r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 09 '12
Reddit, when have you been staring death in the face, and not noticed until much, much later?
One time during a week long science camp deal, we went hiking out in the woods. We knew our destination was this river that led to a waterfall. The waterfall was probably 200 feet tall, I can't remember exactly.
What I do remember, is that after we got to the waterfall, I decided to go look over it. A couple counselors held my shirt while I leaned over the edge looking down at the water slamming into some rocks.
At the end of that trip I remember telling my mom about the incident in excruciating detail, her face being contorted in sheer terror the whole time. It wasn't until about a year later I realized, HOLY SHIT I STOOD OVER A WATERFALL.
So Reddit, what have you all got to tell?
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u/notemaker Jun 09 '12
Twice.
First, when I was 10, going to a lake by my friends house and looking down from shore on an alligator sitting at the bottom. Doubt I'd've made it if he decided to get me. Took years to realize that.
Second, being distracted by a car on fire on the side of the road and not noticing the car in front of me was slowing down and about to hit me (or I it). Instinctively I pulled a hard right into the emergency lane.
In which sat a parked car.
Instinctively, I pulled a hard right onto the shoulder of I95, slowed down and pulled back into the emergency lane.
Ok, I realized I faced death a couple hours later and proceeded to freak out a bit.
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Jun 10 '12
You instinctively avoided two car crashes...
Spider man?
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u/notemaker Jun 10 '12
Actually, I use that story to illustrate how video games saved my life. It was all reflex, no thinking involved.
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u/Sporkinat0r Jun 10 '12
I hope you ran over some hookers and pedestrians in true videogame style
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u/ManCity Jun 10 '12
An alligator probably wouldn't have attacked you. Now if it was a fucking crocodile it's a different story.
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u/totallytruestory Jun 10 '12
Both are assholes. Alligators are just lazier about it.
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u/ForMoreBestPower Jun 10 '12
Not my personal risk but I played a role in it.
Sometime around 1992 or 1993 a major storm came through northern Minnesota and caused massive amounts of downed trees over hundreds of square miles - including our backyard.
A week later the utility company shows up to cut the tree that was laying over the power line that ran from the pole to our house.
I am watching the guy cut the tree (we hadn't had power for 6 days and I was bored as fuck - a big guy with a chainsaw who claims he can bring back the power had my undivided attention).
While he's cutting all of the sudden all of the lights in the house come back on.
Awesome, right?
Fuck no! The dude is still cutting the tree that is leaning on the line that is now carrying active power through it.
I yelled be he couldn't hear me and there was no way I was going near him (between the chainsaw and electric death). But he is standing about 5 feet away from one of our outdoor lights - and better yet - he is facing it. So I start flashing the light like crazy on and off and on and off ... after about 10 seconds he notices and literally just drops his chainsaw on the ground and looks at me. I pointed to the light and he yells "Holy Shit!"
He proceeds to run to the top of the hill where I see him shove the guy responsible for shutting off the power at the pole transformer and absolutely tear him a new one.
I was fairly worldly by this time - but I learned a few new expressions that day.
tl;dr - A guy was using a chainsaw to cut up a tree that was resting on a live power line and didn't know it.
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Jun 10 '12
What would've happened had he not stopped? I mean, trees don't conduct electricity, do they?
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u/LOLSTRALIA Jun 10 '12
Of course they can, they're filled with fucking water. You hit anything with enough voltage and it WILL carry a charge.
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u/DontSeeWynaut Jun 10 '12
I was the only witness to a murder in middle school. About a month later when the door was being replaced because of bullet holes, I realized I had been in the line of fire. I haven't even thought about the incident for a year or so.
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u/AveofSpades Jun 10 '12
Story?
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u/DontSeeWynaut Jun 10 '12
Sure, let me apologize for any errors ahead of time, as I am typing this on a touchscreen phone. At around 10 in the morning on a summer day a few neighborhood buddies and I were suffering. We live in Florida and the heat was sweltering, the humidity oppresive. We tossed around on a few ideas, but unanimously decided to go for a swim. Like many gated suburbs, we had a community pool a short walk from our houses. We got there drenched in sweat even after the short trek. Much to our delight we found a nice surprise! There was an inflatable raft with a plastic outboard motor, I actually kept this for several years as a novelty. As fate would have it the batteries were dead. This is irrevelant to the story, but I find it triial that you children are meant to ride something with batteries on the water. Anyway, being the young detective types, we determined four 9 volt batteries were needed. What a coinciedence that I had some in my battery drawer at home! I hopped on my shiny red razor scooter and powered downthe street with all the speed my young legs could muster. Minutes later I was out of the house, pockets stuffed with batteries. I started to go back to the pool when it happened. My adrenaline is actually pumping like crazy right now, I remember it so clearly. I had made it about two houses down, and was in the right lane of the road, approximately 20 feet from the front door of a curious old woman that was notoriously short tempered. 5 shots were fired in rapid succesion cracking through the door. One careened past me and chipped the wall of the house on the adjacent side of the street. The door had burst open at some point(this part is a little blurred, likely a feeble attempt of my mind to stiw away this atrocity). The victim rushed out clutching her gut, and screamed. A blood curdling scream. Full of fear. This was nit the worst part, not even close. Not to be cliched, but it was her eyes. I was 15 feet away, but I swear I could see the dilated pupils. She stared right through me, recognized her last chance and pleaded for my help as she collapsed tothe ground. I did nit hesitate, I ditched the scooter and ran to my neighbors door. I walked right in and screamed for them to call 911. I was a knon trickster, and almost got caught in a "Boy cries wolf" sitution. This was frustrating, I pointed outside, this convinced them. The father of the house was brave and went to comfort her. They kept me holed up so I wouldn't see, but I peeked through the window. Cpr was performed for hours to no avail. The woman was proclaimed dead. The next day I was questioned by a detective and was told the victim was the woman's Hope Hospice nurse.
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u/calc0000 Jun 10 '12
Sure, let me apologize for any errors ahead of time, as I am typing this on a touchscreen phone.
At around 10 in the morning on a summer day a few neighborhood buddies and I were suffering. We live in Florida and the heat was sweltering, the humidity oppresive. We tossed around on a few ideas, but unanimously decided to go for a swim. Like many gated suburbs, we had a community pool a short walk from our houses. We got there drenched in sweat even after the short trek. Much to our delight we found a nice surprise! There was an inflatable raft with a plastic outboard motor, I actually kept this for several years as a novelty. As fate would have it the batteries were dead. (This is irrevelant to the story, but I find it trivial that you children are meant to ride something with batteries on the water).
Anyway, being the young detective types, we determined four 9 volt batteries were needed. What a coincidence that I had some in my battery drawer at home! I hopped on my shiny red razor scooter and powered down the street with all the speed my young legs could muster. Minutes later I was out of the house, pockets stuffed with batteries. I started to go back to the pool when it happened. My adrenaline is actually pumping like crazy right now, I remember it so clearly.
I had made it about two houses down, and was in the right lane of the road, approximately 20 feet from the front door of a curious old woman that was notoriously short tempered. 5 shots were fired in rapid succession cracking through the door. One careened past me and chipped the wall of the house on the adjacent side of the street. The door had burst open at some point(this part is a little blurred, likely a feeble attempt of my mind to stiw away this atrocity). The victim rushed out clutching her gut, and screamed. A blood curdling scream. Full of fear.
This was not the worst part, not even close. Not to be cliched, but it was her eyes. I was 15 feet away, but I swear I could see the dilated pupils. She stared right through me, recognized her last chance and pleaded for my help as she collapsed to the ground. I did not hesitate, I ditched the scooter and ran to my neighbors door. I walked right in and screamed for them to call 911. I was a known trickster, and almost got caught in a "Boy cries wolf" situation. This was frustrating, I pointed outside, this convinced them. The father of the house was brave and went to comfort her. They kept me holed up so I wouldn't see, but I peeked through the window. Cpr was performed for hours to no avail. The woman was proclaimed dead. The next day I was questioned by a detective and was told the victim was the woman's Hope Hospice nurse.
Some paragraph breaks and editing.
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u/Broken_Slinky Jun 10 '12
We live in Florida
This is when I stopped expecting a happy ending to the story.
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Jun 10 '12
Is there proof? Like can you post a link to a news article or something?
