Driving down I-71 in Cincinnati with 14 inches of snow around me. The Blizzard of '96. I thought I was going slowly and cautiously enough; certainly other people were passing me. Suddenly my car skids and spins around. I don’t think I’d ever been more scared than that in my life.
Thank G-d, I didn’t hit anything, and nothing hit me. I corrected the car the textbook way, and drove to the nearest exit…to sit safely somewhere while waiting for snowplows to do their job.
Gee, Arnold, I read your topic line and I thought, “Oh, that’s right, Arnold’s getting married.” So I came in here to give you some hard-won Words of Wisdom on the subject.
Hmm.
Well, as long as I’m here, for future reference, I’ll tell you what I told my kid brother, at his wedding rehearsal dinner.
“Decide, right away, who’s going to wash the dishes, and how often.”
Saves a world of trouble later on.
P.S. Glad you’re not dead yet. 
Summer of '98 my house was in forclosure. My boyfriend had gone on a crack binge, stolen my credit card and a book of checks. He had wiped out my checking account and put over 2000 on my credit card. On a Thursday I had gone to the gun shop across the street to buy a gun. I was intimidated so I left. That Saturday I took a bottle of vodka, a roll of duck tape, and my best garden hose. I rode out near the lake and found a dirt road. Swilling the vodka I attached the hose to the exhaust with duct tape and ran the other end into the window.
I sat there boo-hooing for 10 or 15 minutes. Damn! did it ever stink. I thought about my children and our financial situation. There wouldn’t be much left for them once the creditors got their cut. I thought about my best friend who has stuck by me all these years. Who loved me when no body else really had to, she just did. She had given up a child at 14, had lost both of her parents, and was separted from her husband. Could she take one more disappointment? She’d been my touchstone for so many years and I hers. This was all a secret to her, she’d never understand why I hadn’t come to her for help. I thought about my sisters who had always looked up to me until this man had come into my life and turned it upside down. The baby had lost her dad two years prior to cancer, he had died swiftly and painfully. She was just coming out of the shock. The middle one is sensitive, easy to hurt, she’d be sick with guilt for giving me a hard time. I opened the door, detached the hose and drove home.
A week later I find myself again on a Saturday night. Sitting in the bathtub fully clothed with another bottle of vodka and a utility knife. My daughter would be home by 12:00 she’d find me. Not a good idea.
I contemplated going back out to that dirt road with a rope and my kitchen stool, finding a nice tree. I thought about diving off the bridge into the river. I thought about hitting the pawn shop for that gun. In the end, I decided that leaving this world would cause a lot of people more pain than it would alieviate mine. I decided I could take it if I had too. I decided I could bare the shame of telling my family what kind of evil had invaded my life. I could tell them that I was stupid and inexperienced. The shame I felt at being fooled and used was so great it was crushing. I had lost everything I had worked for, even after building myself back up from the divorce. I was about to loose the roof over our heads. I’d already lost my confidence, sense of self, and even my will to go on.
That was my closest brush with death. I’ve rarely been afraid of anything. I found out that I was much more afraid of failing my children and my family than any fear I might have for any kind of physical danger. Nothing bothers me much anymore. I rarely feel physical pain, or I ignore it most of the time. I’m not afraid of traffic like I used to be or being alone in the house at night. I’m afraid now that I won’t get the bills out on time, or that somehow that two years of horror while I was so ineffectual will permanently damage my children and their future. I’m not afraid of leaving this world in any conventional manner. I’m afraid of staying and fucking up again somehow.
Needs2know…Hope this one doesn’t turn out to be a thread killer. I’m just having one of those days. You’d think I’d be in a good one, I was dreaming Harrison Ford was flirting with me this morning! Go figure!
Not once ever have I had a brush with death, damn it. And I’m feeling pretty left out. I mean, 35 years and you’d think I could have at least fallen off something. I keep hearing how cool these near-death experiences are but noooooo… I have to sit here in perfect health all happy as the proverbial clam. Life sucks.
Wait a minute… uh… is it a bad thing if your left arm goes suddenly numb?
