What was your closest brush with death?

[MNDude]

It seems almost everyone has a story of how they almost drowned, almost drove off a cliff, or narrowly dodged a bullet. What is your story of the closest you came to dying?

[ransomnote]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!

[jodyel]

LOL!!!

[Stentor]

Got my finger and a plug into a socket when I was a kid in the fifties. My right arm stiffened and my teeth started grinding. The old man knocked me out of the socket with a wicker basket. Funny thing was I watched my father get thrown against the wall when he put his hand in an old Fada TV. Must have contacted a capacitor.

[Steely Tom]

Got my finger and a plug into a socket when I was a kid in the fifties. My right arm stiffened and my teeth started grinding. The old man knocked me out of the socket with a wicker basket. Funny thing was I watched my father get thrown against the wall when he put his hand in an old Fada TV. Must have contacted a capacitor.

The back end of the picture tube had 15kV on it if it was a black-and-white set, 25kV if it was color.

My dad invited an engineer friend from work to our house when I was seven or so. I told the guy I wanted an oscilloscope, and he proceeded to talk my dad into letting him make one out of our Philco television.

He made a big deal out of telling me I had had had to make sure the HV power supply was discharged before I touched anything. His stern warnings made a lasting impression.

My dad convinced him to give up the project before he actually got the oscilloscope working.

I was a little bit disappointed, but he also had made me queasy... I was afraid he might break my beloved TV set! No more after-school science fiction movies! No more Jetsons!

I wanted an oscilloscope, yes, but not that much.

[KevinB]

Ping for later.

[Vendome]

From when I was 6?

I was in the stands and thos two planes crashed a long way from us.

But, New that I think of it, I did skid forty feet on the right side of my face after hitting the front brakes on my New bike.

Missed 1st grade from September til January.

When I showed up I was a real irritant to my teacher.

My Mom taught me how to read and write before I started kindergarten.

The teacher had us reading some Jack played with a ball story and my Dad had given me a book “Lightfoot the Deer”.

Jack and his ball didn’t seem interesting after that but, what got me sent to the Principal was my argument I had already read the book. I think I wasn’t interested in reading aloud with the class.

So my parents came down and there was a meeting. The teacher insisted I read the book, I insisted already had.

So I was asked to repeat what I know and I did.

My parents told the teacher they understood her position but, wanted to demonstrate I wasn’t lying.

They handed me the newspaper of the day and asked I read it. So I did.

They then asked me to some multipication/division no pencil or paper.

The teacher wanted to know how I could do that.

I don’t recall the rest but, I can tell you that experience and my further experience in the school system prove that when the parents are involved children excell.

I ended up in some advanced class after that in every grade up to 9th.

Don’t know what the point was. I didn’t get ousted into college or anything.
But, I did leave high school in the 10th grade for college.

The point is, where parents can support you, it is very possible to excel.

When they don’t you become an exception and extraoridinary .

My parents never judged me and always said it was okay to fall down.

Fall down a thousand times if you must but, if something is important to you then never, ever quit.

It the quiter who has defeated himself.

It the man of living who looks for New challenges,
Passions and interests.

Live it up baby! No one gets out of this thing alive....

[Vote 4 Nixon]

Driving to work one morning about five years ago when two wild hogs ran out in front of me. I got both of them but one went into my right front wheel well and it was like I did a hard right turn going over 65 mph. Rolled my ford ranger over three times. Suffered about a five inch laceration to my left forearm, my right and left ACL was torn and came close to passing out. I remember screaming, I thought I was a goner for sure.

[Hoodat]

The vast majority of mine involve alcohol and/or drugs in some shape or form whether I was doing them or someone else was doing them. But perhaps the dumbest was when sober, walking into an Atlanta crack house at 2 am to find someone and bring them out.

The drunk event that stands out the most was the time I was driving down a Virginia mountain after consuming a dozen malt liquor tall boys at age 17. With a cliff going straight up to my left on one side and a cliff going straight down on my right, I realized I might have been going too fast. I slammed on the brakes and started spinning in circles. When the car finally stopped, the back wheels were hanging off the cliff.

Within a minute, a van with NY plates stopped. They had a chain and pulled me back onto the road. The worst part is that I had three other people in the car with me. That event has always stuck in my mind because I know that God was with me that day even though I didn't deserve it. And the New Yorkers were really angels.

I'm sure there were closer calls, but since I was blacked-out on those occasions, I can't seem to recall the details.

[Trod Upon]

I had the same experience in CA. In my case the strip was made of divots indented in the edge of the asphalt. I was headed over a bluff when I woke up. What’s funny now is, as shocking as it was, it was nothing compared to the terror of the next 50 miles before I could find a place to get off the highway. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay awake but couldn’t stop. Kept having these “am I asleep again?” moments every 45 seconds or so. It was like some twisted Outer Limits episode. Never again will I knowingly drive exhausted.

[Vendome]

Just looked it up. I was 7 and the accident was 1970

[Vendome]

ROTFLAMO!!!!

Lucky Bass Turd !!!!

A story of resurrection indeed...

[jodyel]

Fantastic story!! Wow!

