Near-death experiences

How close have you ever come to dying?

I came pretty damn close today. On my way out of Best Buy, I get the green light to take a left out of the plaza, so I start driving. Suddenly a TRACTOR TRAILER blows through his red light, and I slam on the brakes. Luckily I was far enough away to where I wasn't too close to him but had I done my usual "green = go" and pulled out at my usual speed, I (or at the very least my car) could have been done for.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The closest I have come was also in a car. I was driving on a 4-lane freeway, in the third lane (next to the fast lane), when I heard a noise and saw in the rear view mirror a huge strip of tire flying away from my car.

I started trying to get over to the right, and was doing fine until I got between the first and second lanes, when my car kept trying to pull me leftward again, even though I was steering right. I made it to the first lane, and was pulling as hard as I could to get the car to go right onto the shoulder, but the car was pulling me back into the traffic on the left.

I realized that there was no way I was going to get my car off the road, and that if it kept pulling me the direction it was going, I was going to wind up smashing into the center divide, if I made it across all 4 lanes of traffic unscathed.

The words "steer into the spin" literally went through my mind like those going across a marquee, and I went and steered my car a hard left, terrified, and taking a quick look back at my 2 year old in the rear passenger seat. I was especially terrified for him, because his side of the car was what was going to be sliding into the other lane and most likely to be hit.

When the car stopped, I looked up and saw I was straddling the two middle lanes facing into traffic. The craziest part was that all of the cars had stopped and were lined up perfectly in rows in their lanes. I saw an ambulance coming from behind the cars. The drivers came through the traffic, parked on the shoulder, and approached my car. The guy who spoke to me said "Wow! You handled that awesome!" and I promptly burst into shaking and tears.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Both of mine involved swimming at a young age, although they fortunately haven't had any adverse effect on me for future instances.

First was when I was six and swimming in a pool. More like wading actually, since it was the adult pool. I could keep my head above the water if I stood on my tiptoes, but I kept bobbing up and down. Eventually I gulped in too much pool water or something and next thing I remember I'm in the hospital eating lady fingers and playing my Game Gear.

Second was swimming at a lake. I was racing my friend to see who could front crawl faster, and then I ended up very close to the boundary where the water was deep, after blindly swimming on an angle away from him. I was about to sink when I stopped swimming since I wasn't good at treading water, so my friend swam out and came to fetch me before that happened.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I think the closest was a few stupid stepping out in the road when there's a car/bus coming.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I nearly died of what they suspect was CIDs as an infant when I turned blue and stopped breathing for no apparent reason and had to be resuscitated (I had a heart monitor and everything for months).

I ate a can of chew when I was an infant, another trip to the hospital.

I climbed off a 13 foot ledge at the age of 1, bruised my kidneys and back pretty badly.

I almost drowned once or twice when I was about 5.

I've been trampled on by about 10 high school kids when I was about 6 after being thrown off of a merry go round.

I was electrocuted badly enough at the age of 7 that I lost consciousness and didn’t wake up until the next day.

I’ve been poisoned on a few occasions.

I am deathly allergic to poison oak something the pharmacists told me was impossible. I think that was at age 11.

I’ve been thrown off of a car moving at about 30mph, which sucked (age 17).

There is a bunch of other stuff that could be considered risking death but I think this list is good enough to illustrate the number of times I’ve “almost died”. Lucky for us “almost” only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Let's see, I have only about 2 real big things.

1. When I was a baby my brother pushed my stroller down our driveway(it's not a gentle hill, but it's not steep) and I fell out on the ground to almost be crushed by a car backing up.

2. I feel off the steps of our deck from pretty high up and nearly missed hitting my head on a truck and fell on the dirt at a young age.(It's cement now, so I guess makes me lucky )


Oh, I also almost killed my mother with pneumonia .(irrelevant)

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I almost drowned in my grandmother's pool when I was 5.

I have jumped off the back of a moving car (roughly 30-35 mph), landed on the ground and slammed my head into the ground hard enough to give me a pretty bad concussion.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Yeldarb

Oh, I also almost killed my mother with pneumonia .(irrelevant)

Why are you smiling at this.

