Around age 10 or 12, we were on vacation at Cape Hatteras, NC. I was swimming, riding the waves for a long time, when I finally noticed I was a LOONG way out from the beach. I of course wasn’t actively swimming in that direction, so I had no idea I would get gradually pulled out. My parents were way off in the distance, and I was treading water and getting tired. I tried yelling for help but they couldn’t hear me over the surf. No lifeguards, Cape Hatteras is not crowded at all.
I was pretty worried because I could tell I was getting pulled out further all the time. I guess I found extra energy from adrenaline, and I got back to shore by diving underwater and swimming as far towards the shore as I could, then coming up for air. In that way I finally made it back to the beach, exhausted.
I don’t think I even told my parents, I figured they wouldn’t let me swim any more.
When I was 2 I happily crawled out the window of my bedroom. It was one story, but underneath the window there was a bed of rocks, which I landed on, apparently on my face. I broke my nose a little and still have a little scar at the top. I don’t recall (obviously) if anyone was angry at me about it, but it prompted my dad taking me back to SF (from Hawaii, where i was with my mom).
Then when I graduated middle school I went to an afternoon celebration with a bunch of my friends in a nearby park, where we were sort of running around playing with those giant rubber balls, just happy not to be at a desk. I dove towards one as the others were doing, but instead of landing on it and rolling in the grass, I slid right over it and landed on my neck. I remember feeling it snapping, but I walked away fine. If things had been positioned differently that would have been a pretty crappy graduation gift.
I also got hit by a car when I was 7, but it wasn’t my fault. I was hurrying across, but in the crosswalk with a green light. It was a hit and run that slammed into me, flinging me across the intersection, and I had a concussion, eye, knee and spleen injuries. I landed right on the muni tracks, so thankfully no trains were coming! I remember being all banged up in the hospital and my mom saying to my brother (who had been with me but couldn’t stop it), “you don’t like seeing you little sister like this, do you? That’s why you need to protect her,” or something, and he started to cry, and I felt really bad. That’s the only thing I remember about the accident at all.
Oh! and once when I was back in Hawaii one summer and at the beach (perhaps I was 5-7), I’d head out as far as I dared in the water and then ‘pretend’ to drown to get my brother’s attention and he’d come and grab me and tow me or toss me back. We did it a few times and I loved it. So of course the one time he’s busy with something else, I head out further than I can handle and nearly do drown before he notices. Pretty stupid of me.
Age 2 or so, Christmastime. In front of parents and various relatives, I pick up a pair of pliers and cut through the cord of the transformer for my Dad’s American Flyer train set, which happens to be plugged in at the time. I remember the before and after, but not in between, so I’ll have to take the witnesses’ word for the colorful light show that ensued.
About age 7, sitting with my younger brother in the back seat of the family’s '57 Olds wagon, which is in the driveway of an antique shop near Somerset, PA. My youngest brother, who is an infant, is in the front. My Mom is inside the shop negotiating a purchase. Youngest brother, bored, reaches over and flicks the transmission lever into neutral, and the car immediately takes off down the driveway. Youngest brother is loving it, younger brother is screaming in terror, I’m wondering whether I should maybe climb over the seat and try to steer it or something. The car rolls across a busy highway; I look both ways and heavy trucks are heading towards us from both directions. The car coasts slowly into a field, then gently comes to rest against a chain-link fence, without a scratch on it. My Mom came dashing up in a complete panic to find all of us sitting calmly as though this sort of thing happened all the time.
Around age 9, and I’d been tormented for months by a neighbor’s kid who was a couple of years older and bullied the younger neighborhood kids mercilessly. On the mile-or so walk to school, there was a busy road we had to cross. It was a snowy day. I was waiting for traffic to clear when I spied the bully coming down the street. At the mere sight of him I panicked and started running across the road. As I reached the opposite lane, something brushed my arm and I spun around and fell down. What brushed me was the mirror of a passing car that skidded to halt on the slushy road a few yards beyond. The white-faced driver got out, sure that he’d run right over me. I didn’t even have a scratch, and although several adults gathered around and wanted to take me to the hospital, I insisted on going to school (what can I say, I was a nerd). Word got ahead and when I arrived the school nurse grabbed me and hauled me in for a thorough check-over.
A few weeks later, the older brothers of another neighbor kid who had been one of the bully’s many victims cornered him and gave a righteous ass-kicking. Didn’t have any problems from him after that.
When I was just a pup, I discovered the power of ant immolation via magnifying glass. It didn’t take long before I started to wonder if I could use this power to produce actual fire. Grabbing some newspaper (since the thought of using one of my comic books was sacrilege), I gave it my best shot. Nothing. Giving it a little (damned little) thought, I went to the shed where the lawnmower was and poured gasoline over the newspaper and tried again.
