true . . the speedometer was buried(past 140mph)when we hit it right in the ass . . it laid there dazed . . struggled to its feet and limped off, im sure with at least 1 broken leg. it may have died later . . i dont know.
Philadelphia
(where you only *wish[/] you’re dead!)
…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!
I was driving to high school and a guy in a white van in oncoming traffic sneezed and momentarily lost control of his vehicle and swerved right in front of me, about two car lengths ahead. Being a fairly new driver, I froze at the wheel. The other driver recovered and missed hitting me head on.
I can still picture his face to this day, 16 years later.
I’m living so beyond my income that we may almost said to be living apart
-e e cummings
Well, the search engine works again, so here’s the story I promised earlier in this thread. I posted it on Oktober 1, 1999, and it just struck me reading this how much my English has improved since then - this board is a great way of enhancing ones language skills! Anyway, my brush with death (from http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/001525.html ):
So there. Stupid enough for ya? I’m not proud of it, but hey, it DOES answer the OP.
Coldfire
Voted Poster Most Likely To Post Drunk
"You know how complex women are"
- Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
Not quite measuring up to the standards set forth, but…
-
About age 4 we went to a new neighbors to swim in their pool. I’d never been swimming before, and didn’t know how, but excitement got the better of me. I sprinted through the gate and went straight into the deep end, wearing shirt and shoes. Dad fished me out before I realized what I had done. We soon got swimming lessons after that.
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About age 7 I was at a community pool playing with strangers. It was a wading pool. One of the kids pulled my feet out from under me and pinned me under water for what felt like eternity. Scared me really bad, though I probably wasn’t in as much danger as I felt.
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About age 10 my brother, sister, and I were exploring an aunt’s farm in Oklahoma. It was cold and we found a pond with ice on the surface. We thought it would be fun to walk on the ice. After “testing” the surface by throwing a large limb onto it, my sister and I trudged out onto the ice. Halfway across we noticed the ice was sort of cracking. We rushed to get to the edge, as the ice broke. Brother pulled us both out, so all three of us were drenched in freezing weather with a quarter mile hike back to the house. Cold, crying, scared, miserable, we made it back.
I seem to have a thing for water.
- At age 18 or so I went with my brother on a trip to visit my sister away from home - just the two of us driving without the parents. On the way back, I was driving and got really tired, and dozed off behind the wheel. I woke up as the car was sliding into the median and I was braking. Scary.
Been lucky the couple times I’ve dozed off behind the wheel that nothing bad has happened.
Wow! I don’t know if any of my experiences come to the level of several of these, but they impacted my life a great deal.
Age 3, Albaturkeypotpie, NM(hey, it’s what we CALLED it, ok?): my older brother and I decide to taste the stuff in the drainage ditch near our trailer. Turns out it was lye, and we had to have our stomaches pumped, were very ill for days.
Age 3,at the rim of the Grand Canyon: I thought that the whole world was level ground, or something, I wanted a closer look at the canyon, so I slipped under the guard rail and leaned over, too far as it turns out. Next thing I know, I’m dangling over the canyon, feeling nothing but air around me, and hearing my Dad yell for help. Let’s just say, it’s a darn good thing that my Dad had a rope tied around my waist, with the other end attached to him(they knew I had no fear of anything). I was hanging by that thin thread out over the Grand canyon for about 3-4 minutes, but I still didn’t get it, and was having fun with the view I had.
Age 6, somewhere in Germany, on a mountain side: my Mom’s little VW Switchback’s brakes quit working while we’re driving around this mountain. On our left is the mountain, and on our right is a 2ft high stone wall, and then nothing but the cliff, and a looooong way down. She’s frantically trying to keep from going over the cliff, and trying to somehow stop the car, and my 2 brothers and I were bouncing all over the place(no one wore seatbelts those days) and we end up taking out some guys car parked right next to the wall, finally coming to a stop. We later see that we not only took out this guy’s car, but his car had broken through the wall, and was partially out over the edge. If that car hadn’t been there to slow us down, we would have gone right over. The weirdest part was my little brother, gets up from the floor of the back of the Switchback and starts laughing his head off(he was 2.5 at the time) and asks if we can do that again, it was FUN! I thought my Mom was going to kill him right then and there!
Age 7, on the beach in Chile, across from our house: My older brother and I got caught in a riptide some 15ft from shore(no, I don’t know how we got out that far) and were being slowly sucked under. A stray german shepard rushed into the ocean, swam to us, and pulled us out of danger, my brother first, then came back for me. He was our guardian angel that day, so we kept him for many years. Our swimsuits were ruined from his teeth, but that was a very small price to pay for our lives. Mom and Dad never again let us go to the beach without Scraps(my Mom named him, give me a break).
Age 21, in San Antonio: After suffering through a day at work, and then off to night classes at SAC Jr College, I went home, and realized that I was getting sicker by the minute, and starting to have some SERIOUS stomach pains. I called my SIL back up, (she’d just dropped me off, we had classes together) and asked her to take me to the hospital. After spending the worst night ever, almost, in the ER, getting poked and prodded and no one could decide what was wrong with me,they decided to go ahead and take out my appendix. It was a good thing they did, I was told later that if they had waited 2-3 more hours, it would’ve ruptured, and I could have died, it was so badly infected. To top that wonderful experience off, I came down with Strep Throat the next day, so I spent a week in the hospital.
Age 23, in Omaha, Ne: I had had a very difficult pregnancy and was pre-eclamptic, blood pressure out of control, and so ill I didn’t even realize how bad I was. The doctor finally agreed to do an emergency c-section since my body refused to go into labor in spite of the drugs, and the baby was 3weeks late. I found out days later that I had started to go into convulsions and almost died on them, before they could get my precious son out.