Originally Posted by Gumby

I ate a can of chew when I was an infant, another trip to the hospital.

The fuck is chew? Serious question.

Only time I've nearly died is when I was driving interstate. Some cock pulled out infront of me when I was doing 120. Was either hit him and die, or swerve across the road and maybe die. I swerved, thank fuck no one was close enough to hit. I ended up in a ditch shaken like all hell. No fucking cunt came to help me though >=[

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by SCHWARZE-4

The fuck is chew? Serious question.

Chewing tobacco.

Quote:

No fucking cunt came to help me though >=[

Grow boobs.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The most recent incident for me happened because I hadn't paid attention to my tires for a while. A dog ran out in front of me on the freeway, I braked hard, and started spinning out.

I ended up with my car across the leftmost lane facing the median. Luckily, most people behind me had seen it and were slowing down or avoiding me - how ever, this motorcycle did not until it was nearly too late, and nearly hit me before I righted myself and drove off. That was pretty close.

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Just today I went to the sandwich shop across the street from my school. One side was clear, so I decided to walk (yes, in a crosswalk). Now sometimes if someone's on the side of the road on a crosswalk, I don't see them until it's too late, and I can't stop in time. That's one thing. I was in the middle of the road with everyone stopped around me. Two lanes on one side, and one lane on the other. So I'm walking when SOME FUCKING RICE ROCKET RACING CUNTARD goes flying up the side and almost takes me out. If he had hit me, good thing I'm fat, because he woulda done more damage to his NIP-OMOBILE than he woulda done to me.

Fucking shithead.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The closest I came to dying was probably when I was four, when I was swimming in the deep end of our pool. I didn't have on my little floater wings at the time, and it was my first time in the deep end. I snuck over and jumped in, but after immediately realizing it wasn't shallow enough to stand, I began to panic and sucked in a lot of water. My pops jumped in and saved me, and I can't say it was too close of a call, considering I didn't need CPR or anything. Still, fairly scary.

The next incident happened at where I work, about....I think seven or eight months ago. I was using a tall cherry picker to pick some heavy boxes off of a rack, and I simply lost my footing and almost fell off. I was able to pull myself back onto the platform, but I was pretty angry at myself because I wasn't using (and had never used up to that point) the safety harness. I was more than fifty feet in the air, and I definitely would have broken myself up good if I hadn't died on the spot, so I guess this can qualify. Either way, I use the safety harness anytime I use the machine now.

How ya doing, buddy?

The car has the right of way in THAT situation.

I almost drowned in a river called Wolf River in Mississippi. I was young and completely underestimated both the dropoff and the current and it would've swept me under in a matter of seconds.
Luckily, my mother was fairly nearby and ran over and grabbed me and pulled me out when I started flying down. I came up spitting water out of all of my orifices.

Also, my very first experience on this planet was near-death. After being delivered through c-section, I stopped breathing and turned blue..for about 3 or so minutes, then started again, so that was good I guess.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Fell off a dock walking backwards. Lost my perception of the length of the dock and fell 9 feet underwater. I never got a chance to hold my breath and was lucky enough to hold it off just long enough to get air...

Scariest experience ever.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by RainMan

The car has the right of way in THAT situation.

The car has right of way when you're on a crossing? What?

How ya doing, buddy?

4 here from memory:


1. Pool. Was young and attempted to swim the deeper part. Let go of the side of the pool and was gasping for air. Somebody helped soon after. About 8.

2. Electrocuted by reaching an open electrical outlet with a metal wrench when I was around 7. No one was watching. Oh well.

3. Two years ago someone almost hit me when I was crossing the road. Usual shit happening in urban areas.

4. Rabies. Was bitten by our pet dog when I was 3. I was given enough rabies shots as a precaution. Since then, no pet dogs.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I think this happened when I was 8, but I was sitting in the backseat of the family car, and as we're merging into another street another car comes racing around a bend in the road (we couldn't have seen him coming) and rams right into the our side and right before all I saw were blurs was the other car's headlights through the side door windows before it hit us. Granted I was behind a car door and whatnot but thats about as close to death as I can recall, besides various incidents where I'm almost run over by a car but I think lots of people have had that happen to them.

