# When did you become conscious of your own mortality?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-become-conscious-of-your-own-mortality/494509
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [April 27, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-become-conscious-of-your-own-mortality/494509 "2009-04-27T15:33:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2009, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-become-conscious-of-your-own-mortality/494509/21 "2009-04-28T06:14:32Z")
At 11, I tripped. I landed flat faced on a sapling stump\*, cut at an angle, positioned such that the stakelike tip was painfully nestled just below my adam’s apple. As I stood up, I realized that there was no particular reason, beyond luck, that it hadn’t just pierced my airway, and that everything from here on out was gravy.
- called a “stob” in the southeast.
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### Author:  [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2009, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-become-conscious-of-your-own-mortality/494509/22 "2009-04-28T07:29:22Z")
Still haven’t. I’m 32 and have been in a likely-instantly-lethal situation once. Even as I feel my body not working the same way it did when I was 20 anymore, I have this foolish, intuitive feeling that nothing will get to me.
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### Author:  [@Henrichek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Henrichek)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2009, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-become-conscious-of-your-own-mortality/494509/23 "2009-04-28T11:36:12Z")
I am still immortal.
I am 25 and death is still something quite abstract to me. I have only had two relatives die during my lifetime, and I have never seen a dead person or seen anybody die. No acquaintance or friend has died. Never have I been in a situation where I came close to death either.
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### Author:  [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2009, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-become-conscious-of-your-own-mortality/494509/24 "2009-04-28T11:50:28Z")
Ever since I was a child. My father is a violent drunk and I was convinced he was going to kill one of us and I was determined it wasn’t going to be me. From a very early age, I was plotting an escape route out of that house and contingency plans for eventualities.
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