[Corollary] Ever almost *been* killed?
JamesKeenan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Given the recent thread, I thought this would be equally as important, and afford the opportunity for as great stories.
I'd start off with something great, but these are all I got...
I used to ride my bike to school, and when I turned the corner of my apartment complex, I'd always take my helmet off, because helmets are nerdy. So I was nearing the corner, when a car comes screaming through our apartment complex. I see it coming, but I think that there's no way it could reach me before I cross the road, so I begin to cross on by bike. Bam. I go over the car, my bike goes forward. Years following that I would get terrible, pounding headaches in the back of my head.
I also strode a U-Haul trailer hitch down a road one time while we were moving, thinking it'd be fun. Not that if I fell off I'd be crushed and killed.
And when I was a baby I was in a booster seat without a seat belt in an airplane. I was bound to the booster, but the booster wasn't bound to the chair. Airplane hits turbulence and I fly up, hit the ceiling of the plane, and fall back down. Apparently with a smile on my face.
I guess the time a car accident happened in front of me and the car swerved not even 6 feet in front just in time not to hit me... that counts, I guess.
I can't think of anything else... Oh, now. I was attacked by a shark.
I'd start off with something great, but these are all I got...
I used to ride my bike to school, and when I turned the corner of my apartment complex, I'd always take my helmet off, because helmets are nerdy. So I was nearing the corner, when a car comes screaming through our apartment complex. I see it coming, but I think that there's no way it could reach me before I cross the road, so I begin to cross on by bike. Bam. I go over the car, my bike goes forward. Years following that I would get terrible, pounding headaches in the back of my head.
I also strode a U-Haul trailer hitch down a road one time while we were moving, thinking it'd be fun. Not that if I fell off I'd be crushed and killed.
And when I was a baby I was in a booster seat without a seat belt in an airplane. I was bound to the booster, but the booster wasn't bound to the chair. Airplane hits turbulence and I fly up, hit the ceiling of the plane, and fall back down. Apparently with a smile on my face.
I guess the time a car accident happened in front of me and the car swerved not even 6 feet in front just in time not to hit me... that counts, I guess.
I can't think of anything else... Oh, now. I was attacked by a shark.
Ok, that last one wasn't true, but I did used to pick on water moccasins near my house.
JamesKeenan on
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So, just about every day.
1) I was cycling along a country road that was next to and above a river bend (had about a 4 foot high metal barrier and then about a 15 foot drop to the bushes and concrete apron on the bank), I had just crossed the road with the intent to take the next turning and was next to the barrier when a car came up behind me (on the wrong side of the road!) going about thirty-five and smashed me onto the railings which me and my bike went flying over for some reason (things happened pretty fast). I hit the river and my bike hit the concrete, give me some minor bruises+shock and utterly destroying the bike - a whim of physics and it be the other way round and I'd have been dead. The car driver zipped off whilst the women they'd been overtaking stopped to fish me out.
2) Rock climbing, got quite high, fell, all my cams came out with sickening popping noises and I was stopped by the last nut (and my belay guy jumping backwards). Ended the descent about four feet from the ground and white as a sheet.
The doc had to cut my skull open to release the pressure, and jab a hose into my ribcage to suck my lung back out, as well as putting 3 six inch pins into my upper arm to hold the 2 inch piece of floating bone.
Weird part? the whole time, i thought i was still riding my bike to my friends house, not lying on the pavement bleeding.
Funny how that works huh?
When I was out of commission in the hospital I had all sort of weird coma dreams that were really out there. Thought I had gone back to work and then was in another car wreck. Another one, I was on a rescue mission to find my wife who was apparently working in a whore house. The best one was that after I woke up I still was having trouble distinguishing reality from non-reality. A bunch of my buddies came to the hospital to visit and I thought we were at some ESPN sponsored rehab facility and they said I was pissed off because I was certain they were getting hand-jobs from the staff and I hadn't gotten mine yet. :P
I pulled the most awesome stunt in my father's Chevy Tahoe one day while I was driving down to school
I was on the highway with the cruise control set to 75 mph. The roads were pretty empty at the time - I was in the leftmost of three lanes, and there were no cars in my immediate vicinity. There's a concrete median to my left, and on the other side the three lanes of traffic going the other way. There's no cars visible ahead as far as I can see, and about 3-4 behind me way off in the distance in my rear view mirror, so I've mostly got the road to myself.
I'm totally spacing out. I've made this drive thousands of times. I do it twice a week, and it takes me about an hour. I can make it on autopilot. I was in the tahoe because I was going to move my stuff out of my college apartment, and I needed the space. It's a large truck that rides pretty high compared to my normal car.
I just barely spot a deer at the right side of the road, two lanes over from me coming out of the brush. The minute I see the thing start running I swear to god time slowed down to a crawl while I did the geometry in my head - if the deer is running across the lanes towards the median at that speed and I am going forward at seventy fi-OH HOLY SHIT
I had just enough time to cut the wheel hard to the right, which was probably a dumb idea on paper. I couldn't have gone left, because there was a concrete median that would have gladly fucked my car up, and continuing straight was not a preferable option because the deer had decided it wanted to be in my lane.
What follows in text transpired in the span of about five seconds.
The entire tahoe quickly cut to the right, still doing seventy five miles an hour thanks to the cruise control and my inability to hit the brake fast enough. It started to swerve into the middle lane and I heard an ungodly sound from my tires. I zoomed by the deer, missing it by a hair. I tried pulling the wheel back to the left so I wouldn't careen straight off the right side of the highway. As I did, the entire truck decided to flip up onto the two driver's side wheels into a 45 degree angle.
I was on the brakes by this point, but they weren't doing a damn thing other than making a horrible sound, and I wasn't stomping on them because it seemed at the time if I did I would be rolling upside-down over the highway. I'm in the middle lane, two-wheeling it on the driver's side in the tahoe, and starting to veer back in towards the median. I see what's about to happen again and I freak out as it starts pulling over towards the concrete divider. I pull the wheel back to the right like a moron and cringe, expecting to drive into the wall.
The car two-wheels into the left lane, slams onto all four as it approaches the barrier, and then pops up onto the other two wheels on the passenger side. I coast like this for about a second more before the car starts drifting back to center and comes back down on all fours and keeps going like nothing happened.
I continued driving and over the course of the next few minutes began to grin like an idiot at how awesome it was that I just did that without flipping the tahoe or hitting anything. I see the skidmarks of the event every time I make this drive now. To this day, I can only imagine how cool that must have looked to the people driving a ways behind me; seeing the tahoe skid all over the road on two wheels must have been entertaining. I would have been so fucked if there was actually traffic in my immediate vicinity, though.
tl;dr - I two-wheeled a tahoe twice in about five seconds at 75 miles per hour without flipping it to dodge a deer.
1) I used to ride my bike to school, and I lived beside a fairly busy state road. Well, I waited until it was safe to cross. I looked left and saw nobody close, and to the right a schoolbus was headed my way. The bus driver kindly stopped to let me pass, but I forgot to look back to the left, and crossed. There was a terrible squealing screech, and I looked up just in time to see a red pickup bearing down on me, billowing smoke from the tires. Instead of killing me (which might have actually been more merciful), it just 'bumped' me off my bike into the street, right in front of a bus full of my classmates. I got up and rode off as quickly as possible, assuring the driver of the pickup that I was "yeah, fine." I was "that kid who got hit by the truck" for the rest of the year, but luckily we moved out after 5th grade anyway.
2) At the end of that same school year, I had a couple of my best buddies over on the last day to hang out and celebrate. Well dad came home and was pissed that I had friends over without permission. Well at some point the window in my room had come loose from the track that holds it in somehow, and dad was all ranting and told me to fix it. Well, I had no clue what to do, so I figured I'd just push it back into place. Yeah, so that's how I found out that glass has a tendency to break when you push on it. I cut open my wrist and blood EXPLODED onto the wall by my bed! I panicked. I spent the next twenty minutes or so coming to grips with the fact that I was absolutely going to die. And I did.
No, not really. I ended up just nicking an artery, and the hospital sewed me up with some crazy huge frankenstein stitches, it was pretty gross. I still have some nerve damage and can't hold my fingers together (which pissed a lot of people off when I was in the navy, since I can't even salute properly.
3) A few years later I was riding my bike around town and I accidentally pitched off into a deep ditch. I was thrown forward right at one of those green poles with the reflector on top. It would have speared me right in the middle of the chest. I don't know if it would have killed me, but it sure seemed possible at the time. I somehow managed to frog-hop off of my bike just barely over the pole. And I mean BARELY. The post caught on my shirt just a couple of inches below my neck, and ripped a big hole in the shirt. I probably peed on myself a little, but I don't really remember.
I lived!
On one occasion I'd crossed the road and was cycling on the sidewalk. When I do this I tend to keep my speed down so I'm going no faster than, say, a morning jogger. I was cycling past a Bank of America and a woman was pulling out of the parking lot of this place. I could see her. There was every indication that she'd be able to see me. I kept cycling believing that she'd stop.
She didn't.
I swerved to avoid her, ending up on the road going against incoming traffic. She shouted some obscenity at me and I, ina moment of stupidty, turned around to tell her to fuck off. As I did this a car clipped my side and I fell off of my bike and onto the sidewalk. Remarkably neither I or the bike were damaged, but it was a bit of a shock. I was just glad I wore my helmet.
That's the closest I've come to actual death, ignoring (of course) the pedophile who stalked me when I was 13.
