Back before Ariana Grande was boycotting the Grammys and messing up tattoos, it was her propensity for being hit by hockey pucks that made headlines.
On Sunday, February 10, the 25-year-old shared a scan of a 1998 South Florida Insider article about her via Instagram. “Boca kid gets a puck and ice: 5-year-old fine after being struck second time,” the newspaper read.
“Started from the bottom now we here,” a self-deprecating Grande captioned the Instagram upload, referencing a Drake lyric. She also added the hashtags “#thankunext” and “#fineafterbeingstruck2ndtime.”
After another user wrote, “yoooooooo,” Grande took another jab at herself: “Only difference now is that hand says bbq grill finger.”
As previously reported, the Best Pop Vocal Album Grammy winner tried to get the palm of her hand tattooed with Japanese character spelling out her track “7 Rings,” showing off the new ink on Twitter on January 29. Instead, however, the characters actually spelled out a type of Japanese barbecue grill.
The following day, Grande told fans she had consulted with a tutor to get the botched tattoo changed, but the revised tattoo was also erroneous, according to BuzzFeed and other outlets. “Now Ariana’s tattoo reads ‘Japanese BBQ finger,’” one Twitter user observed.
The 1998 newspaper article shows Grande had bad luck as a child too. The then-5-year-old had attended almost every Florida Panthers home game since she was 2 years old and had been hit by hockey pucks on two occasions.
In fact, the second puck hit Ariana’s right wrist just as mom Joan Grande was telling reporter Jose Lambiet about the first incident, in which a puck hit the future pop star on her left wrist.
“What are the odds of this happening,” her visibly shaken dad, Ed Butera, mused at the time.
Ariana, described by Lambiet as “a real cutie in her red Panthers jersey,” also made franchise history by being the first fan hit in a regular-season game at the BB&T Center and by being the first kid to ride the Zamboni that season. (Her parents had bid $200 at an auction for the latter experience.)
Luckily, the newspaper article states, Ariana escaped major injury to her wrist: “Diagnosis: Just a small bruise, taken care of in minutes with an ice pack.”
