In terms of sheer level of terror, nothing compares to the 3-4 night terrors I had as a kid.
As for sick horror, it had to be the bombing of Rafik Hariri. The bomb was so enormous I thought it had happened on campus, even though it was about 1/2 mile away. I called my wife to tell her I was okay, and then starting walking to College Hall, fully expecting to find the plaza full of dead and maimed students. I have no idea what I thought I was going to do when I got there; I just mechanically went out the door of my office and went to where I thought the bomb was.
I’ve got a few that pegged my stress-o-meter: Finding my mom lying face down on the garage steps. That turned out to be brain tumors from her breast cancer, which was otherwise responding well to medication. It eventually killed her about a month before my 18th birthday. Felt like projectile vomiting from the shock.
Got into a fight with a guy who turned out to have a knife on him, when I stepped in to stop his victim from getting bullied. Miraculously, I managed to do everything right and didn’t get cut. Was shaky as hell a few minutes after. My martial arts teacher reminded everyone that my fight was the exception to the rule; you should expect to get cut if you get in a knife fight. I was damn lucky, along with being fast and good, but if I’d screwed up I could have died.
I’ve had a gun pointed at me with moderate intent. That wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t quite as serious as the knife fight since I was fairly sure he wouldn’t shoot me. No guarantees with that kind of thing though, so the pucker factor was plenty high. Again, that was because I intervened. More justification this time since he was originally pointing the gun at my sister.
Almost flipped a car when going too fast and attempting to swerve around something in the road. I think it was a branch. Same car had a rear tire blowout when going around a corner, again too fast. I grew out of the teenage desire to speed pretty quickly, but had a few close calls before that happened.
Those are the big ones. I’ve had a nice uneventful life for the last decade or more. Couple of seconds of clutching at arm rests during bumpy flights, but that’s about it. Moving out of Stockton a couple of years after graduation was the best thing I ever did for my safety and stress levels. I’ve had few violent encounters since moving away from that crime-ridden pit, and none of the brief altercations I had in college involved weapons. Except for that one guy who tried to hit me with a chair. Seriously? Did he think we were in a bad western movie? I also learned to avoid people who create drama around them. I’ve very, very rarely gotten into trouble on my own. Every single one of the lift-threatening violent encounters has been because I intervened.
Hard to say. Almost stepped on a rattlin’ snake in the middle of nowhere. Rode off a (small) cliff during a desert race. (Found out I scream like a little girl without knowin’ about it!) Had a few close calls out on the road.
But my kid going missing one day was about the awfulest feeling I ever want to experience. He went to some new kid’s house to play X box or something. Went right inside, never told us where or with who. :eek:
