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This isn't the most serious wound on this site but I wanted to share it just because it was just a dumbass thing that happened.

I had taken my son camping with the Cub Scouts and we were sitting around a fire roasting marshmallows and making 'smores. I had the bag of marshmallows when a Wolf Cub’s 5-year-old brother came up and asked me if I would put one on his "stick".

I said, "Sure, buddy!"

He handed me his metal two-pronged roasting fork and I saw that the prongs were spread out too wide for both wires to stick in a marshmallow - they needed to be bent closer. Without much thought, I squeezed the two prongs together with my thumb and forefinger when I heard the sound: PSSSSSST!!!

You guessed it. The stupid little bastard had been sticking the metal ends into the red coals right before handing me the "branding iron". I didn’t see it, but the prongs were red-hot.

He didn’t realize what he had done and I didn’t want to make him cry so I gave no reaction to the searing pain. I immediately went to the ice chest for some relief.

These photos were taken the next day.

Please don't use my name or email if you post this. I intend on becoming a den leader so that I can pay that little f**ker back! (only kidding)

[There are also] followup shots of my branded thumb. One at one week out and another at 2 1/2 weeks with the same angle showing nice healing but still a bit of a shine at the burn site.

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Editor's Notes:

Branded for life. You belong to the Cub Scouts now, boy.

Ah, branding, not like you try to do to your product that the world couldn't live without, but what you do to your livestock and slaves.

I've always thought of branding as one of the more extreme forms of body modification, but I guess I'm old or something. It even seems like an extreme way to mark livestock these days, but I just read on the intarweb that they do this fancified Freeze Branding now which is done with a super cold brander and causes the hair in the branded area to grow back white. They say it's painless. I think we should take up a collection for a few of these machines and drop them off at college campuses for use by fraternities that still encourage branding.

Anyway, if I was in charge of branding these new freeze branding systems, I'd use this guy as the spokesman. Which clearly illustrates why I'm not in marketing.

Photos:
Branded- nice collage by the submitter
Brand healing- 1 week
Brand Healed- 2 1/2 weeks-little scar