This is sort of a spinoff of the crime thread. I'm just wondering what is the closest you've ever come to dying.... For me, it'd probably be either a car wreck or.... One day, when I was about 9 or so, my friends, my brother, my sister and I were all out in their pasture "exploring" like little kids would do. It was a day after it had rained a ton, and everything was damp and wet. We had seen a few snakes, which made us very scared. One was HUGE, from what I remember. Anyways, after the "snake counts" got to about 6, we decided to make our way home safe. We had to cross one gully to get there, and being the scaredy cat that I was, I was hesistant to jump this gully. It has about 3 feet of water in it, and was probably about a 3 feet jump across. The water did, however, sit about 4 feet below the normal land level. Anyways, I was the last person to jump across. Everyone was trying to get me to jump across, but I simply wouldn't. Finally, they all told me they would leave if I didn't go for it, so I did. They counted to three, and I took off, and got ready to jump. As I got to the gully, and just before I actually lept, a HUGE Water Moccasin poked his head and top half out of the water, looked straight at me, and hissed. I thought I was going to die. I stopped in my tracks, and wanted to flip out and run. I remembered though, that you were supposed to stand still, so I did, and the snake just kept on his merry way. I thought I was dead. I never lived that down. I guess that's as close as I've come. What about you?
I was outside a club in dallas when there was a drive by and from a rough estimation, possibly 6inches to a foot of distance where the bullets landed in the brick wall. Blood was everywhere. 1 person died, and another person got brain damage and doesn't even remember me. That night rocked my world from top to bottom.
I had an automatic rifle barrel pressed up against my head for about 5 minutes during a bank robbery. See the crime thread.
A few times. Once, was when I lived in Chicago, I was into some things that I shouldn't have been into. Anyway, ran into someone who was trying to prove himself, but could only do it with his friends around. One day, I ran into him alone, and took care of business. Thirty minutes later, he finds me with at least 20 of his friends, most didn't need to be part of civilization. Another time, a car ran me off the road, I swerved into the median, spun around a few times, and landed squarely between the posts of a sign. Hmmm, in a past life, I've woken up to my own vomit in strange places.
Right now I am the closest to dying becau... oh, there goes another minute... ok, another... hey, I keep getting closer... ----------- seriously, though: I was probably 10 years old, still living in Mexico. After a baseball game in, the guys and I went to swim in the river. It was full of holes around the shallow area, and the deeper end was near. I stepped into one of these holes, and fell, and didn't know how to swim yet. A teammate pulled me from my hair and he said I was under a good 5 seconds so he thought he had lost me. We laughed. Good times.
At age 4, I fell into a mall pond without being noticed. I still have memory of seeing green weeds at the bottom of the pond. Some passover saved me. At age 6, one of my in-law sisters dared me to jump over a deep creek. I did, fell off cliffs, right to the bottom of the cliff (must be more than 4 stories high), blood all over my head. At high school, I swam on a unguarded beach that one time. It's not your typical shallow beach. It got steep quickly. I tried to swam to that tiny rock in the middle of the sea. It didn't look very distant, but boy was I mistaken. I didn't have strength swimming back, and almost sunk fighting torrents on the way back. At college, I was struck by a drunken driver, lost my conciousness. I couldn't recall my name when I woke up. The minivan's window was completely smashed, somehow, I turned out ok. That's it for now. I know the meaning of life.
Man, I thought you meant you were planning to get f\/cked up... lol... and yes, we're already in 2006... just not July
I was on a camping trip with my best friend, among other people. We walked around this small lake, and he found a small tree which had fallen over, and it happened to be just perfect to make into a walking stick. He brought it back to the campsite and wittled out a handle at the top. The length was about 5 feet total, the width of the handle was about 1.5 inches, and the width of the rest of it was about 3 inches. So this is a honking huge walking stick. Once he's done, he grabs it by the handle and starts swinging it like a baseball bat. Biiiig whooshing sound. I think "hmmm... if he keeps doing that, it'll probably break, because that's a ton of force for that handle to take without breaking." Of course, I keep my mouth shut, like a moron. On the third swing, the thing breaks, and smacks me in the head (I was sitting about 15 feet away, I think). Now, where it actually made contact with my head, there was a sizeable knot... this knot hit me in the middle of my left sideburn. Now, if that had made contact a bit higher, I'd be dead. A bit lower, I'd have a nasty scare on my cheek for the rest of my life. A bit farther right, it punctures my ear. A bit farther left, I'm blind in one eye. So basically, I was reeeeeaaaaalllly lucky. A nice guy with a campsite about 200 yards away even came running with an icepack a few minutes later, because he said he CLEARLY heard the sound of the impact from his campsite. Jeez. And all that really resulted from this was a sore head for a day and a scar that I can easily cover up by maintaining short sideburns.