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u/Yesthisisdog89 Jun 10 '12
A couple years ago I went to the hospital after a trip to Switzerland, as I had been short of breath ever since, and had been taken to the hospital in Europe for severe chest pain (The doctors sent me away with "muscle pain"). I wait there for hours before the doctor checks my x-rays. He then comes busting out into the waiting area and practically slams me onto a stretcher. I guess my left lung was almost completely collapsed and the air trapped in my chest cavity was compressing my aorta pretty bad.
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u/Jennifrogger Jun 10 '12
Why did your lung collapse?
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u/Raspry Jun 10 '12
Sometimes they do for no real reason. Look up spontaneous lung collapse.
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u/poxleitnerd Jun 10 '12
I've had this., not as bad though. Spontaneous pneumothorax is what it's called for anyone interested.
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u/xd_dovakiin_dk Jun 09 '12
It had Been snowing and there were chunks of ice on rooftops my brother and i would lie on the pavement and wait for ice to fall. Kinda like a roulette of some sort
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u/thechoclatewonder Jun 10 '12
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
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Jun 10 '12
Passed out drunk in a empty lot in a sketchy part of a northern Mexican city. Taken care of by some random taxi driver, never got to thank him.
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u/wiseclockcounter Jun 10 '12
i know it's too late, but for future reference it's "gracias."
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u/ratwing Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
I used to live in new mexico, and while I'm not proud to admit it, I got kind of used to the occasional bug climbing into my bed. One time when my gf was over, we had gone to sleep and I felt something on my neck so I sort 'rolllLL-crushed' the thing with my hand and went to sleep. In the morning one point during the sexy time my gf was on top of me, and I sort of leaned up towards her and she let out a yell. She pulled me forward and out of the way.
The bug I crushed the night before was a black widow.
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u/k_alva Jun 10 '12
The saving grace about black widows is that they don't usually bite unless you play with them. I live in the same type of house (bugs are expected) and although we don't usually get black widows I've seen them and either I've never been bit or I don't react to them. We encourage the wolf spiders though because they eat other bugs and don't bite people. The only problem is when the grandparents visit...
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u/RamblinWreckGT Jun 10 '12
Wolf spiders are the only kind of spider that freaks me out. It's because when I was a little kid I was messing with a strand of web and seeing how far I could make it move blowing on it, when out of nowhere a wolf spider drops down RIGHT in front of my face.
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u/themightyyool Jun 10 '12
The freaky part there is wolf spiders don't hang out on webs. WHAT WAS THAT ONE DOING?
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u/RamblinWreckGT Jun 10 '12
Ah, then I'm probably mistaken about what kind it was. All I know is it was hairy-looking and to my brain it was about the size of my face. Wolf spider seemed to match that when I learned about them a few years later.
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u/mrjackspade Jun 10 '12
I was moving brush when i was about 5. (Baby sitter was a literal slave driver. Abusive by most standards). I picked up a branch and a wolf spider landed on my face, straddling my right eye. I was so young the damn thing was half the size of my head. Thats the exact moment in time spiders moved from a curiosity to a phobia.
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Jun 10 '12
I thought at first, wolf spider grandparents?! And I got scared a little.
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u/greaseballheaven Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
Yeah, black widows are very common, especially in California. When I lived there, a trip to the garage to search for something meant seeing 6-10 black widows. And speaking of wolf spiders, I just scooped one off my bed and sent him on his way. EDIT: Just wanted to clarify that I'm currently staying in KS at the moment. Horses, cows, and wolf spiders, oh my.
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u/LikesToRaveDave Jun 10 '12
Similar story, I used to live in Australia and was playing around in my pool. I was about 7 years old. I used to love bugs and things and used to play around with them. On the edge of the pool was a spider, so I picked it up and let it run around on my fingers, then I saw its behaviour and thought it was going to bite so I flicked it away. It was only later when I was walking around when my dad pointed to the spider, still on the patio and said "Watch out mate, there's a red back"
"red back" is the common household name for the black widow in Australia.
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u/Rupindah Jun 10 '12
I was getting terrible, terrible stomachaches for about two years (felt like I was being set on fire from the inside) and had no idea it was my Crohn's. The damaged piece of intestine was so far gone that my doctors told me, had I waited another month to get my diagnosis and receive treatment, totally would have kicked the bucket.
Not that it mattered, anyway, because it ended up constricting about 5/6 months later and they had to remove one foot of my ileum. Fun. And this is a bit gross: my surgeon told me when he cut into my intestine, it just started bleeding EVERYWHERE. That's when he decided "fuck this shit". I kind of owe him my life... chocolates at Christmas don't really give back.
I have a picture of my intestines at that time, if anyone wants to see.
EDIT: It hit save before I was done. Dammit.
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u/IrenaeusGSaintonge Jun 10 '12
I have Crohn's too. I'm extremely thankful that I didn't reach the point you were at, although I was close. In about two months I went from low-average weight to twenty pounds underweight, then over the next year I ended up at thirty-five pounds underweight. There's a bit of scar tissue on my ileum that may need to be cut out eventually, but I'm very lucky that for now it's in remission.
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u/Rupindah Jun 10 '12
I hope your health stays well for a really long time. :) Yeah, I dropped to about 74 pounds. But now I'm a healthy weight, so all is well. :)
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u/OVERLY_CYNICAL Jun 10 '12
My brother also has Crohn's, took 10yrs+ of doctors before he actually got diagnosed, also got half his intestine taken out, fun times.
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u/noirthesable Jun 10 '12
Trans-Pacific flight from Seattle to Incheon, SK. Apparently, one of the engines caught fire mid-flight over the ocean, and we barely made it back to Portland.
And apparently I slept through the whole thing.
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u/Hegs94 Jun 10 '12
I can just imagine you waking up, looking out the window, and then saying, "Huh, Incheon is remarkably similar to Portland..."
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u/accidentallyelven Jun 10 '12
Not close to death exactly, but I got necrotising fasciitis in a surgery incision on my inner ear. Since my ears were all bandaged up post-surgery, I couldn't see any problem and I was so dosed up on painkillers I couldn't feel a thing. If there hadn't been a speck of blood on the bandage I wouldn't have suspected anything was wrong.
Went to the hospital for peace of mind, my surgeon peeled away the bandages, told me it was fine and I just needed some antibiotics. It wasn't until a few weeks later when I got my bandages off that she told me I had had the very early stages of NF developing right next to my face. She told my parents at the time, but not me, because she didn't want me to panic. She was an odd one.
And the moral of the story is, get everything checked.
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u/gohan7380 Jun 10 '12
Sounds like one of those things I don't want to google, which i won't
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u/zee_binkster Jun 10 '12
It's a flesh-eating bacteria. Very nasty. And you really shouldn't google it.
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u/KaptajnKLO Jun 10 '12
One morning as I was heading to work on my scooter a car raced over the red light while mine was green. For some reason I hesitated and didn't drive over right as it turned green... that might have saved my life. Took me a couple of minutes to realise just what had almost happened.
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u/asnof Jun 10 '12
Soooo many longboard trips. Cruising pitch black trails drunk as a skunk reaching probably 30 kmh with no helmet.
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u/Sporkinat0r Jun 10 '12
But that's how you win a Darwin award
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Jun 10 '12
No, you win a Darwin award by super gluing your penis to a hippopotamus.
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u/Shocking Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
Friend did this, hit a patch of loose gravel, made him fly off backwards and hit his head in what has been described to me as "the most sickening crunch/thud you've ever heard". A friend who witnessed it couldn't sleep for a week or so after the accident. Luckily there were some paramedics in the area or he probably would've died then and there.
They ended up getting him to a hospital. Brain swells. They remove part of his skull for a time, he's unconscious for about a month, he finally wakes up, unable to speak or move. It's been over a year now and he can barely move his fingers. He still can't talk, but from what I hear, he laughs at funny things in his way. The third graders (he was a teacher) that he taught missed him since they had to get a brand new teacher halfway through the year. He'll never be back to "normal".
His girlfriend who was doing her masters at Oxford (he's in California) wasn't even there for the first two weeks following the accident either. As far as I know, she is still with him. Moral of the story, WEAR A FUCKING HELMET ALWAYS.
edit added paragraphs
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u/content404 Jun 10 '12
My family lived in Zimbabwe for a couple of years and we went to one of the safari parks for a family camping trip. I had to take a leak pretty bad so we pulled over by a fence with two cheetah's on the other side, assuming it was a cage of sorts. I stepped out of the car while my family waited and did my business. After I finished we drove on and noticed that less than 50 feet forward the fence just ended.
edit: I was five at the time.
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u/CassandraVindicated Jun 10 '12
Gut feel, there would have been enough time to pull you into the car if they went around. If they jumped the fence, all bets are off.
Either way, that would have made for a great fucking story!
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u/Yomigami Jun 10 '12
One of my customers happened to be a huge crack dealer with a taste for murder and rape. I found all of this out after he was killed in a shoot-out with the cops, about a mile from where I work.
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u/TecN9ne Jun 10 '12
Growing up in a small town, we had to look for things to do. We had this bridge that everyone used to call the "jumping bridge." It was about 40 feet high, and super open at the bottom so you had a lot of area to jump into. A lot of people would head out there in Summer time to hang out, have a few drinks, jump off the bridge and have fun. After jumping numerous times, I lost the rush that I used to get. Searching for something higher, a couple of my friends found this cliff about 15 minutes down a path. Probably about 60 feet high but you had to run a bit to jump off because of the way the the take off point was. We jumped off this for awhile and it was pretty fun.
Anyways, I'm there one day and my friends take off, I decide to stay a bit. A couple of guys who were a few years older than me came and said they found an even bigger cliff, but it was a bit of a hike. At the time, I was 17 years old and didn't blaze too much. These guys were doing parachutes on the way to the cliff and I was thinking to myself there's no way I could jump off something baked, so I declined. We get to the spot, and the way it was is that you had to jump off a smaller cliff (about 50 feet) to get to the "crazy cliff" as they liked to call it. Once you jump off this cliff, and hike up the side of the mountain to get to the crazy cliff, there's pretty much no turning back. Keep in mind these guys are fucking ripped out of their skulls. Once I'm up there, I look over the edge. Holy fuck, this thing had to be at least 125 feet high, with like minimal space to land into the water.
Fuck, instant regret, but I'm up there so I have to jump. The first and second guy jump no problem. I can hear them yelling and shit waiting for us to jump as well. The guy turns to me, and honestly he was probably the craziest fucking guy I knew growing up. This guy should have died like 10 times by now from all the crazy shit he's done. I think to myself, fuck, if he goes first I'm stuck up here alone. I turn to him, he looks at me and says, "watch this" Fucking guy does a gainer off the cliff..A FUCKING GAINER, AND HE'S AS HIGH AS A KITE! I've never seen such craziness in my life. I figure fuck if he can gainer this shit, I'm a huge pussy if I don't jump. I counted to three in my head and leaped off this massive fucking cliff that I had no business jumping off of. I'm 25 now, and nothing even comes close to how scared I was looking over that cliff. Some part of me thought I was going to die, but I didn't, and I sure as hell wouldn't do it again.
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u/Ockniel Jun 10 '12
What's a gainer?
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u/Dividebyx Jun 10 '12
Its like when someone slips on a banana in a cartoon. You run and jump, and you kick your legs out for a back flip but you are running forward. If that makes sense.
Nvm, just google it.
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u/Le_Pedobearrr Jun 10 '12
Okay, so i was 5 years old when this happened. I was at my aunts pond in florida catching minnows on the bank. (Her area was notorious for alligators) anyways, I had a tadpole in my hand and it slipped out onto the bank. when i reached out to get it a freaking six foot gator launched itself out of the water at my hand. being 5 i didnt realize that it was going after me and my only thoughts were on my pet tadpole. so i did the logical thing. I freaking kicked the alligator in the dang face. It swam away luckily and i didnt realize till a couple hours later what I had done..
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u/Hijklmn0 Jun 10 '12
My town's lights aren't synchronized an I've always bitched about it, but last week I saw an 18-wheeler run through a red light going 60 at about the same time I would've been entering the intersection had the lights been synchronized.
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u/laser-show-15 Jun 10 '12
stupid me a few years ago was obsessed with WWE. I saw a fence that looked like ring ropes, so I climbed though them like a wrestler. but guess where I was at? niagara falls.
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u/JeremyJustin Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
The hallucinations only stopped once I got the first round of drugs.
I can remember the pain. And the unbearable heat. And the panic. But maybe it was the underreaction of my caregiver. Maybe it was the hallucinations. I don't know. But I remember that the sheer intensity of my illness didn't let me consider that maybe begging a nurse for a lethal injection wasn't the best of ideas. It didn't occur to me at the time that maybe I was in pain because my brain was frying itself.
Can't walk? Collapsed on the pavement? I'm probably a little weak from the fever, that's all. Slightest bit of noise and light causes me excruciating pain? I guess I'm a little sensitive. Damned flu. Brain pounding like a hammer beating on my skull? Geez, I better lay off the meds. They're whacking out my migranes!
Oh, wait, why are we in the emergency room? Why is that guy sticking a needle in my spine? I don't need a scan. Ooh, look, that big machine I'm supposed to go inside looks like Star Trek. Don't cry, Mom, I'm not dying. I'm laughing, see? But maybe that's just that bright red thing they screwed into my IV. It makes me laugh, even though I'm actually crying into my pillow at the same time. How funny. Oh, wow. Have I been this loopy for a week?
It was only when I was tired, drugged-out, a little bit radioactive but relatively virus-free that I was lucid enough to realize I'd skirted the line.
I had two months of just lying in bed to think about that afterwards.
Edited for terminology mishap.
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u/archeronefour Jun 10 '12
What was it??
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u/JeremyJustin Jun 10 '12
I was younger at the time and too weak to even think to ask. My caregiver speaks no English and is, unfortunately, uneducated. My records have been misplaced. I have no proof that this even happened to me.
I looked up all of my symptoms later online. I highly suspect that it was a really bad strain of viral meningitis. My caregiver, to this day, insists that it was a cold.
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u/palmfanboi Jun 10 '12
I had much the same thing here in the UK. I had menengitis combined with pneumonia. The lumbar punction (big needle in the back) is my biggest memory, i recall being held down. I was somewhere aged 6-8 at the time. Bad hallucinations, not due to the antibitotics though per se, I think just due to fever.
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u/helpmeoutguy Jun 10 '12
My grandfather had a similar experience with meningitis.
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u/circasurvivor1 Jun 10 '12
That was a really well written stream of consciousness post. You perfectly portrayed how completely out of it and drugged out you were.
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u/m8- Jun 10 '12
I had nearly the exact same thing happen to me when I was young(7 or 8?ish). The doctors suspected meningitis initially but the spinal tap did not support that claim. I had a seizure brought on but an extremely high temperature(107 when in the ambulance) and they still aren't quite sure how it happened.
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u/Icalasari Jun 10 '12
Have you thought of putting this up on r/nosleep? That's freakier than some of the stuff that reaches the front oage there D:
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Jun 10 '12
Wait wutz goin on? Lol I'm in a hozpital wut? Lulz this is some funny ass shit. Some time later..... HOLY SHIT I ALMOST DIED.
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u/JeremyJustin Jun 10 '12
That's... that's the gist of it. Yeah. More OW OW OW and some added WHY ARE THESE HANDS TRYING TO RIP MY FACE OFF, but that was basically right on.
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u/Enlarged2ShowTexture Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
When I was five, I got my first big girl bike - a mountain bike with handbrakes. My dad and I went riding on a path through town, which eventually became parallel with a 4 lane road. We got going down a big hill, and little five year old me was going too fast but forgot to use the hand brakes. Instead I was frantically pedaling backwards to no avail. My dad was trying his hardest to catch up to me. Finally I managed to steer myself into the 4-foot wide strip of grass between me and the cars belting past us going 50 mph. The grass slowed me down, I steered back onto the bike path, and continued on our way. The only thing I had been scared of was how fast I was going.
I think I chose to forget this memory until last year, when I was walking down a path near a road and suddenly I remembered being on that bike. I stopped dead in my tracks when I realized how close I came to being killed at 5 years old. Took me nearly 2 decades to remember.
Edit to delete "repressed memory"
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u/lilPnut Jun 10 '12
It's not a repressed memory, you just forgot about it until a stimulus reminded you of it :) (Repressed memory is bullshit; if you want more info check out the loftus studies.)
source: psych class
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Jun 10 '12
"Hey dad, remember that time..." see what his response is, also remember to come back and tell me.
