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.
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.
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.
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.