I think I’d better lie down…
I’ve had my share of auto accidents, but nothing as near death as everyone else’s (though the potential was there a time or two). So I’ll contribute a beach story instead: When SO Cygnus and I first became a unit ten years ago, we were in Florida for a weekend. Typical sunny FL activies were enjoyed, including “swimming” in the ocean, except that I can’t swim. I have a dog paddle that will get me to the edge of the pool, and that’s it. SO is an excellent and strong swimmer, though, so I have never been afraid to be in the water with him present. I was out to about neck deep, still in what seemed like a safe zone, paddling merrily about, when I got caught in an undertow. Suddenly I was being pulled out to sea, with no one else nearby, and of course no lifeguards, and my dog paddling was keeping my head pointed toward shore but not much more, certainly doing nothing to prevent the shore’s receding as I drifted further out. Once I realized I was in trouble, I called, “Um, I think I need some help here,” and SO caught hold of my arm and tried to pull me back. The undertow was so strong that he was not able to swim and pull me. He braced his feet on the bottom and tried to hold on to keep me from going any further out. I slipped away a time or two but he managed to grab me again. Ultimately, after a good lengthy time of struggling, he got me moved far enough to break free of the undertow and pull me to safety. He told me afterward that his feet kept sliding outward on the sand as it rushed away in great swirls of current, and that several times he was sure he wasn’t going to be able to keep hold of me.
Later in the same trip we were at a different water area, and there was a modest sandbar-type island some hundred yards out, with the water in between very shallow, never more than chest high. We were having a marvelous time enjoying the water and the wading and scenery, and took our time meandering across the expanse. Just as we neared the sandbar, we encountered another couple of people who were headed back in the opposite direction. We called some friendly greeting about the water and such, and one of them replied, “Yes, it’s great, as long as you keep dragging your feet.” To our raised eyebrows he added, “You know, for the stingrays.” Hmmm, we thought, stopping in our tracks and surveying the water with a newly suspicious eye. Sure enough, we hadn’t gone another ten feet before one of those suckers went cruising by, about five feet long, gliding silently along the sandy bottom - very cool, but a real eye widener. :eek: Heaven knows how many we came close to stepping on, since we proceeded to see bunches more (as we scrupulously dragged our feet); this was clearly a ray-populated area. It wouldn’t have been deadly to be stung (I assume), but it certainly would have been unpleasant.
All in all, a surprisingly adventurous and dangerous three days for a couple of folks who were just planning to laze around Florida drinking daquiris.
Thank you everyone for sharing your stories! The majority of them seem to be traffic-related, I guess this is anecdotal evidence for the fact that the most dangerous thing we do in our everyday lives is driving the car.
UncleBeer: If you’re worried about the guns being a danger, get rid of them! Instead, get a boomerang, very effective, or so I’ve heard. And if you miss, it comes right back to you for recycling.
Blue Twylight, I can’t imagine anything scarier than a gun to the head. What made the robber eventually decide to go away?
Shirley Ujest, thank you for the wishes. That day, I was actually glad I didn’t have a pile of blow next to me, becauseif I did I’m sure the CHiP officer wouldn’t have been as nice to me as he was.
beatle, so what’s this stalking story?
Johnny L.A., I must confess that when I was telling my friends “I’m going on a helicopter ride on Sunday, and this guy flies without doors” a couple of people looked at me dubiously and Elizabeth was not too happy about the “no doors” part. (Her illness came in mighty handy to prevent me from going! Hmmmm.) P.S. For those of you that don’t know, Johnny L.A. is a helicopter pilot.
Fonz, sounds like you were worse off than I was. Those neck braces look incredibly annoying (and stupid too, IMHO), do they really help? (Glad you’re OK too!)
neuro-trash grrrl, I still remember when I was a kid my brother chasing me with an old piece of electical cord with the plug still attached out and threatening to shock me by touching me with metal prongs of the plug. The wire (obviously) was not plugged into anything, so he was laughing at me the whole time. But I was taking no chances.
Rilchiam, I don’t think it was big enough of an accident to be on TV, probably was mentioned on the radio traffic reports “a five-car accident has two lanes closed on the south 405 in Long Beach.” Being an LA person, don’t you have any traffic horror stories?
Ruffian, your story is much scarier than mine, but funny too! I like the part how the stereo was still playing. Just think, if you had been fiddling with the radio, you might not even have noticed anything! By the way, how did your fiancé get home from the airport?
cmkeller, I had an experience like yours (but not as scary) back home in Switzerland. I’m still afraid to drive in winter when I go back there. Now that I’m in Southern California, I never see snow or ice, so I’m not used to it anymore.
Notthemama, LOL! I will definitely have to tell my fiancée that one. I’m sure she’ll think it’s hilarious, not! Dishes have already been decided, that’s my job, and she empties the cat litter box.
Needs2know, your story is definitely the scariest. I hope your life has taken an upswing now (how could it get worse?)
