Hermit,
I may have you beat on the "cut yourself with a sythe" story. My father was (still is, at age 86) a doctor of internal medicine, and was a solo practioner in Fairfax VA. He was extremely mean and unforgiving when we were growing up, apparently from many years of near starvation during the Depression.
Anyway, one day he decided my litte brother and I were going to go out and clear a 5 acre piece of land he owned in a separate subdivision. I was 12 and my brother was 9. My dad told my little brother to gather up all of the tools and put them in the car. (A huge Chrysler New-Yorker doctor's car.)
So, my brother, being a dumb kid, layed a sythe on the back seat of the car. My dad yelled at us that it was time to go, so I promptly jumped in the back seat and slammed the door. I felt my right forearm "brush" up against something. I then noticed blood everyone, especially on his white leather seats.
I had cut my forearm open, with about a six inch long cut, starting about 1 inch past my elbow and extending up towards my wrist.
My Dad was furious, because this would mean that we would have to stop off at his office (so he could sew me up), and we would be late getting out to the land. He screamed that I was negligent, and that it was my fault, because I "sat down without looking first."
In order to make sure that I was more careful next time, he put in 16 stiches, with no novicaine or other anasthetic whatsoever. (Picture the Rambo movie, where he sewed himself up and watched the needle "pop" through the other side of the skin with every stitch.) Then he taped it all up, and made me go out to the land and swing the sythe for about 6 hours in the summer sun. He said I was lucky I had stiches in my arm, or he would've beaten me bad when we got home. (Usually, 45 to 50 hard lashes with the belt.)
When I tell folks that I hate my father, they all say, "Well, he couldn't have been such a bad guy." Yes. He was. So anyway, that's my sythe story.
Mannyrock
