Have you ever had to FEND FOR YOUR OWN LIFE?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was speaking to my am class yesterday about the innate human instinct of fight or flight and one girl said she would never be put in a situation to fend for her own life because she lived in the city…

As naïve as that may sound I assure you she was quite serious. I began to explain to her that no one knows when they will have to make that split second decision. It could be the decision to duck when you are caught in the middle of a gang drive-by shooting, or the time when you are mugged and have to decide if you must submit and not fight, or knee the assailant in the nuts and run off…

Or on a more primal level, learning how to swim, so you don’t drown when you fall of the conie island board walk etc…etc…

The question does not lay in our instinctual fight or flight response, but more in fighting for your own life.

Have you ever had to fight for your own life, or fend off death?

Personally, I almost drown when I was 6, I was not more than 50 feet from shore, but I was alone, and on a dock I shouldnot have been on. I could not keep my head above water, and I nearly perished, but I kept kicking, and kicking until my loafer hit a rock, then I kicked some more, and eventually stood on a barnackle covered stone and wept. Walking the remainder of my ordeal back to my summer house, I could not understand what just happened. That event has haunted me, and I do believe I may have died had I not thrashed about and kicked my feet to stay afloat.

Ten years later at the ripe ol age of 16 I was in a serious dirt bike accident where I woke up in a pool of blood, alone again. I was riding on a farm where I should not have been in the middle of a very rural area. I rounded a corner where I could not see what was on the other side, and smacked right into a stone wall I thought paralelled the barn but in fact took a 90 degree turn into the side of it. I struck the wall going roughly 35 miles an hour I was thrown from my bike and hit my head. I woke up around duck with a softball size lump on my skull and a hole in my leg, where I could see my Femur. I was about a half mile from a house, and I straggled the entire way there, passing out occasionally… That day haunts me as well, and I have a scar on my thigh that reminds me to think ahead…and reminds me of the second time in my life I had to fend for my own life…
Anyone else??

2

Sort of.

I was coming back from the gym one day, with a car load of friends, when I got into an accident. Suffice it is to say, the accident was totally 100 percent not-my-fault. Anyway, the driver gets out of the car, all pissed off, and comes over the driver-side of my car. I had just opened the door and was about to get out and give my information when the angry guy hit me twice in the head real quickly. This pissed me off and I instantly tried to get out of the car to strangle the idiot. Unfortunately my seat belt was still attached and I had to struggle to get it off.

During this time the angry guy backed up and screamed “Get my piece” to his friends who had remained in his car. I wasn’t thinking and didn’t really care what he was yelling, I was setting myself up for “ass-kicking mode”. My friends however began yelling at me “he’s getting a gun” and “let’s get out of here”. I took their advice and booked out of there. Actually I grabbed the guy’s arm before I floored it. He stumbled and fell when I floored it.

That was about 5 years ago.

3

Every damn day. I drive in Boston…

:wink:

Barry

4

Well, notwithstanding your friend’s naiveté, cities are actually much safer than small town hicks seem to think :slight_smile:

A couple years ago I was attacked by some strung-out teens doped up on crystal meth. Since they were smaller than me, I deliberately went out of my way not to hurt them-- thinking that I would walk away, call the cops, and have them all rounded up and convicted.

Turned out they were arrested, but charges were dropped when I could not identify the youths from a photo line-up three weeks later (yes, justice is slow and ponderous). In retrospect I should have broken several limbs and ribs (which would have been easy, because I only threw them to the ground about 8 times and was wearing steel toed shoes at the time).

5

Once whilst lost on Rt 25 between Denver and Colorado Springs I got a flat tire. It was very snowy and I was waaay under prepared. So I pulled off and started going through the arduous process of changing the tire of a full size Bronco. Not too long after I started jacking up the tire, two guys pulled up so close to the back bumper I they practiaclly hit it. One got out and took his sweat shirt off. The other got our and said “need some hep?”

I being a white male medium build roughly 55 at the time, said no thanks I’m almost done… “Aw come on…” there’s got to be something we can do???"

That set me off. I was scared… The other guy was walking around the truck and looking in the windows.It was snowing really hard. The second guy opened my passenger side door, and the second I said “Hey!! What are you doin??” Guy number one punched my side, then the back of my head…

Bucky - my Lab - mus have bit guy number two because he was screaming for guy 1 to go git his gun… He slammed the door shut, and came around to mee, who was halfway under my car, with some blood coming from my nose…

Then out of the blue a trooper, came to a screaming halt right next to where I and guy 1 were… Jumped out of his car and drew his gun… I was still down and guy 1 ran to his car where guy 2 was already starting the engine… They took off down the median and onto the dirt access road next to the highway… I stood up and realized the cop didn’t know if I was a bad guy or not… but seeing my face, and the way I was dressed, he said wait here I’ll be back…

To make a long story short. I didn’t really fend for my life, but had my dog not been in the car things may have initially gone differently. A different trooper showed up in about 5 minutes, and told me that I was not the first one those two have jacked in the past month. And their MO was waiting until inclement weather then jumping and robbing people… They were subsequently arrested later that eveing…

6

I seem to get myself into all kinds of bad troubles, maybe thats why I started the thread…

7

:smack: preview post should be tattoed on my right index finger…25yrs old not 55 errrrr!!!

8

Once when I was much younger I was sitting in the car while my mother picked up a few things at the grocery store. A red bronco pulled up beside the car and being the nosy kid I was, I stared over at the couple inside it. They seemed to be arguing over something and were far more interesting than the painted yellow lines on the other side of the car. It went back and forth for a minute and then the guy reached into the glove compartment. He pulled out the biggest, blackest, scariest handgun I have ever seen. At that point, every ounce of adrenaline in me had poured into my veins and I was trying to mentally catalogue every detail- I was also trying not to look at the car, my reasoning being that if these unstable wackjobs with guns caught me looking at them, they’d probably want to shoot me first.

Myself being a prime witness to whatever was coming, I felt the need to sink under my seat and disappear. The young man hopped out of the SUV and flipped up the back of his t-shirt, shoving the gun into his waistband. A longer flannel shirt hid the butt of the gun, but I knew it was in there, and as he walked toward the entrance to the grocery store I counted his steps, wondering when he would be far enough away from the cars that I could run for help. I kept nervously glancing over at the woman still left in the car, praying she wouldn’t raise some sort of alarm and give me away. I couldn’t decide who was in more danger, my mother in the store, where the man was clearly headed, or me, alone with him and his gun in the parking lot.

Not to imply that I was feeling terribly heroic or brave. In fact, at one point I was sobbing hysterically (albeit completely silently) because all I could imagine was a bloody incident in the store followed by a gang style execution of Yours Truly after being yanked from the car and made to kneel on the pavement.

As it turned out, the guy turned around about 15 ft. from the store entrance and came toward the cars…then turned again halfway back…My fight or flight response was turned all the way up and I was shaking with fear and the desire to do something about this.
When my mother returned to the car, I told her to “Shut the door and pull out…now” very white-faced and tight-lipped. She gave me a funny look and took her time fumbling with her seatbelt. About to throttle her with my impatience I repeated myself. Something about my tone caught her the second time through and she asked what was wrong as she jammed the keys into the ignition. Without looking over, I told her that the man next to us had a handgun shoved down the back of his pants.

She looked over and at that very moment he jumped into his side of the bronco revealing the gun underneath his shirt. We left with a quickness!

I suppose the story only relates in the sense that it was damn close to something…and I had enough adrenaline pumping for a party of 5. (Something which, by the way, is not so useful while cowering and trying to be invisible in a car.)