JohnnyDigits, those close brushes with death are not all they’re cracked up to be. If you really want to have one, eat some canned food that’s gone bad, then you’ll have your story and you’ll see that it’s not really worth having a story to tell.
cygnus, I’ve never seen a stingray, but since being stung by a jellyfish as a child, I’m paranoid about them everytime I go to the beach now.
I counted four glaring mistakes in my post. I know the gist of the story is still there, but…ergghhrrrufff! I know how to spell “destroyed,” it should be “who realized too late,” it took me a moment to realize they weren’t going slow, and he turned the semi enough so that he didn’t hit me head on. I know y’all don’t care, but the editor/teacher in me was just wincing in anguish.
Arnold, thank God for cell phones. I called 911 (which was busy the first two calls!), then called the airport to have Bri paged. Bri called back right away–but hadn’t received the page yet. He thought I was late because the airport had a completely new terminal, and I would be picking him up in a different place than I dropped him off, and I might be lost. It was a surreal conversation: “I’m okay, baby!” “Huh? Are you lost, hon?” I explained the situation, called my then-roommate for a ride, and waited. Then Bri received the page and called me back, just to make sure the story hadn’t changed.
My roommate took me to the airport to pick up Bri, and to complete the tow paperwork and such.
What really irks me is I had a Gerber daisy in my passenger seat to give Bri at the airport. While driving before the accident, I passed a semi with a picture of a large flower and the word “Sunflower” on its trailer. I smiled and thought of the daisy I was bringing Bri.
Guess which semi wound up totalling my car later.
Dammit!
During the Falklands War against the Agentinians a trio of enemy aircraft came at our ship on a bombing run.
I was in the forward damage control crew when one bomb come through the bulkhead, bounced about, and came to rest in an intercom junction box.
Turned out the bomb was not properly armed, it had been relased too close to us and struck before the primer had unwound.Getting rid of the damn thing was hairy too as we didn’t want to complete the arming process whilst moving it.
Whilst out on a training ride on our bicycles I was hammering along with a huge tailwind and overtook a car which was doing over 40.
Dammit but a sheep had to run out and I managed to clock it good and proper. I even had time whilst flying through the air to think about how much it would hurt-I was wrong by a country mile, until I come round again.
During the Falklands War against the Agentinians a trio of enemy aircraft came at our ship on a bombing run.
I was in the forward damage control crew when one bomb come through the bulkhead, bounced about, and came to rest in an intercom junction box.
Turned out the bomb was not properly armed, it had been relased too close to us and struck before the primer had unwound.Getting rid of the damn thing was hairy too as we didn’t want to complete the arming process whilst moving it.
Whilst out on a training ride on our bicycles I was hammering along with a huge tailwind and overtook a car which was doing over 40.
Dammit but a sheep had to run out and I managed to clock it good and proper. I even had time whilst flying through the air to think about how much it would hurt-I was wrong by a country mile, until I come round again.
I was sitting at a stop light at lunch one day on the way to my credit union. An idiot coming in from the right decided that he was going to turn left even though there was a car coming at him. I watched the lady try to avoid the idiot and end up in a skid coming right at me. All I could think of was that it was a shame that these people had to see my face when they struck the driver side of the car. She was driving an older (early 80’s) larger car and I was in a Suburu Impreza - there was no way I was going to live through the accident. She stopped 1/2 inch from my door. The idiot who was responsible just kept on going. I managed to get to the credit union ok, but I stayed in the parking lot shaking for over an hour.
Two stories:
Driving to work in Northern Germany in February, roommate in teh passenger seat. 0600. Slightly hungover. Black ice. Personal experience of that hypothetical “frictionless plane” your physics teacher always talked about. For about 30 seconds I thought I would bring it under control. I did all the textbook maneuvers, managed t keep the tail behind the hood, control the spin, keep on the straightaway.
Then the road curved. The car, of course, went straight.
This was German farm country, deep drainage ditches beside the road, trees lining each side. The car hit the ditch front left fender first, then flipped end over end. My roommate said his first words of the day, “Oh, shit.” We landed upside down, between trees, hanging from our seatbelts a few inches above the roof. Roommate was unscathed. My worst injury came from teh ass-chewing my CO administered ince he found out we were all right.
