisioning. In my line of work I think that I’ve already used more than my nine lives though. Blue collar guy trying to survive on fluther, now that’s dangerous ;o)I<

@Hypocrisy_Central That is correct, but not on a rocky downhill slope, you’re better off bailing for both yourself and the horse. Forget westerns, it is suicide to gallop downhill, let alone on rocky terrain.
No experienced horse person would ever gallop their horse down a steep hill.

@Hypocrisy_Central I was collecting balls and avoiding bullies.

@Hypocrisy_Central 8 more feet to the floor. I don’t think it was a conscious effort to prepare. It was more that swinging around the joist left me kind of curled up so I hit the concrete ready to roll and avoided bashing my head on it.