I got shot at and hit with a richochet’d bullet. That was pretty scary.
I got almost mugged once. As it was going down the guy pulled a gun on me. I looked over his shoulder, he twitched and I grabbed for it. We both fell and he ran away. I was pretty sure when the gun’s barrel hit the palm of my hand a bullet was going to go thorough it. He didn’t fire though.
I got knocked out by the police once. They pulled me over at gun point, dragged me out in a field to separate me from the passenger of the car, and kicked me in the back of the head. Woke up face down in a fire ant pile, cops were leaving. Still not really sure why they pulled us over, they never said. The passenger was thrown down in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. The people in the restaurant came out to help us up and the manager of the place came out and pulled my civic into the their parking lot so it was off the street.
My mom had a heart attack when she was driving my pickup once between Dallas and Houston. All we were told is “she is unresponsive and is being taken to the hospital”. I found this out when I was in Oklahoma. That was a long drive south with no word as to whether she was alive or not.
My daughter, at the age of five or six, started crossing the street for the beach when a guy ran a red light and came within a few feet of hitting her. I was standing there at the trunk with my arms full of beach stuff, completely helpless. I was sure she was going to be hit. It took forever for my heart rate to come down. If the driver would have gotten out of the car I might have attacked him. This rates number 1 for me.
As part of initial SWAT training they had us rappel, face first (basically walking down the wall) on the outside of a six story building on a wet cold, windy day. This after about an hour or two of training. It was meant to build team cohesion by sharing a “dangerous” experience together. I’m a glider pilot and have no problem being thousands of feet in the air in a cramped aircraft. Rappelling in the traditional manner didn’t bother me. Intentionally stepping off the roof of a 70’ building while looking down is a different story. A few guys flat out refused to do it. Its actually completely safe with a belay man on the ground but it also goes against every instinct of self-preservation.
I jumped out of Cessna at 3000’ on my first parachute jump. No tandem or instructor. Step out on that little step on the wing strut, hang there for a second and let go. That was pretty scary, too.
Doing an undercover buy for an ounce of coke with a known shooter sitting behind me in the car was a little rattling. I was a white cop in a neighborhood where I clearly didn’t belong. If he wanted to shoot me there was nothing I could do about it. Fortunately, the deal was over in about 10 seconds. Lesson learned.
In no particular order -
*was sexually assaulted twice - one was date rape, one was a stranger.
*was physically assaulted by my loving fiancee, leaving me with a depressed skull fracture that had me in an induced coma for a week.
*fell 90 feet and broke my neck and back in 3 places.
*had to walk past the back wall of the house as it was ready to burn through using my crutches because it was faster than dicking around with rigging my wheelchair, and I was needing to carry my back pack of medications. It flashed as I got out the front door.
Unfortunately no, the horror continued for almost 3 years. My son was diagnosed with a rare cancer (approx 200 cases since the early '80’s) - desmoplastic round cell soft tissue sarcoma - 10% survival rate. And that’s only for 4 years after the diagnois. He was already at Stage 4. He underwent extreme chemo treatments, had a 16-hour surgery at the Mayo Clinic where they removed his colon, spleen, gallbladder, a portion of his liver and a portion of one of his lungs. He had his stem cells harvested, numerous painful tests, had another surgery to remove the lining of his lungs, not to mention all of the scans, blood tests, etc. They were able to remove 90% of the tumor, but it showed up again in his liver. There was nothing more they could do. He fought like a warrior but couldn’t win. He died a month after his 30th birthday. There is no horror like the horror of watching helplessly as your child dies.
This, so much this. I’ve had a guy point a weapon at me and threaten me more than once, which was just part of being a cocaine dealer. It’s over so fast, you don’t have time to be scared. One guy used a dirty needle instead of a knife or gun, which actually scared me more than the guns. Don’t sell drugs kids, it’s not a fun scene.
However, by far the scariest moment of my life was the aftermath after I was curb-stomped in my teens. My attackers had left, and I was left crying and lying on the ground with multiple broken bones, unable to move. All I could do was lay there and think, “So this is how I am going to die,” as my world slowly faded into grey. It took a very, very long time before the nightmares stopped from that.