Second story:
Not really near death, but I was actually more scared after this incident. Years ago when I was single and a part-time alcoholic, I left a bar with a woman I just met. She knew where a party was, and that sounded good to me. Followed her to a someone’s home. We got out of our respective cars, but before we make the front door some guy comes screaming out of the bushes. Grabs teh girl. Yells at me. The girl gets very friendly with him. He tells me to go away. I say, “Hey, I don’t care about the girl. I just came for the booze.” He yells some more. I cop an attitude. “She said there would be booze – the stores have losed – just give me a six pack.” Whiny alcoholic shit.
He threatens me. At one time, I enjoyed fighting in bars almost as much as drinking in them. I don’t leave. He calls loudly for help. It is 3AM. Lights come on in a couple houses. I hear a door open. He reaches for me. I catch him with a textbook perect uppercut. His head snaps back. He topples backward, knees locked, back arched. I feel godlike for about 1.5 seconds. Then his head hits the pavement. A soft sound, a trickle of blood. More people.
I was lucky. He suffered a concussion but no permanent injury. He also had a record and outstanding warrants. He had made the first move. I escaped withuot legal consequences. But those moments after his head hit the ground were the most terror-filled of my life.
I think my precise thoughts were, “O shit”, rather than, “this is it, I’m going to die.” I was rock climbing and doing it freehand. I was only about forty feet up the line but below the ground was littered with sharp rocks. I couldn’t find a handhold and only had two points on the cliff. I needed the third and stuck my hand in a dark hole, know the ramifications wouldn’t be good. Sure enough, a horde of wasps defend their home. Being only precariously affixed to the cliff, when I remove my hand to shake off the stinging insects I lose my grip. I was pretty sure I broken spine, neck or brain covered rock would ensue. A second later I was gasping for breath. I’ve never been so happy to have the wind knocked out of me. Somehow I managed to land in the one spot devoid on hard pointy objects. I had about an inch of clearance around my head and back. A few contusions on my legs and a few moments without air was all the injury I sustained. For some reason I still love freehand rock climbing and skydiving.
Let’s see. There are two occasions that come to mind.
The first was when I was in college, driving north from Plano on 75. (For those of you that complain about Dallas drivers, just remember, Plano is even worse, because they have money and bigger cars.) I missed my exit, and grumbling under my breath, I took the next exit so I flip a U and catch it going south. The exit ramp was maybe an 1/8th of a mile long. Halfway up it, a truck cuts across the median (about 20 yards of grass and dirt) to get on and comes directly into my path. When I saw it, it was a bout two yards from clipping my front left fender. I was going about 65, they were probably going 55 or so.
I slammed on my brakes and veered to the right to get some space. The driver must have seen me in her rear view mirror or heard me, because she went and did the exact same thing! She slammed on her brakes and veered to the right. I think the gap between us got down to a foot or two before I came to a halt at the side of the road. They pulled over too, and as I sat shaking and nearly in tears, the driver’s boyfriend came back and apologized profusely. They were missing their exit, and he told her to cut across the median, and they hadn’t seen me . . . blahblahblah. If I’d had my wits about me, I’d have yelled back at him that I’d missed my damn exit, but I hadn’t nearly killed someone because of it. shudder
The second episode took place about three and half years ago. I had recently broken up with my first lover because he wasn’t careful enough with the condoms and kept complaining about how they interfered with his abilities. I started having abdominal pains and running a fever. I blew it off for a couple of days until it got much worse. I finally ended up going to the ER and having emergency surgery that day. What they had thought might have been appendicitous ended up being a raging case of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease that had caused enough scar tissue to block my large intestine. Had I waited another day or so, the doctor later told me, my intestine probably would have ruptured, and I’d have died of peritonitis - not a pleasant way to go under any circumstances.
A couple of years ago I started to notice a lump on one of my testicles . I knew what this could mean but for over a year I did nothing about it . There was no logic involved in this decision , I just would not accept that it was happening to me .
For a year I had a knot in my stomach and felt distant from everyday life . I would not recommend this course of inaction to anyone .
Eventually , during a heavy night on the beer I confided to one of my closest friends and she insisted that we go to the hospital there and then . It turned out to be a completely harmless hydrocoele (sp?) and I had it removed . 
Arnold,
The robbers (there were three) must have thought we had a silent alarm (we didn’t), and decided to book before the cops came. They couldn’t have been in the store more than five minutes, but it felt like an hour.
Later that week, I saw on the news that they were arrested for another robbery, and were suspected of a string of robberies, including one where a man was shot to death.
It has been almost six years, and I still think about it at least once a day, and every once in a while I will have a nightmare about it.
Funny thing is, the same NYPD detective who handeled that case, handeled the bank robbery I was involved in three years later. He remembered me
Rose
I was forced to eat cauliflower as a child by my evil parents. :eek:
Well, it felt like near death when I was 5.
