My cousins and I had a ritual fishing trip each and every year, usually during July. We'd go camping and hiking, but mostly fishing. Good time to be assholes and run around like a bunch of witless fucks.
So this particular camping trip was right after July 4th. My dad had an 'in' where he worked and would just score assloads of fireworks, all illegal here in Oregon. Can't even have firecrackers here. Anyway, I had at least 5 full bricks of firecrackers with me on this trip. For no other reason than I just had them. Take a few and throw them in the fire every now and then, in the air, in someone else's tent, whatever.
One night, I got it in my head that it would be really fun to just light a whole brick. So I did. Sounded like a war was going on out there. We're all getting a kick out of it, so I throw another brick on the pile. Woohoo. That was almost too much, and it started to get boring after a while, so we went to bed.
In the morning, it was crazy- there were piles of firecracker pieces everywhere. I started looking through them finding some that hadn't gone off. Alot of them still had their fuses and everything...... some of them didn't have one at all..... some of them had little tiny fuses. The ones with fuses, we lit as normal, the ones without we threw in the fire and let 'em go...... the ones with little tiny fuses, a little tougher. Find the willing guinea pig to hold a firecracker, someone else to light it and let the hilarity ensue. Right?? RIGHT!
So the willing guinea pig- me. The lighter- my cousin Jack. We got it figured out pretty good- I'd stand with the firecracker in between my forefinger and thumb, arm back ready to throw, and he'd light it. Worked great. For about the first 20 or so. There was one that was reeeeally short..... went off barely out of my hand. It kinda hurt, but not much. Made the ears ring a bit, and my fingers stung a little, but it wasn't bad. The one right after that, not good at all- it was an even faster fuse and it went off right in my fingers. "OOOW SHIT!!!" I screamed hopping around holding my hand. Jack and everybody else were laughing and carrying on, because I'm sure it was pretty funny. I ran over to the lake and put my hand in the water to see if that would make it feel better, and it didn't. Not a bit.
I looked at my hand and saw what had happened....... apparently, my thumb took the full brunt of the firecracker because it was black (after being in the water) and part of my thumbnail was gone and it was black and purple. It was numb and burned like hell. Started bleeding so we bandaged it up and went on our way. Later that day I took the bandage off because it hurt so much; looked at it, and it was getting huge. Luckily it was our last day there, so I could go home and ice it.
Ended up losing feeling in my thumb and forefinger for pretty much the rest of the summer..... it stayed black and purple well into September and my thumbnail eventually fell out. My parents had a hard time letting me play with fireworks after that, the bastards