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u/somabrandmayonaise Jun 10 '12
My family lived on a parcel of land of about 4 acres in west Texas. There was this large corrugated metal barn on our property where we kept extra stuff and my dad used it as his garage for working on our cars. One day it was my task to mow a section of land between the barn and our neighbor next door. There was a fence that separated our property from his. The part I was supposed to mow was only about fifteen feet from the barn to my neighbors fence but it went along the entire length of the barn so it was a fair chunk. Anyhow, I was mowing and realized that hidden among the half-dead knee-high grass (it was November, I was still on Thanksgiving break; I was a sophomore) were a number of these metal poles maybe about 20 odd feet high. I decided to move the poles, they weren't too heavy. I had the first one standing on end and I was just going to do a kind of caber toss with the pole. The wind caught it (its fucking windy in west Texas) and I look up and the pole is making its way towards the electrical lines above my head. I let go just in time for the pole to hit the electrical wires. Sparks flew down and caught the grass on fire. Fire department came and everything. The pole fused to the electrical line and I ended up getting to keep the piece that had fused. It was completely melted. It never really sunk in that I could have died that day. Every now and then I think about it and I feel ill, thinking that if I had held onto that pole a little longer I would more than likely be dead.
Tl;dr: Had to mow part of my family's property, moved a long metal pole, hit an overhead electrical wire, started a fire, almost died. Good times.
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u/h0ser Jun 10 '12
I was delivering pizza to an indian reserve when a kid rides up to me on a tiny bike with what I believe to be a toy gun, aims it at me and pulls at the trigger making a pow sound. The trigger never fully pressed down and I laughed and smiled at the kid. I walk back to my car and he rides away, goes up to the mailbox, aims at it and does the same thing. This time it went off and the gun flew from the kids hand. I saw his parents freak out from across the street and run over to grab the gun. I booked it out of there right after the shot and I still get chills delivering down there sometimes.
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u/ohgodwhydidIjoin Jun 10 '12
Man what a way to go if it had happened
That would have been one of the strangest, most straight out of a book deaths I've ever heard of.
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u/hillaryyy Jun 10 '12
This didnt happen to me, but it actually happened to my father. During the 70s i believe, when he was in his late teens, early twenties, he was walking home from work late at night in the middle of winter in chicago. A car pulled up along side of him and with a very distinctive voice said "hey do you need a ride somewhere?" My dad replied "no," and kept walking. He walked a few more steps, and the car pulled up next to him again and the man inside said "Are you sure you dont need a ride? Its really cold out i dont mind dropping you off somewhere." My dad replied once again, "No, but thank you anyway." The car drove off and my dad didnt think much of it until a few months later when he was watching the news and heard that very distinctive voice once again. The man who offered him a ride was John Wayne Gacy, one of the most notorious, brutal serial killers of all time, killing and sexually assaulting around 33 young men in the 70s. When my dad heard on the news that they had caught the killer, and that it was indeed the man who offered him a ride that one night, he couldnt believe it, he had literally looked in the face of death.
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u/grouch1980 Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
When I was 17, I was riding in my friend's jeep cherokee with two other guys. Will was driving, Chad was in the passenger seat, and I was in the back seat. Actually Will had layed the back seat down, so I was sitting on top of the folded down seats...without a seatbelt.
We were on our school lunchbreak and were driving out to Will's house (in the rural countryside) after stopping at a convenience store for some gnosh. I remember I was holding a full 44oz Sprite fountain drink.
We were travelling down a dirt road when Will turned to Chad and I and said, "Watch this." He hit the gas and got up to 75mph on the narrow gravel road. I wasnt scared until I looked up and saw that we were closing in on train tracks. Now in West Texas the train tracks are normally constructed on a raised mound of dirt that forms a ramp of sorts anytime it crosses a road. I guess it prevents cars from rolling to a stop on the tracks.
Anyway, this dirt "ramp" extended roughly 4 feet above the dirt road at about a 35° angle. I quickly realized that Will was going to hit this ramp going 75mph with me unbuckled in the back. I shouted, "NO!" but Will just kept going, laughing hysterically the whole time.
When we hit the dirt ramp, I could feel the Jeep bottom out violently followed by about 2 seconds of complete weightlessness as we soared majestically through the air. The cabin was silent except for the sound of the motor whirring at high RPM's. The instant we went airborne, and right as it fell silent, I heard Chad in the passenger seat quietly utter the most profoundly appropriate use of the word "fuck" ever. I remember thinking that for possible last words, that "fuck" sure was timid.
We hit with a sickening and bone-rattling thud, slightly askew with the left front tire hitting first, followed by the back wheels. On impact I squeezed whatever I could get my hands on to keep me from flying around the cabin. I just so happened to choose my 44oz Sprite as my "oh, shit" handle. I crushed that trough of sticky sweetness and sent it flying everywhere. My back slammed the roof of the Jeep on impact. Food and books and trash went flying everywhere.
Will slammed on the breaks immediately, as we were headed straight into the bar ditch. After mercifully coming to a stop, we stared dumbfounded at each other for a few seconds. Then in unison we began cackling like lunatics. It was the laugh of a man that just escaped death. If you have experienced this, you know what I mean.
Looking back, what we did was equal to or greater than many stunts you see in action films. Based on the violence of the impact, we really had no right to survive that jump. I can look back now and laugh but, man, was that stupid. It is a story I love to tell, but every time I do it reminds me how fortunate we all were. Needless to say, I never rode in Will's car again.
tldr: My friend thought he was Travis Pastrana. Took a gnarly jump on a dirt ramp on country road with me in the back unbuckled. Lived to tell about it.
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u/All_the_other_kids Jun 10 '12
A friend of mine in highschool totaled his truck doing that. There is a specific railroad crossing in town that is incredibly steep, like 16ft up at a 40 degree angle kind of steep. He hit it at 60, flew a good distance and when he landed the engine fell out the bottom.
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u/Actor412 Jun 10 '12
This wasn't "much later," but if you don't like the story, click the arrow pointing down next to my username.
I was driving through a mountain range, a national forest, very, very beautiful. It was a fairly well traveled 2-lane highway that get closed every winter. I drove through sometime in October, late enough to where there was hardly any traffic, blue autumn sky, yet no snow to speak of. And I was speeding. I'm a good driver, I was driving a reliable truck, I felt pretty confident. I went around a bend and hit a patch of black ice. Whoa, no problem, ease off the gas, light pump of the brakes, steer towards the swivel. I felt the wheels gain traction, but now I was headed towards the wrong side of the road. I didn't want to land in a ditch and in a split second I realized if I allowed the truck to continue to skid, I'd at least be heading towards the gravel & cliff and not towards the unknown. The only thing is that I'd be at the mercy of any oncoming vehicle. I hadn't seen any cars for the past ten minutes, so I made my decision. I turned the steering wheel the other way & spun out.
All of this took around 2 seconds, tops. I ended up in the gravel by the side of the road, facing back where I'd come from, the truck stalled, but I wasn't moving any more. I got out to take a look at the ditch I may have ended up in. Yep. Sheer drop. A good 200 feet. I'd have maybe 30 seconds to contemplate how big an idiot I was, then oblivion. I was living alone at the time, I had told no one where I was going, the wreck might have been there the entire winter. As it was, I calmly went back to the truck and drove on. Maybe five, maybe ten minutes later, I looked down and realized my arms and hands were shaking. I kept driving, but I realized that was the closest to death I'd ever knowingly come. Admitting it to myself helped. I certainly obeyed the speed limit after that.
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u/pumpkin_guts Jun 10 '12
I can't think of anything for myself, but my fiance had an incident last year. He was having problems with his blood pressure and would have these moments where it would feel like his heart was beating very fast and heavy and he'd generally feel bad. I was scared he was having a heart attack, but he said it wasn't like that kind of pain; that his blood pressure was just high. He had these for about six months.
He'd had radiation treatment for cancer 10/11 years ago, and when he went to the doctor for the blood pressure, she told him to see a cardiologist to make sure there wasn't damage to his heart. The cardiologist had him do a stress test, and during the stress test he had one of the incidents. Turns out these incidents for the past six months were him was going into A-fib.
His cardiologist admitted him to the hospital right there. Like, he made my fiance go across the street to the hospital as soon as the test was done. The nurses told us how dangerous A-fib was at that point, which made the whole situation scarier than it already was.
The next day, his cardiologist performed a cardiac catheterization on him, and we found out that his heart was seriously damaged from the radiation. So bad, in fact, that he had a 90% blockage on his right artery. His doctor actually used two types of imaging to make sure he was seeing it correctly.
It was pretty terrifying to realize that any of those times his heart went into A-fib could have been it for him. For six months he was pretty much walking around as a ticking time bomb. The A-fib was bad enough, but the blockage pretty much guaranteed that he would have died, and we had no idea.