[RegulatorCountry]

Don’t know if it’s true for everybody, but one early warning of sleepiness behind the wheel for me is that I slowly begin to lose the ability to estimate the speed of traffic ahead of me, especially at night. Time to pull over and get out of the vehicle, walk around, get some fresh air.

[null and void]

Sorry. I was confused. Another friend of mine was at the show, got there a little late and saw a couple sitting in their seats.

Made the call that ‘aw heck it’s a nice day I can see plenty well enough from here and it isn’t worth making a fuss’.

Not two minutes later, about the time he would have been down there discussing seating with the guy, Jimmy Leeward’s P-51 lost a control surface and crashed exactly where he would have been standing. The couple was killed outright.

[ntnychik]

I had driven 200 miles home at night returning from my Dad’s, and was just three miles from home on a dark but familiar country road. I was watching the ditches carefully for deer.

Voice in head said, “Look up!” When I did, I saw a reflective Dead End sign and immediately hit the brakes. I saw a stop sign to my right as I blew past it. I shot across the road that crossed in front of me. Thank God there was no traffic. I went airborne over a ditch and hit sickeningly hard on the other side. The car continued deep into a cornfield, with me gasping with every rut I went over. I could feel myself going into shock.

I called my husband, who called 911. The EMTs hauled me out on a board. I’d broken my back. I told the responding officer, EMTs and my husband about the sign that had saved my life. They silently exchanged glances. The officer asked about drugs and alcohol.

Several weeks later, I had my daughter take me to the site. The skid
marks were still there. There was a small grove of trees straight across the road. I have no idea why I didn’t plow into them.

I’d come to see the sign that saved my life. The sign wasn’t there. We searched the road, and my daughter searched the ditch and field. When I told my husband the sign was gone, he told me there was no sign. There had never been a sign at that location.

I realized I should have been thanking the source of the voice that told me to “look up”.

[Cementjungle]

Back when I was commuting from Philadelphia to Chicago for work, I once took a flight back to Phila. on Friday the 13th, on United flight #13, and sat in row 13.

It doesn't get any more dangerous than that!

[Vendome]

Is that the one from couple of years ago?

Sad...

[Hildy]

I was in a car accident when I was 18 years old.. I drove into a telephone pole and a tree. I was pronounced dead When a bystander shoved the paramedics aside and gave me CPR and saved my life. the paramedics didn’t ty to save me because it’s less liability for them. This was in 1977 and it’s a true story. I have had a series of Angels who have been there to save me in my darkest hours. I am a lucky and blessed woman.

[Hayride]

I won’t say what my closest brush with death was but here is a couple Reader’s Digest versions of somewhat dangerous incidents I’ve had. . .

I was in the passenger seat, highly “scotched up” and staring at my feet, of a vehicle going 80 on cruise control when my friend decided it was time for a nap. Hilarity ensued. Thank you designated driver.

Before I got out of town after buying my first motorcycle and fancying myself sort of like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape I decided I’d give two girls in a silver convertible the thrill of me giving them some attention as they drove by. “Yah, they were totally checking me out. . .” When I turned my head forward I noticed the traffic in my lane had come to a stop. Over the bars and into the back of a station wagon I went. There was a bit of a scene as I lay on the road but the girls in the silver convertible doubled back and laughed at me as they passed by in the now creeping traffic.

[ransomnote]

Tough to say which one put me closest to death. THere are the wrong place/wrong time kinds (round fired by a weapon on a tripod about 2k yards buzzed past my ear and flipped my hair before striking the embankment I was climbing and making a good portion of it magically disappear and then...after a few seconds...rain down on me).

There’s the really odd (an extremely physically disabled man with brain damage put a bear hug on me and was methodically cracking my ribcage like a walnut while crushing me against his chest until I felt my lungs ‘touch’ front to back and I saw that long dark tunnel),
I’ll delete medical for space.
There’s the how-stupid-could-I-be when I dropped a kitchen chair upside down and stumbled forward and coming thisclose to impaling my chest on the remains of the splintered leg angled perfectly for the task of spearing m.
There’s intense competition in the stupidity class - many examples: There’s traveling to an Alaskan island and going for a walk without telling the bunkhouse - then getting lost in a whiteout for hours as night fell and realizing no one would know I was missing.
There’s industrial - almost getting crushed repeatedly while dangling on a rope between a boat and a ship that were grinding together, there’s almost capsizing (went WAY past the point of balance) on a foreign trawler during a storm which would prohibit rescue efforts. There’s boarding a foreign trawler in high seas while simultaneously playing dodge-the-block-and-tackle, please-don’t-drop-the-block-through-the-floor-of-the-lifeboat, there-are-no-seatbelts-in-Ahabs-rowboat and I-hope-1950’s-Soviet-winch-technology-will-hold-BOTH-ends-of-this-lifeboat-long-enough.

Apparently there is something God wants me to do first.
I haven’t had time to read all the posts yet but I have found every post well worth reading. I particularly glad that the one who DIDN’T take the bottle of anti-depressants is still with us (you have unfinished work too :) and grateful and proud for the military and first responders. I have to say - Cripplecreeks may still be the best. It caught me and almost knocked me outta my chair laughing.