How ya doing, buddy?

When I was in the army driving a tank.
We out training, shooting the guns. I was the loader, hefting the 105mm shells into the main gun of a M60 tank. (Classic design love to have one of my own)
Anyway I'm pumping rounds into this thing so my crew can score the highest. The job of a loader has one hazard, dont get caught behind the cannon when it shoots, else you a dead trooper.
So I'm ramming a shell in and it gets stuck so the breach doesn't close, my pals the commander & gunner are all ramped up to pull the trigger and plug a target....
No biggie I just give the back of the shell a kung-fu palm strike, the thing goes in the instant the trigger is pulled and BOOM I see that big gun go off in my face.

I know where the Materix movie makers got that slow motion scene from near death does something to perception or something.....

With some "Devine" help I had enough time to see, calculate and twist my butt out of the way. My buds in the track just knew I was dead meat but not that day.

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I was in a friend's car on the motorway and he didn't notice the tow-truck crawling at 10mph ahead of us. VERY nearly rear-ended it at 80mph. That's probably the biggest near-miss I've had as far as cars go.

Other things: I'm strongly allergic to nuts, peanuts, glue and apples. I was quite ill at one point during my childhood. A rough landing at a rural airport in Chile convinced me (and most of the other passengers) that the plane was going to buckle and snap. At the age of three, I ate around a hundred juniper berries before my mother noticed.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I almost die every day. The Joy of California drivers! It's the worst here in this shitty town. No one gives a shit about pedestrians or other vehicles.

I walk to work everyday and 80% of the time when I get the signal to cross and am halfway through the intersection some car runs a red light and nearly hits me. The closest a car has gone past me is about an inch. One little nudge and I would of been a pancake on the road.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

When I was 7 my mother worked part-time grooming dogs at a pet store and I tagged along during the summer, cleaning mouse and hamster cages and doing other little things here and there. In the front was where the pets were sold, which of course had a front wall made of essentially only glass from the waist up so that everyone could see the animals, and the back was where the dogs were groomed.

One day my mother and her friend, who also worked there, were in the back grooming dogs while I was in the front looking at the kittens for the hundredth time that week since they had come in (I was really supposed to be cleaning the hamster cages). I went to the back to ask my mother again if I could have one and I had barely walked through the doorway to the back part of the store when a Ford truck plowed through the front of the store. Everything was a complete mess. Glass, cement, and brick was everywhere from the giant window, wall, and rodent cages. There were dead hamsters and other small animals all over the place and I distinctly remember my mom's friend digging through the bricks and glass under the truck screaming my name. My mother had already found me at that point and called her friend off of the ground. The kittens ended up being okay.

I have no doubt in my mind that if I had been in the front of the store I would be dead. That truck had to have been going going really fucking fast to have come into the store like it did. If I hadn't got it into my head to ask my for the kitten I would have kept cleaning the hamster cages and been directly in the path of the truck. So, basically, a kitten saved my life.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I can't say I've been through experience in which I was practically on the verge of dying or even brought to the hospital but I've had some pretty close calls.

Just recently within the last 5 months I escaped a truck fire in which my truck had caught on fire just after I lost my brakes, so that was definetely a scary experience.

The other time in which I felt my life was in danger was when I fell through the ice when I was 7 years old. Thankfully I wasn't under the water for very long, I had soem of the older kids haul me out. Since that time I've been deathly afraid of going into the water. I'm simply afraid of being out in open water. Its a fear i would like to overcome because I would like to go swimming with my fiance eventually.

How ya doing, buddy?

Apart from my usual routine of pressing the button at a crossing and immediately walking out into the middle of the road (one time I was damn lucky my friend pulled me back, I was an inch away from getting hit), I fell into the canal when I was about 5. It was winter and it was frozen over so I tried hacking a hole into it, which I promptly fell into. I got trapped under the ice and if it weren't for three lovely Irish blokes walking down the toepath I would probably be dead.

FELIPE NO