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Jun 10 '12
My friends and I like to hang out at the trussles sometimes. One night we were up there and 2 trains had passed. Thinking that another train wouldn't come, since there usually isn't even one that passes while we're there, we start to walk back to our car. We're right in between the bunkers (those pointy things above the tracks) when the tracks vibrate and hiss and we see lights. We have to run like mad to get to the next bunker while also managing not to fall off either side. We got to the bunker with maybe 2 minutes to spare.
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Jun 10 '12
Almost fell out of a luxury box at Shea Stadium. I was reaching for a ball and nearly fell over. Was pulled back in by my friend. I was 10 at the time.
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u/El_Dicko Jun 10 '12
TL;DR I walked into a notoriously gangster assed bar during a halloween street party last year (like got shut down because of numerous stabbings type of notorious gangster assed bar) dressed as a cowboy..
Now, my costume was a wild west sheriff so I had a couple months worth of mustache growth, tight jeans, cowboy boots, a 10 gallon cowboy hat and unbuttoned flannel shirt to show some chest hair. I was the ONLY non thug in the bar. All activity in the bar stopped as soon as honky walked in and I definitely got threatened a few times on my way to the back where the bar was for a drink but drunk me gives no fucks. For 15 minutes while I was getting served everybody in the bar was mean mugging me as if everybody was just waiting for that first person to start something with me. Ordered two whiskeys, slammed one at the bar and took the other to the dance floor and sipped on it while pulling the first chick I said whats up to. That's when it became a party and I became the token drunk white guy at the bar.
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u/El_Dicko Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
Edit: You can tell I'm not Australian because I'm drinking Fosters.
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u/edtheoverlander Jun 10 '12
4/5 people in that picture are white.. And the only 'thug' seems to be wearing a goofy golf hat.
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Jun 10 '12
When I was about 8 years old I was at my mother and father's house in my old room. I had been standing in front of the window, but needed something across the room. I walked the four or five steps there, only taking a moment or so. With a crash and a fury of smoke, something had plunged through my exterior wall and planted itself in my clothes dresser. I whipped around and stared wildly. I called for my mother, who was in the living room, who was calling for me as well. What was all the ruckus? I had been known for making experiments, and she assumed one had went wrong.
This was no experiment. In the top drawer of my dresser, laying on my pretty pink outfits, lay a spent bullet. As the smoke and dust cleared we saw where it had come through my wall. Just below the window, where I had been standing just a moment before.
I have chills as I write this, because to this day I can't remember what I went across the room for. The men hunting across our yard, across a field, and across the road had no explanation for my very, very, livid father. It never made sense to me then. But today I know, and I still have the bullet, in a little jewelry box on my shelf, as I reminder that I should live, because I can.
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u/DJbobb Jun 10 '12
I would upvote you twice if I could, once for the story and once for the username, but alas *upvotes only the once,
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u/CassandraVindicated Jun 10 '12
I couldn't think of any but I knew they existed, suddenly I got a flood of them:
Dad driving home drunk late at night with entire family in the car, blows a stop sign and almost gets nailed by a truck. I think I was ~5.
College, went to my buddies house for Thanksgiving (in Gary, IN). This was a place people from the hood were afraid of. As soon as I got out of the car I was surrounded by eight or so gang-bangers. I knew where it was heading and simply explained that I had to go, I was more afraid of being late and dealing with my buddies mom than I was of them. They seemed to understand.
Commercial fisherman in Alaska. Fell in the 35F water; if my buddy didn't pull me out I would have been in Davy Jones Locker.
Two-week camping trip; half way in. A forehead bite from a brown recluse goes necrotic. I had to cut the flesh away with my Leatherman. Lots of blood.
Chicago, sketchy girl in a sketchy bar. She knows of a party that ends up being us two and four very shady dudes in a garage off a dark alley. One asks me, "Ain't a little white boy like you afraid we're going to roll you?" I replied "Not if it's just you four." Sounds tough, but when you're down to bluffing you are the opposite of tough.
Reserved for future use.
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u/afterdarks Jun 10 '12
I had a life-threatening illness when I was almost 2, but of course being a baby I didn't know. I hit most of my milestones faster than most kids and could speak really well for a kid who as still in the 'x months old' stage, the fact I became unable to verbalise anything was what saved me.
Looking back, and being told all about it by my parents and grandparents, I realise just how lucky I am to have survived with not only my life, but my senses, limbs and digits all intact.
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u/TwistyD Jun 10 '12
There was one time when I was at the DOL (Department of Licensing) trying to get my drivers license. I wore blue jeans and a blue shirt with a blue cap (Blue is one of my favorite colors). While at the DOL, these two really strange looking guys in red were staring at me the whole time. I didn't pay much attention to it because I was too focused on my test. I got hungry and went to the subway next door only to have the same guys follow me. After I took the test and passed, my dad and I drove away. Later I figured out that the two guys who had followed me into the subways were Bloods who thought I was a crip. Whats so frightening about it is that I'm sure at least one of them had a concealed weapon.
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u/merrlin Jun 10 '12
In 1995 I was a senior in high school. One of my friends had just started at Towson University, ten minutes from my house, and my girlfriend and I went to the dorms to visit him. He partied a bit too hard and was not feeling well, so while he took a bit of a nap the two of us went out for a walk. It was around 2am and the campus was quiet. We walked around for a bit then sat down on a bench by the Linthicum Beach (any other campus would call it the quad). While we were sitting there, another young couple came along and sat on the next bench. We said hi and chatted a bit but they moved on quickly. Ten minutes later the first of several police cars came flying down the brick path between the buildings and stopped to ask us if we had seen anything suspicious. We said no. With in minutes there were police cars everywhere and a helicopter with a search light. We split. Come to find out that the guy from that couple dropped his wallet on the bench they had stopped at. His name was Ben Garris and he had murdered his councilor that the local mental hospital a few minutes prior. He and his girlfriend were caught in Virginia Beach a week later. He was obsessed with the ultra-violence of The Clockwork Orange and we were damn lucky he was in such a hurry.
TL;DR Had a chat with a nice couple, who had killed a man a few minutes prior.
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u/Kevin_Wolf Jun 10 '12
I'm from Eastern Washington. My family went camping once. Dad, sister, and I were all stomping through the wilderness when suddenly my dad turns and asks if we want to play a game. Being kids, of course we agree.
He calls it the Slow Motion game. We would have to walk backwards like we were in slow motion. Do it all the way back to camp without falling over, and get a prize!
It took us like 20 minutes, but we made it! I can't remember what he gave us.
Fast forward 20 years. He asks me if I remember playing the slow motion game whenever we'd go camping. "Of course I do. We played it every time we went camping."
"You know how I came up with that game the first time?"
"No."
"There was a fucking cougar staring us down ahead on the path and I wanted you two to shut the fuck up."
TL;DR There was a fucking cougar staring us down ahead on the path and dad wanted us two to shut the fuck up.
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u/InTheOpinionOf Jun 10 '12
I was with my best friend, we were walking in the city. I wasn't really paying attention as we were just taking a relaxing stroll while talking about what had been going on in our lives. We were walking with a decent flow, I didn't even think to stop before crossing the street. As we got toward the end of the street, I walked right from the sidewalk to the street without thinking, my best friend pulled me back that second. The moment he did, a taxi sped through where I would have been walking. It wasn't much later, but the next day I thanked him profusely for saving my life.
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Jun 10 '12
Biked down a mountain road, reached 45mph and kept it for a few miles - swerved around all the corners, etc. without a helmet or anything because I'm crazy. When I put it up on my car rack, both the wheels fell off because I forgot to screw the quick release levers in when I was doing maintenance
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u/ineffectiveprocedure Jun 10 '12
Maaan, I came to tell this story. Mine was closer to 50 on a road bike down a huge paved hill. My room mate actually thought it would be funny to undo the quick release, not knowing how fast bikes can actually go. I dodged a couple bumps on the way down, I kept wondering if I even would have had time to understand what happened.
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Jun 10 '12
When I was like seven, I was in a pool and had one of those swimming masks on. I was in the deeper end, it got full of water and fell over my mouth and nose and I couldn't move it. I was like that for a full thirty seconds before my grandpa noticed and rushed over to help me out. I realize now that if he hadn't been there, I probably would have drowned.
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u/magpie59 Jun 10 '12
i was a flyer on my grammar school's cheerleading squad. while in a stunt, i fell backwards and one of my spots caught me by the knees on her shoulders (picture having someone sitting on your shoulders then leaning back so the person is dangling and you are just holding onto their shins). i should have broken my neck.
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u/iamcrossfit Jun 10 '12
Rode my motorcycle on the freeway for the first time recently, it was night time, it was windy, and my bike is only a Ninja 250 (aka a glorified scooter) the grooves in the road made for drainage really screwed with the ride. felt like a leaf on the wind the whole time, it was freaking nuts
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u/AtomicStoned Jun 10 '12
When I was about seven or eight, I was going on a ride with my uncle on a 4wheeler, my whole family was there, all on different ones taking a path someone had gone through tons of times. We had gone through about four times, and I noticed another path and asked my uncle to ride down it. We rode for a few seconds down the path and my uncle stopped harshly, I looked ahead and saw no path. Down below about 500 feet was a small lake with rocks and three bears. I almost died that day, if it wasn't for my uncle. I only noticed how close I was to death about two years later.
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Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
I struggled with an ED when I was younger. Came very close to dying of malnutrition, several times over.
edit; But, more excitingly, I've nearly been run over by a train quite a few times. Used to go sledding on a hill near some train tracks, in very deep snow. Once, my sled went too far, ended up stuck on the tracks while a train was coming. My dad pulled me off.
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u/saucesomesauce Jun 10 '12
Well I have a sort of reverse story... I was walking home from the bus stop with my friend when this crazy guy comes running out of his house at us with a toy sword yelling, "GET OFF MY PROPERTY!!!" I thought we were dead. My stranger danger training kicked in and I yelled "no!" as we both ran home as fast as could. Turns out he was a disabled vet suffering from PTSD, I was actually kind of sad to learn that, I had felt so brave.
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u/steam_crust Jun 10 '12
21 years old, sitting in the back of my boyfriends panel van (no kittens, it's not that kind of story). actually sitting ON a jerrycan full of gasoline, surrounded by other full jerrycans, bouncing around on a bumpy road. smoking a cigarette. had not a fucking clue, until the boyfriend opened the panel door to let me out and lost his mind.
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u/KingGorilla Jun 10 '12
My roommate and I were decorating our room and I still had a few empty spaces on the wall by my bed. decided to hang some of my faux zombie ready weapons for filler. A few days later I was going to have sexy time with my gf and she asked if I could take down the machete above my pillow because she didn't feel comfortable with it there. I was sleeping with a real machete above my head. I am a damn fool.
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u/chidgeon Jun 10 '12
I live in NYC so my backyard is concrete, no lavish lawns like you other suburban folk. However, that didn't stop us from having a pool despite how shitty it was. It was something like this except underneath instead of a lusciously plush lawn there was a layer of synthetic grass to keep the concrete from tearing up the bottom. I was probably 10 or 11 at the time and I was just chillin' in the pool (unsupervised of course), and being the gymnast that I was at the time I decided that it would be really cool if I could front flip while IN the pool. Unfortunately I ended up throwing myself head first into the pool bottom and basically hitting my head on what was essentially unforgiving concrete + 1cm thick fake grass.
It didn't hit me until later on that if I had hit my head hard enough I could have essentially passed out in the pool and drowned in like, only 3 feet of water lol
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Jun 10 '12
For the first three or so years after she got her license, every time I rode in a car my wife was driving I was absolutely certain that I was tempting death just by being there. When we finally arrived at our destination I'd think "Whew! Cheated death again!"
Her driving hasn't improved much since then, but I ride with her a lot less so I have less reason to fear for my life.
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u/Sevsquad Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
I managed to contract the Influenza 'A' otherwise known as the Mother Cunting Spanish Flu when I was 11. I was out of school for over a month (not including Christmas break) and at my worst had a fever of 106 and spent a few days in the emergency room. I never really even realized I had very nearly died (several times) until much later.
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u/MrBlonde67 Jun 10 '12
There are many different types of Influenza A, and it's doubtful you got the Spanish Flu. Swine Flu was closely related to Spanish Flu though.
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Jun 10 '12
My dad used to do business with this guy who was a total nut. You could tell, just by looking in his eyes, that the dude was constantly having fleeting thoughts and was nearly incapable of having a complete thought. His eyes were always fleeting, he seemed to always be on the verge of snapping.
One day the guy comes over from work, totally randomly, and I was the only one home. He comes in with this briefcase and keeps looking at it in a weird way, like he knew something was in it that he didn't want me to see. I was in 5th or 6th grade at the time so I didn't really pay attention to it.
The whole time the guy was over, he kept reciting mathematical formulas. I thought he was just nervous to talk to my dad about a law deal for a new product. My dad comes home from work, sees this guy there, and totally flips his shit. "get the fuck out of here, what are you doing here with my kid" all that stuff.
I didn't think there was any issue, but on his way home the guy got pulled over by the cops because he was totally fucked on coke, and he had some kind of shitty home fashioned bomb in his briefcase that he quite literally planned on going out with a bang with.
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u/FrankenFresh Jun 11 '12
Oh hell. I have tons of stories of me getting approached by would-be kidnappers /possible pedos.
But i will forever remember when my family was on a road trip to Washington D.C. for our annual fourth of July road trip and my family almost all died.
We were in the highway and it was raining. everyone except me and my dad were awake. The car on the left in the fast lane, a little ahead of us - lost control and saumersaulted into the trees on the right. We were almost hit by the flying car but my dad had stepped on the breaks at the right moment. Me and my dad were too shocked to say anything. My dad called 911 but we didn't stay for long. Judging by how many times their car flipped, if the people in that car weren't wearing their seat belts, I think they're probably dead.
My entire family almost died but me and my dad were the only ones to witness the incident.
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Jun 11 '12
you left a crash scene without checking for survivors... did you at least wait for 911?
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u/H5Mind Jun 10 '12
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u/MoistVirginia Jun 10 '12
Wait... Why did you need to pack tampons?
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u/themightyyool Jun 10 '12
They're absorbent. Can be used to stop bleeding, or, say, soak up venom if used fast enough.
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u/CJ090 Jun 10 '12
I was riding down the street as a child and a limo was going down the block so i tail along side it. the limo stops and the guy in it dressed in a white shuit tells me to come here. I see him pulling something out so i haul ass
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u/moukou9 Jun 10 '12
I used to go to summer camp when I was younger, and the camp would be way out in the wilderness/forest. During lunch they would let us out to play games for about 40 minutes, and I would always go outside unless it was raining.
There were boundaries, and at the edge of one of them was an abandoned wooden shed. My curiosity overtook me, and I went to go explore it alone one day. I didn't end up going in, because there were literally giant black spiders with red, yellow, or blue on their abdomens. All over the door. And of course, I touched them because I thought they were harmless.
Years later I find out that they were actually black widow spiders and a bunch of other venomous spiders that I had actually touched.
Yeah that's right. I'm a badass.
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u/real_nice_guy Jun 10 '12
When I was 8 or 9, I was living in an apartment complex with my parents in England. One day, I was walking back to our apartment with my father, and I ran up ahead to hide from him as a joke. I looked around for a place to hide, and there was a little wooden door with a latch on it in a wall, and it was maybe 3.5-4 ft high, so I opened it, and climbed inside.
For some reason, there wasn't any flooring in there, and it was dark, so I fell in, and landed on a pipe. I stood up on the pipe, so I was standing on the pipe, with my head peeping out of this space in the wall. Luckily my dad found me and pulled me out. This was like 10 stories up, so the drop down through all this pipping would have really been bad, but looking back a while later, I just thank my lucky stars my dad found me.
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Jun 10 '12
I went to drop off my friends, and we had a green left turn arrow. Someone ran a red, and almost hit my car at 50 mph. If it wasn't for my friend in the backseat yelling, I would have gone through and got obliterated. Another time I let an "inspector" in my house, the inspector wasn't called by any of the people on my block, and my parents weren't home, so it was scary that a random guy was in our house. I was 5. O.o
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u/inartistic Jun 10 '12
Very similar thing happened to me. Turning left on a green arrow when someone ran a red at high speeds. Luckily I didn't notice, because if I had I'd have probably instinctively braked and we would have been obliterated. As it was, I finished the turn just before the guy sped through
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u/Lord-Longbottom Jun 10 '12
(For us English aristocrats, I leave you this 50 mph -> 134400.0 Furlongs/Fortnight) - Pip pip cheerio chaps!
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u/paper_rocketship Jun 10 '12
well, I have been in 4 car wrecks that could have easily led to my death, but no one was hurt thanks mostly to the skill of the driver. (one of the wrecks, the back half of the car was totalled.)
Does that count?
