Close Calls

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

5th grade, my neighbors received 3 wheel motorcycles for Christmas. Big tires, ran great over the snow. So we tied a rope to the back of them and a plastic toboggan to the other end of the rope. Most of us sat on the toboggan while being pulled but the kid that owned the 3-wheeler laid on his stomach. So of course, I had to.

He was driving, going about 30 mph (not any fun if you don’t go as fast as possible) went down in front of my house and turned around. Unfortunately, the toboggan didn’t have the same turning radius, so it went head on into the metal mail box post. The plastic of course bent, and my head went right beside the post. I still have a very distinct visual memory of the post, right beside my right ear, going down into the ground with the front of the toboggan pushed back against it.

So I missed a fractured skull/broken neck by about 3 inches and had to settle for 2 broken arms. I never let go of the handholds at the front of the toboggan and the force of the collision broke both forearms.

Years later, driving to a friend’s wedding in December, during a snowstorm. It was a 2 lane road and I was driving too fast for conditions, although I wasn’t doing 55. A semi passed me and the small pick up I was driving (with an empty back end) was blown to the side slightly. Just enough to cause the back end to break lose completely and start trying to switch places with the front end. I turned into the skid, but it kept going around until I was sliding down the road at 50 mph sideways.

The bad part was looking out the passenger window at the semi that had been behind me and was still going almost 55 and rapidly catching up to me. I don’t know if I said “Oh God, I’m dead.” out loud or just in my head, but I do remember the words. Then the back swung the rest of the way around and I ended up at the bottom of a 4 foot ditch, between 2 poles, facing back the way I had come.

I was late for the wedding, but I did make the reception.

There was the swimming in the keys, and the appearance of some barracuda. They were not really a problem, but the sudden loss of the snorkel I was using did result in my trying to breath some ocean. Not really all that close a call.

I know there are some others, but I can’t remember them right now. And the first 2 are definitely the closest.

22

Well there was that one time in Mexico I decided to try and jump over a low wall, for some stupid reason. It was a class trip and we were in the parking lot, all wide and lolling hills. Very unremarkable, lush green trees on the other side and everything. For some reason at the last second I decided to jump on TOP of the wall instead of over it like I’d planned.

Those unremarkable trees were very tall, at least 75’, maybe 100’. The other side of that low wall was a sheer cliff to a street below, at least a few stories.

So yea, I almost died in Mexico falling to my death.

23

I came home drunk from a happy hour once. That was a near death experience.

24

When I was little, I lived on a corner house. Mom was outside doing something and a friend and I had left off talking to her and were at the end of the sidewalk waiting to cross the street to visit a friend. There was a car coming from our left and a car coming from the right that was turning left onto my street. But the driver of the turning car turned RIGHT in front of the other car and they both ended up on the sidewalk corner across the street.

It’s not exactly a close call, but had we decided to cross the street from that other corner there’s no way we would have gotten out of the way in time. However, I never had to be taught that a car was a 1-2 ton weapon.

25

Hmm, where to begin …

Age 6-ish: Rode my bike off the curb right in front of a car. Ended up knocked down and under the bumper/radiator, but not all the way under the engine or wheels. Cars had a lot more ground clearance at the front in the old days.

Age 15-ish: Riding my bike facing oncoming traffic, some car turned right in front of me and ended up crushing my front tire under his right front tire. I was pinned under my bike, but probably would not have ended up under hs car had he kept going.

Age 20-ish: Riding my motorcycle on the freeway, ran into a peice of debris and was knocked off. Slid from 70-ish to a stop, then scambled out of the traffic lane just in time to see a car slide sideways through where I’d just been laying.

Age 20-ish: Out shooting pistols at some junk in the desert. Had a round come right back at me. Struck dead center in the chest by a fully mushroomed .38 Special wadcutter. The impact was no harder than a finger-flick and didn’t even raise a welt or bruise. Coulda been a lot more interesting. I still have the round.

Age 25-ish: In the military. On leave in a dangerous but non-war zone. Killed a would-be mugger in a knife fight. His friends chose to scatter rather than gang up.

Age-26ish: In the military. Flying. Had an engine failure. In the wrong place that’d been fatal, as it had been to the last 2 guys in my unit to lose engines. I was near an airport with enough altitude and it was a non-event, so that one barely qualifies.

Age-26ish: In the military. Driving across the Peruvian desert on the Pan American hghway. At night. Riding shotgun in a VW van. Hit head on by a late 60s Chevy, all 4000 lbs of it. I wasn’t seriously hurt, but the driver lost a leg and most everybody else in our van was incapacitated. That was a very long night.

Age 28-ish: In the military. Flying. Misjudged a ridge crossing & came a lot closer to the ground than I should have. Goin’ 500+ mph, just a brush with anything solid will tear the jet apart & then you’re toast.

There are a couple more from the military days, but the less said about them the better.

Since then things have been a bit calmer. I have a feeling I’m forgetting one or two subsequent events, but I can’t put my finger on the details.