I was a passenger in my friend’s Toyota pickup, driving home after visiting our families for Christmas. The highway we were on had been closed for a week due to extremely heavy snowfall. One lane in each direction had been re-opened that day. The truck had 4-wheel drive and we took most of the trip slowly and carefully, taking time to laugh at all the cars in the ditch because, hey, we were being careful. Near the end of the drive, the road conditions became less severe. Intending to save fuel, we put the truck back into 2 wheel drive. Big mistake.
Doing about 80km/h in the left lane, we hit a patch of black ice. With no weight in the back of the truck, the drive wheels lost their grip. I felt the truck start to fishtail. Looking down at the car beside us, I thought we might take him out with us. Suddenly, we hit the snowbank on the driver’s side and it sucked us onto the median.
The median was a ditch about 50 yards wide and about 10 feet deep. The snow was probably 3-4 feet deep. As we started to spin, I looked out my window and all I could see was white as the snow flew over the truck. I remember thinking that I would be on the low side when we rolled.
After 2 full revolutions, we ended up perpendicular to the road, with the rear half of the truck in the oncoming lane. After taking a second to say, “Holy shit!”, we shifted back into 4 wheel drive, drove across the median to our side of the road and merged back into traffic.
Had there been a tree, post or other obstruction in the median at that point, we would have hit it hard. Had there been any oncoming traffic, they would have hit us. Any number of things could have gone wrong that could easily have resulted in injury or death. We got very, very lucky that day.
My brush with death was a little odd. I was almost killed by a deer, of all things.
I was a student, and I had been given the onerus assignment of collecting the deer dung necessary to culture a fungus that grows best in herbivore dung. I was tooling around in the hills northeast of Berkeley looking for deer dung. I found some deer and figured where there’s deer, there’s dung. So I approach closer and start looking on the ground for dung, gloves on and sample jar out. Once I got closer I saw that there were actually three deer: two bucks and a doe… and the bucks were facing off each other nervously. This should have given me pause, but I had just sighted my goal: a nice, steaming heap of refuse on the other side of the deer. (OK, it actually wasn’t steaming, thank God!) There was a fence nearby, and I tried to thread my way between the fence and the closest buck without spooking him. He would glance at me, glance at the other buck again and again, trying to figure out which was the bigger threat. I’ve never been so close to a deer, I got to within seven or eight feet. Then I must have misstepped or just gotten too close, because I spooked the nearby deer, and he panicked, running straight at the other buck. The other buck figured this was a challenge, flared his nostrils and locked antlers with the panicked one, and they struggled for leverage. With muscles straining, the second buck gets the advantage and pushes his panicked opponent straight back at me. I barely had enough time to get out of the way before they both smash into the fence just a couple feet from me, almost demolishing it. Both the panicked deer and I ran away while the second buck stared holes into us with a haughty look (Yeah, I’m anthropomorphizing a little, but he really did look arrogant).
I was shaken enough that I didn’t even remember to collect the dung.
Not only was I not truly endangered by this, but only a couple people were even injured. More than anything, I was scared to death. So I guess it didn’t really count, but for a few hours there, I was really and truly scared.
I spent my junior year of university abroad in Israel (big hint right there), and eventually learned to be very nonchalant about terrorism, but I had only been in the country for a couple months when my bus stop was blown up; I had only been in Jerusalem for a couple days, and was still finding my way around. The bomb went off at about eight o’clock in the morning, and didn’t wake me up. Police sirens did, though, and when I got up, it was chaos. Because of police barricades and such, it was difficult for the casual observor to tell just what had been blown up, and the bus stop was directly in front of the old Overseas School (overseas students like myself have our own school, and a new building had just been constructed to house it). Some classes were still being taught there, and it was conceivable that there would be people in there early. So that was the conclusion that we all immediately leaped to - a bomb had gone off in the building, people we knew had been injured or killed, what were we doing in this country, etc., etc. I felt very frightened and vulnerable.
As it turned out, the bus stop had been blown up. A couple soldiers waiting there had been injured, no one seriously. So, like I said, I wasn’t endangered by the explosion, not even close. But for a while, I very much feared for my life.
“Driving down I-71 in Cincinnati with 14 inches of snow around me. The Blizzard of '96.”
We did that in Chicago, about 1990. Driving a borrowed Pinto. Ended on the exit ramp facing the wrong direction.It was just ice, hardly any snow.