Age 25, in Omaha: This time, I had different problems with the pregnancy, but still very serious ones. I was told by every doc I saw that if I wanted to live to raise these 2 kids, I’d better NEVER get pregnant again. I got so ill so fast at the end, again, I almost died before they did the emergence c-section. I love my kids dearly, wouldn’t trade them for the world, but I can’t ever go through that again.
Age 26, later that same year my daughter was born, now in San Antonio:After fighting one kidney infection after another all year long, it was discovered that I had kidney stones(skipping over the pain that knocked me to the ground). And, 3 surgeries later, almost losing my kidney, and spending a month in the hospital, I was deemed healthy enough to go home, provided someone else(MIL) would continue to keep the kids, now 3yrs, and 10mo’s old for another 3 weeks, minimum. Again, the doctor told me I could’ve have died from the complications I had.
There are a few others, but I’ll save those for another day, that’s enough for now.
Don’t make me come down there.
God
Oh good, another let’s-talk-about-ourselves thread!
Can you read this thread and not think we’ve got some lucky (or unlucky, take your choice) posters here?
I’ve had a few, but the closest call was probably when I stuck a bicycle hanlebar through my liver at age 10. The accident did some other stuff (bent spine, collapsed lung), but the liver was the main event. They removed 2/3s of it. I don’t know what survival stats are for ruptured livers nowadays, but in 1963 it was a grim picture.
I spent two weeks in ICU with all kinds of tubes running in and out of me (I particularly remember a heart catheter that went in at my ankle) and another three months in the hospital after that. About a month into it I got my first solid food - guess what it was? I’ve never been able to eat liver since.
As I said, there were a few others; by the time I was 22, I’d spent 13 months of my life hospitalized (only one overnight since in another 24 years).
oh man! you’ve got to be kidding me! they actualy served you liver? such sensitive doctors back then…
eggo
My Web Page:SMITE WARNING it may offend you.
[Hijack]
Coldfire wrote in response to BDA:
Althought the speed involved sounds a bit iffy to me, I might be able to clarify something. The deer over here in the US are large. About the size of a pony, as a visual. The kind of deer that I’ve seen over in Germany that I think you are thinking of, are about the size of a medium sized dog.
There are many a tales of some poor slob nailing a deer while driving home from work/the bar/whatever at 2am and the deer crashes right through the windshield. After the car stops ( either by the driver or a ditch or tree) and the driver realizes he isn’t dead,and frees himself from the mess, the stun deer comes back to life and kicks like a muther to get out of the car and back into the woods hardly the worst for the wear.
(ohh, that was a run on sentance) There’s something like 38,000 car/deer accidents here in Michigan alone last year.
[/hijack]
I’m living so beyond my income that we may almost said to be living apart
-e e cummings
Back in '85 I took up the leisure pursuit of laser experimentation, creating a decently stocked lab in the garage.
I was working on my latest project, a 3-meter bore length carbon dioxide laser, when one of the cooling jacket hoses began to leak slightly…something I didn’t notice as the leak was below the workbench top.
I was ready to fire the thing up for the first time–gas mixture was right, carbon blocks positioned down range…thinking about everything but my personal safety…walked around to the back of the workbench to adjust the position of the high voltage leads. There was water on the floor, and the leads were hot. 48-freaking-thousand-volts!
I remember seeing a flash that seemed to come from the inside of my eyes–really strange…you “see” it but don’t see it. Hard to describe. Other than that, I don’t remember anything else.
At any rate, I went through the window behind me into the back yard–not that impressive as it was a low window. The workbench got thrown over somehow and ruined a lot of expensive hardware. The crashing of me going through the window brought my next-door neighbor over–I later found out that he thought that someone was breaking into the house.
The whole of the unconscious experience for me was just a sizzling sound–might as well have been cooking bacon for all that was worth. No lights, no visions, just coming to with some ugly cuss slapping me silly.
I figured out who he was before hitting him back, and we pieced together what must have happened. The garage floor was a mess of shattered quartz glass in a pool of water.
I don’t work alone with high voltage-pumped lasers anymore.
–Kalél
TheHungerSite.com
“If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic.”
“Well, there was that thing with the Cheese-Wiz…but I’m feeling much better now!” – John Astin, Night Court
shirley ujest . . believe me . . i wasnt driving . . my friends cousin was . . i was in the back seat and very nervously watching the needle rise. check out late 70’s camaro’s/trans am’s speedometers . . they register 140 . . and we were past that.
I think my closest call with the Grim Reaper was when I almost choked to death. I was driving home from work in my little white pick-up truck, eating Spree candies and singing. I accidently inhaled one of them, (they’re about the size of a nickle, but fatter) and was choking. Only it wasn’t like coughing and coughing choking, it was just plain “I can’t move air into my lungs” choking.
I pulled over and tried to cough it up with absolutely no luck. It was too far to walk to a house. After about 30 seconds, I started feeling lightheaded and dizzy.
I got out of the truck, and was scared at how weak and panicky I felt. I seriously started thinking “Holy Shit. I’m gonna die- right here- from eating fucking candy”.
I got my wits back and got to the back of the truck by the bumper. I pushed myself into the bumper with everything I had right in the “Heimlick” spot, and sure enough after two tries it came up. I’ll never forget how scary that was, and I likely would not have known to try that had I not taken a CPR class about a month prior.
Very scary stuff.
Zette
“If I had to live your life, I’d be begging to have someone pop out both my eyes. Just in case I came across a mirror.” - android209 (in the Pit)
Zettecity
Voted “Most Empathetic”- can you believe that?