Next thing i know im on the hood of someones car a block down the road. They hit me at like 30 miles an hour and didnt stop until the next block.
Messed up my ankle bad enough that i had to wear a splint thingy. After the incident they put up speed bumps going towards that intersection.
I have to admit, I thought the end of that sentence was going someplace else.
STEAM
Three months in a halo jacket sorted me out, and now I have holes in my head. And something like arthritis in my neck.
Clincher: I woke up all bloody underneath my balcony, with slight memory loss, wearing only my underpants, and stood up to threathen the guys who called the ambulance (random wintesses) because I tought they stole my keys. Ta-daaa!
All in all, a strange goddamn experience. Definitely a near-death experience as far as my brain was concerned, which is probably why I name it as such today. Lesson learned though; if I do drugs, I'm staying with friends strapped to my arm.
I look up to see a 6 foot shark pass not more than 5 feet in front of me. I nearly shat my pants.
Lucky for me, it didn't even spare me a second glance and wandered off in the direction of one of the nearby uninhabited islands.
My right eye is a bit fucked up. It's kind of like a lazy eye, but mild enough that it's not overly visible. When I was about 5, my parents decided to admit me to the hospital for a procedure that might've been able to cure it completely. As they were operating on my eye and I was young, they administered a general anesthetic to knock me out completely.
That's when the fun happened. Within seconds of being administered the anesthetic, I started convulsing and developed an extremely high fever (106+). My body had a ridiculously bad reaction to what was being put in my system. The high fever had my body essentially breaking down my internal organs - kidneys and liver. The doctors were initially thunderstruck, they had no idea what was going on. It wasn't an allergic reaction, it was something else. They quickly got me off the table and into an ice bath to get the fever down. Wasn't working, though, I was getting worse.
I would've died within minutes, but one of the doctors realized something. There had been a similar thing that had happened in the hospital not a week before I was admitted. Someone had gone in for surgery, been given anesthetic, developed a massive fever, and died. During the investigation, it was discovered that the woman had a rare genetic defect called Malignant Hyperthermia. In short, certain anesthetics cause the body to go nuts if you have this condition.
Guess what. I did. And the doctor realized this and managed to inject me with dantrolene, which counteracts the effects. Took a day, but all the body stuff returned to normal. Doc said I likely would've died if it weren't for the freak coincidence that someone else in the hospital had the same rare genetic defect the previous week. I've had no significant aftereffects from that, but my eye still sucks.
You were probably in no real danger. Sharks rarely attack humans.
took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like rootbeer
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I was very, very close to the Dolphinarium massacre when it occurred and though I was too young to do much of anything helpful I was one of the first responders.
In a similar vein I was on a bus that had a (thwarted) suicide bomber on it.
Hi5!
The downtown connector on my Harley? You have got to be fucking kidding me.
I was also in a bus accident when I was in high school and living in England - our bus-driver was drunk and had a head-on collision with another bus. He died and the girl behind him suffered long-term brain damage. I got away with a to-the-bone cut above my right eye which actually makes a pretty good scar, and didn't hurt since it went through the nerves (bled everywhere though). I also got speared in the stomach by the leg of a seat that broke during the crash; went completely into shock when I saw the torn flesh and everything. Fortunately it didn't pierce the abdominal wall so nothing was critically damaged.
And the counter that, I once tried daydreaming while driving and almost got into a head-on collision.
I'm headed back from one of my buddies houses after my graduation party, and i had just gotten onto the highway (hell of a drive, he lived on like 48th street, and i live on 217th) so i'm shooting down i-80 on the right middle lane(x) because i'm going to exit soon. (and the left most lane (z) is always exit only while mine is optional)
ex:
So, i'm looking to go straight, when the guy in lane Y decides "shit, this is my fuckin' exit... COMING IN!"
Because i'm in position X and he's in Y i gotta move my ass NOW. i mean i hear my tires squeal and white smoke rises from the rear of my vehicle.
He doesn't hit me, i don't hit anyone else (thank god!) Lane Z was empty so i slid in there as fast as i could
All i got from this jerk-off in a rusty bucket was this shrugging/praying motion. i just stare at him and :shock::evil::arrow:
I wanted his car to explode SO badly. I think i almost hated him to bald.
Before I get into it, I'd like to describe myself. I am the smartest of my siblings (which is saying a lot) and am in horrible shape (~6 ft. and 290 lbs.).
So three Thanksgivings ago I went to my sisters' apartment for dinner. I took the bus. The stop is at an uncontrolled crossing. Without even trying to check, I walked out in front of the bus, only to see something very bright in the corner of my left eye when I cleared it. Ah, headlights.
A textbook action movie dive and roll onto the median saved me, and I'm pretty sure I felt the stripstream from the car rustle my jacket.
Yes, that's right. I did something stupid and was saved by my athletic prowess. Irony put my life in jeopardy and saved it.