Your bravest moment.

In My Humble Opinion
1

What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done in your opinion?

The bravest thing I ever did was to consciously submit to a needle in my arm. In fact, it was a tetnus shot. To me, that was the bravest thing that I have ever done. But I’ll give you some background. I had a brain tumour when I was fifteen. It entailed well over 300 needles in 2 weeks. I’m now 31 and I had that needle over a year ago. And my first pap. After nearly 20 years, I can deal with whatever needs to be done to my body so that measures it’s healthiness.

To me, being able to willingly have a needle is the bravest that I’ll ever be. While in the meantime, I have done somethings where friends, closest relatives, etc. have said, after I’ve jumped out a plane, backpacked around the world myself etc “that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do!” and to me, it was quite pedestrian. It was not anything to celebrate or say “OMG!! that’s brave!!”

One of my best friends is the highest scale of bipolar along with a very complicated identity dissociative disorder. Today at 34 he moved out of his dad’s house into assisted living. I am hopelessly proud of him. This is a MASSIVE goal for him.

So I want you, esteemed Dopers, to tell me, the bravest thing you’ve ever done in your opinion.

2

Video Taping a vertical mountain rescue of a ‘victim’ in a stokes litter. From the victims point of view.

3

Driving figure 8 race cars. Lots of fun too. Except the time I was hit in the intersection and my race car was destroyed.

4

When I was a freshman in college I worked the weekend evening shift at a fastfood pizza place. The guys I worked with talked a lot of crap about how tough they were.

We got a lot of high school kids hanging out until a few minutes before curfew. One night I heard a commotion and noticed lots of kids running out the door to the parking lot. I went out to see what was up and noticed one guy on the ground being kicked by others. As I headed over, the kickers jumped into their car and the kickees friends began to pile around the car, trying to get the main culprit out of the backseat where he was cowering. All of the kickers were trying to get their doors and windows shut.

Whatever the fight was about it evidently involved the local basketball and football teams because everybody there was noticeably bigger and taller than me (5’ 10", about 170lbs at the time). Several of the guys around the car were telling me “Why don’t you go back inside for a few minutes”. I was the only thing between the two groups who wanted to beat the crap out of each other.

I stood my ground for a minute until sirens announced impending arrival of the police, at which point everyone forgot about their beef, hopped in their cars and sped off.

Didn’t occur to me until a few minutes later that I could have gotten my ass kicked ten ways from Sunday.

The rest of my coworkers? They all stayed inside and didn’t poke their heads out.

5

I kicked a huge drunk guy out of my apartment for groping my then girlfriend.

6

I posted a thread on it at the time - last winter I was parking at my boyfriend’s house and saw a girl trying to get her car off the train tracks. A guy had come to help her and I wasn’t going to worry about it until I heard the signal start. Ran down to the house and got my boyfriend and his roomates and I stopped the train while they pushed her car off the tracks. The train stopped maybe 50 feet from her car. Maybe it would have seen her in time, maybe not - there’s a pretty blind curve leading to that part of the tracks. Felt like a movie.

7

Shaking myself out of the debilitating depression caused by my son’s autism diagnosis (nothing is so awful as danger/disease/whatever that involves your child) and getting him some help. Taking that first step was the scariest thing I have ever done, and I’ve done some scary shit over the years.

He’s great now, BTW- just over two years of heavy early intervention and experts can no longer recognize that he is on spectrum.

8

I’m not a brave person, but when my daughter’s exboyfriend (an abusive sort) shoved his way into our house, I stood up to him while my daughter dialed 911. When he shoved me, I shoved back–shoved him all the way out the back door, the locked it until the police showed up. Rich outweighs me by about 120 lbs, but, damnit, I’m protecting my kid!

Word is he’s going to sue me for abuse. Ironic?

9

Way back in '96, my husband (separated) brought my two young sons (5 and 3 then) here to Tucson from South Carolina. We had joint custody, and he just picked up one day and brought them here. I consulted my attorney, and he told me that he could definitely have the judge order my husband to come back with the kids, and it would only take several months to a couple of years.

Two weeks later I had sold everything I owned for pennies on the dollar, including my car, and I arrived in Tucson on a Greyhound bus, with 150 dollars in my pocket, no job, and not knowing anyone. Now THAT was scary, and man it was tough to establish myself here, and boy I’ve had some rough times. But it was worth it, if only because now no matter what happens, I know that I will survive. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.

10

The bravest thing I’ve ever done was put my daughter on an airplane. Last summer she had the opportunity to go to Holland to be in a soccer tournament. She was 13 years old, flying from Boston to Amsterdam with people I had met for about 15 minutes. She spent 10 days in Holland, playing with kids from all over the US against kids from all over the world. She toured the canals, the Anne Frank house, cheese factories, and wooden shoe factories. She learned so much about the world and about herself. It was an amazing experience for her, but it was the hardest thing I ever did.