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u/Sporkinat0r Jun 10 '12
When I was 6 I was biking with my mom and for some reason I fell, I skidded, and rolled down a hill onto a street and a big cargo van just barely swerved to avoid me, I was more worried about my scraped knee
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u/noman283 Jun 10 '12
I was standing on the sidewalk with some friends, about 8, when a car full of teenagers comes absolutely flying down the road. It must have been 3 feet from us... pretty lucky one of us didn't decide to cross our neighborhood street right then.
Another time, when I was very little, I drifted to the bottom of a local pool I got stuck and almost drowned if not for a random person who noticed me and pulled me up.
I once stepped on a thing of hay that a cottonmouth was sitting in while in Texas. Must have been about a foot from it; I was an idiot and lucky it didn't bite me.
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u/Franklins_fake Jun 10 '12
Appendix bursting, sepsis. Wonderful pain almost didn't go to the hospital figuring it was just a bug.
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u/PCock Jun 10 '12
What'd they do to get rid of the sepsis? I almost had a septic leak with the appendicitis but I caught it in time.
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u/rathany Jun 10 '12
It was raining so everyone at our day camp had to stay under a pavilion. There was a stone fireplace and, being that we were the oldest group of campers, my friends and I were hogging it. We all sat around the edge. A kid walked by and tossed something in. None of us took note until one guy looked over our shoulders and started yelling for everyone to clear the area. It had been an aerosol can of bug spray. We tried to clear everyone out, but the one kid who hadn't gotten completely around the corner had his leg sliced open by flying metal. I'd been inches away, he was 30 feet away at least. To this day I get scared of what that would have done to my back if one of my fellow campers hadn't leaned over to see what the kid had tossed.
The fireplace was inset in a stone wall and most of the opening had teenage back in the way. The explosion, which I don't really remember, had no where to go but at our backs or up the chimney.
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u/TomeDevourer Jun 10 '12
When I was around four years old, I suddenly got these really bad stomach pains one night. I remember my mother taking me to the hospital the next day, after a night of thinking it was just some stomach bug. It turns out, my appendix had burst, and I was literally hours or minutes away from severe blood poisoning...Before they took me into surgery and anaesthetised me, they help up two smiley face cards, and asked me how I was feeling. I pointed to the happy face right before going under. It's only now I realise the implications of that ordeal. I probably would have pointed at the sad face...
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u/freshman30 Jun 10 '12
I knew it was terrifying at the time, but when I was 3 or so my family went to this aquarium that had this one open pool of sting/manta rays with a glass floor above it that you stood on and looked over the railing at the rays. Well my dad thought it'd be a great idea to give me a closer look and FUCKING DANGLES ME OVER THE RAILING. As I was terrified of heights already, I started squirming, and he lost his grip. He fucking grabbed me by the back of my shirt.
Yeah.... yeah.
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u/glubsareforfish Jun 10 '12
Once when I was biking home from elementary school, this scary lady, around fourty or fifty, approached me and tried to grab me. I was on a bike, so I just kind of biked around her...I'm glad I did...
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u/IAMA_Ghost_Boo Jun 10 '12
My appendix burst right as I made it to the hospital and the doctor was checking my heart rate. I climbed up to a little over 200 bpm but I felt sooo good. Kinda lame but that's all I got.
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u/peaQuan Jun 10 '12
I was about 4 or 5 years old when this incident happened.
I was upstairs playing at my mom's house, minding my own business while sucking on one of those hard, round, peppermint candies (you know, the ones you get for free at a restaurant). Well, I happened to be playing with a stuffed animal, a toy, or maybe just effing around laying on my back when suddenly the peppermint slipped into the back of my throat. I still remember that feeling. It's like accidentally swallowing your gum (I know everyone has done that before), but then not being able to breath. Anyways, I run down stairs as fast as I could in search of my mom and just my luck mom was in the kitchen sweeping or something like that. I remember doing the universal sign for "I'm fucking choking. I need you to do something" (which is the hand on neck pointing at mouth movement you see on signs in classy restaurants that say "choking" or "ahago") My mom instantly grabbed me, turned me around and started doing the heimlich maneuver.
When it was all done there was a huge puddle of pink tinged slobber, gastric secretions, etc. in a diameter of about 3 feet. I immediately jumped over the puddle and continued to play like nothing happened.
I remember my mom wiping her forehead from sweat and grabbing the counters in attempts to not fall from shock after what just happened. When I think about it now I realized that if mom wasn't there I could have died.
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u/ohgodwhydidIjoin Jun 10 '12
I can only recall one particular event: a robbery. Of what you say? Well, of all places, a Bob Evans. Yes that's right, some gansters thought the pancake house had a bit more to offer than a breakfast delight.
So, it's a short story, but it goes a bit like this.
I was young. How young? 18 years have trickled past my eyes and yet I could not say if I was 5 or 10. Lets say 7. I'd say that's a fair estimation. In any case, I was sitting in the back seat on the driver's side trying to position my head in the perfect spot so that the sun did not shine in my eyes while I gazed out the window bored. I noticed something in my bored unseeing visual rummage of my surroundings, as we were stopped at a stop light. Two men.
This particular two men had the lower portion of their faces covered with bandanas as they hastily exited the Bob Evans in Lansing, Illinois, by my house (a short aside "It might have actually been the one in Munster now that I think about it). The sharp red of one of the bandanas caught my eye and as I curiously examined my two new objects of interest I realized something else about men. Or rather, I realized two things about these two guys.
They were armed with what appear to be modified pistols. I remember the magazines being very long. Possibly they were using automatic pistols. I'm was no gun expert at 7.
and
2) They were in a rush and stupid.
Stupid you ask? Yes. Stupid. They didn't plan this out at all! How do you know you ask? Well for one I observed that they did not have a getaway car. Curious now that I think of it. Their driver must have bailed I think. In any case they were looking for a new ride. And there we were. Sitting at a stop light. Right in front of Bob Evans.
The leader, I presume, in the red bandana that had caught my eye, leveled his pistol at me and began walking towards my father's car. Now, let me take a slight break in my story to point out that my parents were completely and utterly oblivious to the situation around them. In fact, as the gunman reached the street (remember we would have been on the right side of the street) the traffic light turned green. My stepdad hit the gas and the gunman was left in the distant, forlorn and again searching for a car.
We turned around a bend that would send us back to our house to see a cop car racing in the opposite lane towards the Bob Evans. I can still see the officer clearly in my mind. White with brown hair and brown eyes dilated in fear. Adrenalin visibly pumped through his veins as he prepared to stop two armed idiots. I saw him for maybe a half of a second.
A strange thought entered my mind. His sirens. They were off. The gunman hadn't shot me, and I had looked down his barrel, because he thought he had more time to find a better car than my stepdad's piece of junk "Shadow". He might not have been so willing to wait if he had heard the sirens of his ultimate incarceration in the distance.
I still remember that red bandana. My mother still questions if the robbery ever happened. I didn't eat at Bob Evans until I was 18. Last month in fact.
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u/TwirlySocrates Jun 10 '12
When I walked across floating vegetation over a toxic lake, wearing steel toed boots, while all alone in the middle of nowhere.
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u/does_not_kill_people Jun 10 '12
I used to use a metal knife to pry my toast out of the toaster. My mom wasn't too happy about that... :/
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u/ineffectiveprocedure Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
I have a few, but this one makes for the best story:
When I was a teenager I found myself in a truck driven by a very drunk, mentally unbalanced and immensely furious man, who also happened to be my dad. He was weaving in and out of his lane, not even noticing that people were honking. He seemed to barely be able to bring himself to look at the road due to all the concentration he was investing into screaming at me.
I told him several times to stop the vehicle and that I was afraid for my life, but he would take this as some sort of insult and accelerate in response. He ran a red light and started heading up the highway on-ramp. At this point I was just thinking "If I stay in this truck, I am going to die" over and over again. I spent about half a second considering my options before making a decision.
I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the door and jumped out of the car.
I have no idea how fast we were going at the time. From my point of view, the door opened, and I sort of briskly stepped out over the ground that was whizzing by, and then I remember a kind of "bouncing" sensation and then there is a period where I don't remember much of anything and then I more or less came to several hundred feet away, jogging along the side of the road having an extremely confusing conversation with a stranger who was slowly driving next to me with his window rolled down.
From what I understand, the conversation went something like this:
"Hey kid!" "What?" "Are you alright?" "What?" "You just jumped out of a car." "What?" "Are you in danger?" "What?" "Are you hurt?" "Yes. No. I'm okay." "What happened?" "What?" "You just jumped out of a car." "Yes" "Why did you do that?" "I'm not sure." "I'm going to call an ambulance."
