The Day My Hammer and I Stopped Being Friends

When I used to work construction, the laws of physics were often suspended at the precise moment I did something stupid, allowing me to frequently injure myself horrifically. Lest anyone think I am complaining, let me say that it wasn't just me; many, MANY other construction-types around me also came unstuck in time on a regular basis.
This is the story of one such event, perhaps one of the ten or fifteen worst self-inflicted injuries I have ever seen, heard of, or suffered.
I was on the roof of some restaurant, recently built, and needed a shim. The SOP for making shims, in the absence of a compound miter saw, is to take a length of 2x4, hold it in front of you, on end, and swing your hammer mightily, with the utmost skill and grace (and a bit of blue collar savagery), not to mention artisanal craftsmanship, and split a perfect wedge off the edge of the block. Voila!
Unfortunately, the Populist moment is over, and craftsmanship or any attempt thereat is severely punished by the forces of nature.
I swung my hammer, claw-end first, of course, oh! mightily and with utmost manliness, but my eye was not speaking to my hand that day, and I missed the 2x4.
I. Fucking. Missed.
Think about the arc--of divine retribution, if you will--of a hammer, the shoulder as the fixed point from which extends a plumb-bob, whirling around in a path that describes a perfect cirle of wrath, swung at a point directly in front of a man's chest. Should it miss the target, it will continue on its path unimpeded...right into the crotch. That's what happened to me.

That's right. I claw-hammered myself in the balls.
For, oh, about .08 of a second, I just stood there, sort of wondering what just happened, and then it hit me. "It" being a tidal wave of blinding pain. I doubled over and tried to take deep breaths, even as my mind raced with thoughts like, "Did I just split open one of my nuts?" "I wonder if that sterilized me..." and the most comforting of all, "Is that blood running down my leg, or did I just shit myself?" None of the choices being very appealing, I went back to the mental drawing board, but by then my brain had gone into shock and all I was getting was a gibberish of "WifewillbepissedBabies??!HowdoyoumissaOw!!MotherfuckerwhatthefuckAdoption?!?"
Just as I got to the top of the wave of (self)mutilation, like clockwork, like when you take a really bad fall and all your friends gather around and eyeball each other to see who will ask the mother of all stupid questions, and then one of them bleats, "Are you OK?" like THAT, somebody yelled up, "Hey, where are the nails?"
As if I fucking give a shit where the nails are!! My nuts are hanging by a thread!!!
Now, I had been trying to gather the zen focus to pick up the hammer off the roof and hit myself in the head with it so that I could wake up later when the worst was over. That plan instantly became moot, since I had to acknowledge the stupid fucking question asked by some dickwad who still had notions of fatherhood. And because I didn't want anybody to know that I'd gone speedbag on my sack with a goddamn hammer, I managed, somehow, to croak out "no."
It is both my proudest and most desperately forgettable moment.