11

When my Grandma was in her 90s, she was suffering from many problems…including lung cancer. My Mom didn’t want to lose Grandma, so she convinced her to have several surgeries done. Grandma had gone along reluctantly, and was really dreading the next surgery, which might give her 2 or 3 more months…but Mom wouldn’t have any of that and continued to insist that Grandma have the surgery. I was on a visit home from college, and Grandma talked to me privately and told me she was ready to “go”…I had no problem with that and neither did Grandma (she was a woman of deep faith)…and then she asked me to convince my mother to let Grandma die. I agreed to intercede which was easy, but telling my Mom that Grandma wanted to die was much harder, and took all of my courage, especially when Mom went ballistic…

I’m glad that I helped Grandma.

12

For me, it was probably working on a night when we thought we might have to deal with a holdup.

I used to work in a beer store–one of Ontario’s Beer Stores, for those who are familiar with them. The local police had received a tip that we had been targeted by a gang for a holdup on a certain weekend. They warned us that the gang would likely be armed, but that they (the police) would be looking out for us.

Small comfort, that. We remained open, but the manager gave us all the chance to turn down our assigned shifts if we wanted. I didn’t want to; I was at one of those points in my life where money was very tight; the more hours I got, the more money I made. When a few of the other guys opted out, I volunteered to fill in for their shifts. I could work every available hour that weekend, if I wanted. And I needed to, if I was to pay that month’s rent.

So there I was, on the weekend that we had been told we were likely to be hit, holding down the till. A co-worker was stocking shelves, and we were the only two there. At sunset each night, a plainclothes police officer came in, showed me his ID, and said not to worry; he and a SWAT team were parked in an unmarked van outside and would come at the first sign of trouble.

That’s when I started to get worried. The cops had bulletproof vests, and plenty of firepower. I had a T-shirt, and no firepower. I was told by the police, however, that if anything happened, let them have the cash. Open the till, open the safe, let them take whatever they wanted, and get the hell away from the till area. Out the back door, if possible. The police would handle the rest. Fair enough; we never had outrageous sums of cash on hand after dark, and insurance would cover any losses of what we did have. Still, it hit home to me that this wasn’t a normal shift, and that I was either very brave or very stupid for working.

As things turned out, nothing happened. All that weekend, people came in, bought beer, and left. We cleaned up the store near our 10 p.m. closing, did our daily reconciliation, and that was that. On the Saturday night, we waved to the cops’ unmarked van as we locked up, and it left. Nothing special, in retrospect, but kind of scary at the time.

Oh–we did hear over the next few days that the gang had been apprehended trying to knock over another Beer Store in our town. Glad it wasn’t ours.

13

Paddled after a friend who had bailed out of his kayak and was heading down a very bad line into a terminal sweeper/log jam. Fished him out with only inches to spare. Took two days of hunting to find his boat in the sweeper/log jam.

14

August 12, 1969.

The man next to me was shot in the chest. There was a lot of shooting going on but I stood up and dragged him back to a concrete block building where there were some more men and tended his wounds until a Corpsman showed up.

One of the men in the building, seeing I was having a hard time dragging him, ran out to help me. I’ve always thought that was a brave thing for him to do.

In the early 70’s I was rock climbing at Seneca Rocks, WV. About half way up the climb (I was leading) it dawned on me that we weren’t doing the climb we thought we were doing but another, much harder, one (5.10/11 instead of 5.6/7). Later we found out that this had happened before and a change to the guide book suggesting that you be certain where you were was planned.

I was way, way over my head. The only piece of protection I had been able to place was fifty feet below me, which had me on the ground if I fell. There was another fiftyish feet to go.

It took just about everything I had to get myself under control. I was certain I was dead.

15

When I was 18, I ran off to NYC. I traveled there by Greyhound, with $17 in my pocket. I carried a small suitcase with a change of clothing. I didn’t know anyone there, had no place to stay, no job, no skills, nothing but optimism (stupidity). The first day, I got a job as an office boy, for $90 a week. I have no idea how I had the nerve to do that.

16

When I was 23 and my brothers were in High School, one day I was walking down the street with Mom and, well, I don’t want to bore you, but basically I asked her to please make sure that my brothers knew Dad’s word was NOT the only option and that they wouldn’t be forced to choose a major because it was “acceptable”: choosing a major means choosing lines of work, you shouldn’t be forced into one because of another person’s prejudices.

We’d been raised on the notion that our parents were of a single mind and that our wants, limitations and likes were unimportant and irrelevant. We had to do perfectly, or else. And sometimes she’ll still wonder where did Middlebro get that paralyzing perfectionist streak, can I kill her now?

17

Held my brother’s hand as he died.

18

Travel alone to Turkey (I was 20). The more time you have to think about stuff the scarier things get and more courage you need. High jumping off a bridge or something takes courage, but you gather it quick then its over quick. I can’t even imagine what being a single teenager raising a child would require.

19

I was walking down a busy street during rush hour when I saw a guy start lurching, landing in the street having colvusions. I went into the street and started directing rush hour traffic around him.

12 cars passed around me, and the 13th was a SUV whose driver stopped in it the lane, put on his emergency blinkers and got out, telling me “You could have been killed.” I never thought of that at the time.

20

Bravery comes in many forms.

My hardest was giving the oration at my mother’s funeral (at her request) without sobbing.