26

Oh yeah

Age 19-ish. Driving on a freeway in LA. Late at night. Going 80-ish. Crested a hill and there was a dead car with no lights sitting in my lane. Swerved enough to miss it but not enough to lose control. Missed it by almost nothing. I actually expected to see paint transfer when I got to my destination.

27

When I was 17, I worked as an apprentice mechanic at a garage where the owner often went out in his recovery truck to pick up or deliver cars, leaving myself and two other apprentices to get on with our jobs. Sometimes he would be out all day, and just be in touch over the phone to check how we were getting on. As we were a group of testosterone filled teenage lads, much hi-jinks were engaged in during these times, and rather less work got done than it otherwise would have.
On one of those days, I had an old Jag xjs to check over for MOT (annual auto inspection in the UK) so it was decided it should be taken for a thorough test drive, to assess it’s condition and listen for any noises worth investigating. The apprentice panel beater, being a year older than me and in possession of a driving license, was selected as the driver, while I sat in the other side.
We had a standard test driving route, about 4 miles around a countryside loop with good visibility and a variety of bumps and bends, generally good for bringing out any problems with a cars suspension or brakes, but more importantly, it’s bloody good fun to drive/be driven on.
We got most of the way around the loop, and were coming up to a long, fast, sweeping right hander with 4-5’ grass banks on either side, going about 110mph. As he turned into the corner, the back of the car began to slide out, he over-corrected and the car slammed into the bank on the left side of the road, launching it into the air, through the hedge at the top of the bank, and rolled over several times before coming to a rest on its wheels, a good 50 feet into a stubble field.
The car was a wreck, the chassis was visibly twisted from the impact with the bank, all the glass was smashed (I later discovered a 10mm shard of glass embedded in my finger, still got the scar where it came out) the doors wouldn’t open, and the roof was quite a bit lower. As in, it was lucky the younger lad from the garage wasn’t in the back as he’d requested, because the roof ended up below the rear headrests.
I broke my nose on the roof as we rolled over, and to this day I count myself lucky I’d elected to wear my seatbelt that day, as I’m pretty sure that was all that stopped me breaking my neck. Aside from that, I walked away with cuts and bruises. The driver wasn’t quite as lucky, he cracked two ribs and got a forearm full of glass splinters that (I’m told) took almost two hours in the hospital to remove and dress.
Maybe a bit tame compared to some of the preceding posts, but it’s the closest I’ve ever been to finding out what happens when you die; I still shudder when I think about it, nearly 6 years on.

28

Previous thread on topic: Have you had something happen that should've hurt you... - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board

29

(1) Was stuck underneath a waterfall, and was blacking out just as a friend trolling for me from his kayak snagged me.

(2) Dove into a ditch while walking when a car spun out in front of me. It ended up on top of me.

30

When I was a just a small deck chair, I was pulled down by an undertow at the beach. I did all the wrong things - I panicked & gasped for air even though I was well under water. I ended up swallowing a belly full of seawater and felt myself giving up the struggle (I sort of went limp and quickly came to terms with my impending drowning) when a wave came in and washed me up on the beach, where I promptly puked up liters of sea water and started gasping for air. I think that was also the same week I switched from baths to showers.

I was in one of the World Trade Center towers the weekend before they came down. I missed it by two days.

31

I’ve had a few.

When I was two I was given penicillin, and went into shock. That’s how the doctors found out I had a severe allergy to it.

There was the time when I was 12, and my house had a vicious carbon monoxide leak. For weeks I had been having severe migraines, staying very drowsy, and staying dizzy all the time. This went on for weeks, before someone finally recognized my symptoms for what they were. When the fire marshal came out to get a reading, the meter showed a level of 87 and climbing coming from our heaters. He said the only reason it hadn’t been fatal was due to the many drafts we had in the house. Being poor actually saved my life that year, as normally we would have sealed the drafty windows with tape and plastic at winter’s onset.

When I was 13 I stepped on a rusty roofing nail in my aunt’s yard. Unknown to me at the time, when the nail punctured my skin, it shoved a blade of grass and a pebble into my foot. I This led to a severe infection that went on for weeks before the pain got so bad I finally had my mom check it out. At that point my foot was quite swollen and had red splotches all over it. After she got the wound cleaned and had removed the grass and pebble, it took weeks for the infection to leave. (I refused to go to the doctor back then, and there was no way she could force me to.)

When I was 21, I started getting sharp pains in my stomach and running a fever. This went on for a couple of weeks, with my belly becoming distended and the pains increasing. It got to the point where I was delirious and hardly sleeping from pain. In my delirum, my family convinced me to go to the hospital. It took 48 hours, 2 hospitals, and 3 different doctors to realize that my appendix had ruptured and leaked toxins in my body. By the time I was diagnosed, I had developed peritonitis, and set up septic shock.

For the next 4 days I was delirious with a fever of 105. For a month afterward my temperature never dropped below 103. I developed several secondary infections that kept me in and out of the hospital. It took me months to recover my appetite.

I think that covers the major incidents.

32

Sweet Jesus, some of these are intense.