Did you know you can have gas fumes on your arm, even if you haven’t actually poured gas on your arm? I didn’t. I can still remember the flames covering my arm (Whoosh!). I made a move like a Big Jim karate chop (stupid, I know, but I was young and panicked) which luckily did the trick. My folks never noticed that instead of hairs on my right arm I had little black dots.
Neighborhood kids were playing “Summer Olympics” discus throw with a metal ten-speed sprocket. The would-be record throw hit me in the temple as I was playing some chase with other kids running around a blind corner. It knocked my unconscious and bleeding.
While playing with a BB gun, practicing trick shooting while on my skateboard, I had a spark of artistic genius. My clear gel transparent skateboard wheels, already looking cool, would look even more enviable if they also had shiny copper BBs suspended inside of them.
I took my gun, gave it a healthy 10 pumps, and aimed the gun at my skateboard wheel at a distance of about 12 inches. BAM! The impact was a near perfect display of conservation of momentum in elastic collisions, and the BB bounced right off the wheel and lodged just above my right eyelid. I came a scant few millimeters from a jellied eyeball.
At home with my brother, parents over at the neighbors next door. Our fireplace was dying down, and no more wood was split. I got a grocery bag of trash, mostly paper I thought, to throw on the fire. I tossed the whole bag in, but didn’t replace the fireplace screen.
The fire whooshed up nice and warm as the papers caught and my brother and I sat warming ourselves in front of the fireplace. That’s when the aerosol can of paint in the bag exploded, showering me, my brother, and the entire living room in flaming ashes and coals.
We rushed around like monkeys, stamping out flaming paper in the air and on each other, and scooping up coals from the carpet and furniture. We got the whole place cleaned and very well Lysoled by the time my parents came back.
Reminds me of the time my brother and I decided to make clay targets to shoot with our BB guns. We molded a little man (complete with a huge weiner) and stuck him to one of the wooden posts of the dock. My brother took the first shot, and WHOCK! At such close range, the BB went right through the wet clay, ricocheted off the post, and chipped my brother’s tooth.
I was a big fan of the Bionic Woman, and had seen her jump out of a tree or window or something, and (IIRC - my memory is sketchy now) her shoes sprouted wheels and propelled her downhill and out of danger. So I went up a tree, thinking I’d just put my skates on and then jump, since obviously I didn’t have those cool shoes.
Good thing I was too scared of heights to climb very far off the ground. I twisted my ankle, and my brother and cousins didn’t rat me out that it was anything more than me just going splat from my usual klutziness on skates.
Oh man, do I know that drill! My mom has always said the way she always knew we had been up to something was that the house was WAY too clean when she got back!
When I was nine, I drowned in Puerto Rican surf one morning. Note I did not say
“almost drowned”, but the real thing…
My Dad and I went out early just after sunrise-surf was kind of rough but only about
3 feet. My Mom was on the beach and actually filming us with the old Super 8
camera. Well we both got caught in a runout (before anyone knew what a runout
was-this was 1971)-my Dad actually tried to throw me back to shore (probably a
bad idea in retrospect). Last thing I remember was Mom frantically running up and
down the beach in full blown panic mode…
Here’s where it gets a little weird. No oddly enough I didn’t have an NDE (no idea
why, something I still ponder to this day), but I just spontaneously awoke on a
surfboard belonging to some Puerto Rican surfers (whom my Mom got to rescue us)-
when I tried to get up one of them promptly pushed me back down. No need for
any CPR or mouth to mouth (my Dad was a doctor actually), I just revived all on
my own for some unfathomable reason (I don’t even recall coughing up that much
water really). Perhaps I got knocked out before I swallowed any of the ocean,
or something, or perhaps it just wasn’t my time yet.
My mother has the theory that there’s certain things One Must Do In Life. Forget about trees, books and kids, she refers to the real important items like “stick a piece of metal into a plug”, “draw on the walls” or “go skinny dipping”, things that you’re supposed to do when you’re little and which parents spend a lot of time trying to prevent.
Middlebro stuck a pair of scissors into a plug when he was 9 because “he wanted to see if it made sparks” - the experiment was succesful. Littlebro was talking on the phone, idly toying with Mom’s tweezers, started poking stuff with them, inserted them into a plug - at 19! He was sitting on Mom’s bed and the plug was at floor level. Good thing the floors in that house are hardwood.
I’m told I did it at 3, one day we were visiting Grandma, but it isn’t even a particularly scary “childhood accident” in my case. Apparently I wasn’t very accident-prone and most accidents were caused by adults hitting me because they hadn’t realized I was there.