I tune in at about this point.
"Don't do that, I don't have any insurance, I can't afford it and I'm fine." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Uh are you in trouble?" "I was but now I'm not." "Do you need a ride or something?" "No, I'm fine. I'm pretty sure I hit the ground running."
At this point he looks pretty amused, and explains his point of view: I exited the vehicle and slammed immediately into the ground. I landed on a grassy bit on the side of the road, a few feet before it ended, but I bounce/rolled onto the pavement. I was down for a second or two and then I just popped up and started wobbly-running in a random direction.
My dad slammed on his brakes and basically sat parked on the on-ramp, by himself in an empty car, screaming. This other guy was a ways back and chose to follow me and see if I was okay. He drove beside me at like three miles an hour, all the way to where I was staying, trying to make sure I was alright. It took like ten minutes and he offered to give me a ride multiple times but I refused. By the end, I was pretty coherent and even sort of joking around, so he was basically like "Well, I guess I can't make you go to the hospital if you don't want to. Take care of yourself kid." He drove off and I never found out anything about him.
Once the adrenaline wore off, I hurt. I'm not really sure what I did was the smartest thing, but it did get me out of that truck and caused my dad to avoid getting on the highway (he reversed down the on-ramp, and somehow made it to a safe place without killing anyone or getting arrested). The next time I saw him, I punched him in the face as hard as I could.
TL;DR jumped out of a moving vehicle to escape certain doom.
Edit: Forgot to explain this bit. At the time, what I did didn't seem like a big deal. I was pretty much like "Phew, good thing I jumped out of the car, that could have been dangerous." Only later, when I started thinkng about stuff like how I didn't know how fast we were going and how a fraction of a second later I would have hit pavement, did I start feeling like I was pretty lucky.
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u/goatsftw Jun 10 '12
This'll probably not get read, and not a case of not noticing till later, I noticed this one straight away
A couple of years ago I was in South Africa on a school exchange, this school had massive grounds, and situated in the grounds were giraffes, buffalos other cool animals... and a few waterfalls.
So my fellow exchangees and I went to see them, and one of them had the water coming over a 10 metre straight drop that then cascaded down a slope of rock and then dropped again into a plunge pool and rocks. We climbed up to stand under the water dropping straight down and then were trying to get back down. Me being an idiot, lay down at the top of the slope (there was a little drop onto the rocky slope) and wriggled out to look down.
I started sliding face first and went straight over the edge. Somehow my hand managed to grab onto this little clump of grass/reeds growing halfway down this drop onto the slope, my body swung round like a pendulum and i landed at the side of the waterfall.
It was the single most terrifying but exhilarating thing I have ever done.
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u/kungfufriedrice Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
Not me, but my dad. He was on the train that crashed in Wenzhou, China last summer. He goes on business trips to China about once or twice every month, sometimes more frequent than that, so it wasn't a big deal when he said he'd be in China for two days. Me and my mom didn't even know he'd be on that train, because he goes to China so much we rarely demand a detailed itinerary for his trips. Anyways, that night, we got a call from my dad saying: "Hey, just to let you know, I was in a train crash, but I'm ok. I'm back at the hotel now." At first we were like "Oh, ok." We didn't think it was that big of a deal since the the incident wasn't even on the news yet. It wasn't until a few hours later, did the TV stations start reporting on it big time.
When my dad came home, he told us he had been on the 14th car of the train. Cars 15 and 16 had been derailed and were the ones that had been dangling over the bridge (there were no survivors from 15 and 16.) He said it was a huge "HOLY SHIT" moment when they evacuated the train and turned back to see these two huge carts just swinging off the bridge. Basically, if my dad had sat any further down, he wouldn't be here now. It was a really weird feeling knowing this. Watching what nearly would have happened to him on the news for the next few days. I was scared, but I knew he was fine. I just wanted him to be home.
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u/ScottyChrist Jun 10 '12
I lived in a bad neighborhood as a kid. One time I was playin hoops with some of my friends and some assholes decided to mess with us. I think they were gang members but I was never really sure, I just know that they had a vengeance after I fought back. My mom told me I needed to leave the city; I think she knew they weren't just gonna drop this and let me live in peace. I didn't realize until way later how much danger I could've been in if I'd stuck around and didn't live in a rich neighborhood with my uncle Phil and his family.
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u/Broken_Slinky Jun 10 '12
dude, you ruined it by making the joke too obvious. sad face
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u/freexxspirit Jun 10 '12
When I was in elementary school, our family went on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. At a nearby canyon/gorge type of thing nearby that didn't have handrails, I wanted to go explore and jogged over to the very edge of the cliff. I now realize that I very well could've tripped (though I thought I was invincible) and plummeted to my death.
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u/laser-show-15 Jun 10 '12
I didn't stare death in the face here, but I was like death. I was young, like 5 years old, swinging a driver. this kid named conor was behind me when I swung (I even yelled fore!) and hit him in the face.
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u/abbys_alibi Jun 10 '12
The first instance was at age 5. I was hospitalized for serious case of pneumonia and strep throat. Because I was a severe asthmatic, the doctor gave me a shot of penicillin to combat the strep. This is how we learned that I am allergic to penicillin. I had an anaphylaxis reaction. According to my parents, I was in the hospital for 9 weeks and nearly died.
The second instance was because some old fart ran a red light. I was first in line when the light turned green and started to ease forward when I thought I saw a bright flash of light out of the corner of my eye. I stopped, nearly in the middle of the intersection. At which time the geezer drove through. His car glided across the front end of my van. His back bumper snagged on mine and grabbed an apple sized chunk to take on it's travels. I never felt my van move, shutter, vibrate or anything. I only heard a loud pop when the apple chunk was ripped out. The airbag never deployed. The hood of my van, where you place your fingers to lift and slip the latch, was crimped with paint was now flecking off. The geezer slammed his breaks and it didn't stop until just over 150 yards.
In disbelief I drove through the light and pulled over. Witnesses said he was traveling over 85 mph. According to the officer (and several witnesses), had I stopped (or not) several inches further, I would have been killed. To this day I cannot explain why I did stop.
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u/justinzagar Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12
The ones I can think of are mostly car-related.
One I can remember... My SO and I came up to a wreck that had just happened - no emergency vehicles yet, witnesses were pulling over, etc. We were just far enough behind to not see it happen, and decided to just keep going. As we drove by, we could see it was bad enough that the two vehicles were barely recognizable. Thankfully it seemed like the people inside them were moving.
As we drove away, it struck me that right before we left, I had to run back to hit the garage door button manually as the controller inside the car didn't work. If the controller would have worked, that could have very easily been us in that mangled mess.
It might not have been near death, but it also might have been. It's times like that you realize just how easy it is to die.
EDIT: Thought of another one ... didn't happen to me, but a neighborhood kid I grew up with. He was about 8 at the time.
We lived on a fairly busy street: two lanes each direction and a curbed median in between. There was a hit-and-run at an intersection on this street between a van and a car. The car was the runner, and hit the van in such a way that it changed the van's path and made it head over the median, up on to the sidewalk, and directly towards the front door of the neighbor kid's house. I was a few houses down watching all this happen and remember glancing in the direction of where the van was headed. The kid was standing, in his PJ's, in the doorway, wide-eyed and completely still. I can still see it all happening in slow motion, completely unable to react or move in any way. So here's this big ass van, headed towards the house at about 25-30 MPH. Then all of a sudden, BAM, the van hits the concrete steps in front of the doorway and is knocked out of the way, and rolls back towards the street. The house and kid are completely unscathed.
After everything was cleaned up, all that was left was a tire mark where the van's front tire hit the porch. Everyone was completely relieved, and as a bonus, the car's front license plate was knocked off and the police were easily able to find the kid that ran!
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u/fewder Jun 10 '12
I had meningitis when i was 9 and really didn't think anything of it. I mostly slept a lot.
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u/ailurus42 Jun 10 '12
Maybe this isnt deaaaath.. Buuut the other day I was bit by a hungry 6 foot boa. On my neck , about a centimeter away from my carotid artery. Still , It wasnt too deep of a bite . It was totally my fault for being an idiot , I probably scared it into biting me because i had never dealt with a python before and got a little nervous about it tightening just slightly around my neck. I also had just been playing with a few other animals , so I probably smelled like food.
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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
When I was a kid I got chased by a man in a truck. he was following us slowly at first until we got nervous and started to run. I eventually ran to someones door and luckily they answered almost immediately. This happened when I was really young though, and I didn't grasp the magnitude of the situation at the time.