Neither of my stories even remotely come close to all y’all’s, but they definitely gave me an adrenaline rush, and, as you will see, complement each other well:

-When I was about 17 or so, I was walking to church for a bell choir practice. It was nighttime, and a car pulled up to an intersecting street I was about to cross. The driver braked, and I crossed, thinking he had seen me. He hadn’t. He moved forward right as I was walking in front of him, and I hauled ass until I was well clear of the car. Then I thought “you idiot, you’re wearing a BLACK coat out at night and you’re walking in front of cars. You’re lucky you weren’t killed.” Now I always wait until the car pulls out or the driver waves at me to cross.

-A few years later, I was running errands with my dad. I was driving, he was in the passenger’s seat. I crossed a fairly busy intersection on a green light, then a pedestrian crossing illegally ran out in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and stopped a couple feet or so away from him. I gave him my best “you STUPID IDIOT” look, and he looked back at me all sheepish. Then we went our separate ways. Took a few minutes for my heart to stop pounding.

I sort of see it as me getting my comeuppance for making an equally stupid crossing a few years earlier. Seeing it from the driver’s seat certainly put things in perspective.

33

My close calls that are forefront in my mind right now are not nearly as intense or dramatic as some of y’alls, but…

Today, driving (I was a passenger) along I-35 in Kansas City…a pick up truck decided he was going to drive between the two left hand lanes (the white line between his tires). We noticed him coming upon us, but could not move over due to the traffic in the other lanes, laid on the horn…didn’t phase him, nothing did. My husband managed to move as far to the right as traffic would allow and he passed us within an inch and with just a few inches between us and the car to the right. It was the scariest thing that has happened to me in a while. I swear everything happened in slow motion (even though we were traveling at high speeds) and I thought that was it.

Then as if that wasn’t enough for one trip, driving back home, a woman in a small car decided to change lanes while we were obviously in her blind spot (big SUV so no reason we shouldn’t have been seen) so she does…just mosies right on over into the space our vehicle currently occupied. Husband laid on the horn again, and we could see the driver jump when he did. She had no idea we were there and came close enough to us that I was looking for scrapes on the car when we got home.

Both times we were driving over 65 miles per hour and if those cars had hit us, we would have surely hit cars in the other lanes and it would have been devastating and most likely fatal for at least some if not all involved.

It doesn’t seem like much, and we all take driving around for granted, but it is an extremely dangerous thing we do every day. After two close calls in one afternoon, I am not sure I wanna do much more of it.

34

Filling out a bank deposit slip while I was driving. Took my eyes away, looked up, and I was in the opposite lane, face to face with a school bus. I swerved in time, and at the same time he hit the brakes. Tragedy averted.

I would have either been killed in the ensuing head-on, or my life would have been totally changed forever if I had survived. Similary, I was lucky that a) this was in a time when (basically) no one had cell phones, and b) there was no one either behind me or the school bus. Even averting the collision, all it would have taken was for someone to snap a pic of my license and report me, and I probably would have been screwed.

Lesson learned. I don’t do paperwork while I’m driving anymore.

35

And I think that’s the big difference between me at sixteen and me now. It takes a few of these brushes with death before I really realized that two tons of metal hurtling at 65 mph needs to be treated with respect.

36

Me too! Do you have a cool scar? I had the operation at 6 weeks. Mom tells fun stories of projectile vomiting. I have a huge tic-tac-toe style scar on my chest that gets so many questions and odd looks that I have taken to telling people that my brother stabbed me with a fork with I was a child. They never ask followup questions for some reason.

37

Nice username/post combo.

My closest call was the domestic violence incident from which I was saved by the guy who was repairing our air conditioner in the back yard. I don’t know if I would literally have been killed, but at the time I did believe my number was up.

Another time, I was feeding my stepdad’s horses. I had gone into a stall to pick up a bucket or some such, when the horse kicked in my direction. His hoof flew over my shoulder and I felt the breeze on my cheek…and I suddenly got some concept of the power that walnut-brained beast was packing. I don’t get close to horses anymore.

38

My closest call that I can recall was in 8th grade playing intramural soccer before school. It was windy that day and when we got out to the field one of the portable soccer goals was face down. It took about 8 or so kids to get it righted. Somehow I got selected to play goalie. About halfway in I get wacked in the head and find myself tangled in the net. Fortunately it seems I only received a glancing blow from the cross-bar and got away with only a few stitches. Had I been a half-step forward, it probably would have broken my neck.

39

Maybe fifty years ago, I was living for while with an Aunt and Uncle. This Uncle was an expert pistol shot; if he could see it, he could hit it. Late one night, I was trying to silently make my way into my bedroom when he jumped from his bedroom into the hall I was in. He was in the combat crouch, I believe its called and he was holding his pistol with both hands, aimed dead center at my chest. There was no more than eight to ten feet between us and when he yelled, “Stop, you son-of-a-bitch,” I stopped with no argument. My Aunt was pleading with him to not shoot, telling him who I was, etc., etc. He finally lowered the gun and went back to bed; I don’t think he was ever completely awake. None of us ever mentioned that incident. I think I was closer to death that night as I ever want to get. He could not have missed if he had pulled the trigger.