Almost drowned twice when I was little. Learned to swim real quick after the second time. Both instances were at a friend's pond during parties, and both times I was knocked off the raft. My boyfriend and I were driving to Houston from Illinois in 2000. It was snowing as we left Iowa (visiting my grandparents), and just as we crested a hill, we hit a dead deer lying in the road. The head got caught in a wheel and threw us twenty some feet into a ditch on the opposite side of the road. If we had been thrown into the other side, my tin can LeMans (i.e. no airbags) would have smashed into a grove of trees right off the shoulder. Pool basketball a couple of years ago- this one guy tried to take the ball from me as I was about to lay it in. He was behind me, and went over my shoulders to take the ball from me and pulled straight back, right into my throat. For some reason, he thought that if he pulled really hard , he'd get the ball. I had started to black out by the time he registered everyone else screaming at him to let go.
wow, look at this video http://www.break.com/index/luckyspectator7.html i would call that pretty close
In high school my friend and I went to another friend's house near Conroe. This guy had a 12-gauge shotgun, a 22 rifle, and a saw-off double-barreled shotgun. We went out in the woods behind his house and started shooting at trees. Well, the one friend I rode there with decided to get fancy with the double-barreled shotgun and it ended up going off probably about 6 inches to the left of me. I nearly got Dick Cheney'd.
Having a Grand Mal Seizure on 1/22/06 and spending two days in the hospital. When I saw my regular doctor after I got out he said "Grand Mal Seizure, eh? Wasn't too grand was it?" I said "they ought to call it a F*cked Mal Seizure, because it was truly f*cked". Oh well...at least I can laugh about it as I pay my medical bills. Keppra is a fun drug.
A few times I've been spared. 1) I was 17 and had taken a couple of Yellow Jackets early in the day (I think their true purpose was pig tranquilizer) . Each pill was like a 6 pack only you weren't sick. Well I was coming off of them and REALLY wanting to sleep but it was Friday night and my friend came over and wanted to go out. He told me to take a couple more Yellow Jackets - that would wake me up. Guess what, it didn't. So now his brilliant plan was for me (I was even more stupid to listen) was to take some Black Beauties. I don't remember how many I had taken now, but my body was messed up. I can't describe the pain, the cold sweats (it was the middle of winter up north and we were at a drive-in with the windows down.). I tried to just sleep it off but I really wanted to go to the hospital (The only time I've ever requested that), because I feared I was going to die. They didn't want to take me because they were afraid they'd get busted. I don't know how close I really came, but that was one stupid night. 2) 69 Camaro SS/RS that had hundreds of dollars in engine "upgrades". I floored it once on a back road and the accelerator pedal stuck. Now the smart thing to do would be shut the car off if you can't reach the pedal, but I froze. We were closing in on 100 mph when heading out into a major 4 lane T intersection. I was trying to brake but it wasn't doing too much good. Fortunately the guy riding with me reached down and pulled the pedal up just in time for me to slam on the brakes and stop. He never rode with me again. 3) Same car but this time I was doing a little over 110 from a hwy race when I was coming off the exit ramp. I pushed on the brake and it just went straight to the floor (no resistance) with the brake light coming on. This was up north where there are no feeder roads and the entrance ramp was about 50 feet offset to the left from the exit ramp on a 4 lane intersection. I downshifted until I hit the intersection. I had the red light and traffic was crossing. I just laid on the horn, threaded between cars and threw it into 1st (around 35-40 mph) and cranked the wheel to where the car spun out in the far lane of the intersection where the engine died. My knees literally shook for over an hour. I sold that car the very next week.
Once after the 1993 NFL wildcard game between the Oilers and Bills, and once after game six of the 1997 WC Finals between the Rockets and Spazz
