One of my main jobs while renovating my grade school's campus was repainting the walls of the classrooms. One of the mothers was an interior designer, and her invaluable contribution to the project was the gift of her expertise. She thought it would be best to color-coordinate the rooms by grade, and she did this by picking a cheapish carpet with flecks of many colors in it, and then selecting wall paints to match the flecks. The dominant color of the carpet was a darkish blue-gray, but unfortunately the flecks were lemon yellow, pale blue, tangerine orange, bright pink, and lime sherbert green.

So one day I was up on the widowmaker painting the pillar in the center of a classroom bright pink when my brush needed more paint. I'd been climbing up and down the ladder just fine all day, but this particular time when I started to descend I missed the next step down completely and fell backwards off the ladder.

Better yet, behind me was our family's old vacuum cleaner from the 70s. It had (has, really; it's not like we don't still have it) a flat rectangular body with a hose jutting from the side to which various differently shaped sucking appendages could be fastened. Not only did I land squarely on top of the rectangular part, I landed squarely on top of the metal-bristled scrub brush laying on top of the rectangular part.

Then the brush, now impaled in my rear/thigh area, and I rolled backwards about five feet because of course the vacuum cleaner was on little wheels.

My biggest regret is that no one was in the room with me to see this happen because moments like that are meant to be shared beyond just gaping at my multiple puncture wounds and hustling me off for an emergency tetnus shot.