Jesus, what does it mean that I’m apparently the only frequent poster without a near-death experience?
Yow, Matt, as someone who doesn’t enjoy flying anymore due to some lesser incidents than that, I can understand how you must be feeling.
Did you ever find out what went wrong? Was it just pressure loss? If so, that’s typically not a big deal. But the whole “not sure we’ll be landing at the airport” certainly implied a bigger problem!
Seriously? Nothing? Not even in a car?
The three I posted were just the worst. If I count near-miss traffic incidents, getting run into by a car on my bike as a kid, and some other stuff, I have plenty more.
It means you are blissfully unaware of your own near-death experiences. Which is fine, btw. Your strengths are elsewhere.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. You might as well be telling me you used to wear hamburgers on your feet back then. I buckle in my backpack.
Nope, no car wrecks, no drownings, no crime. Uh, I guess one time some wasps stung me, and was one time I was having trouble breathing due to a really bad upper respiratory thing, but it was actually a false alarm.
I had a scrap of metal in my elbow I didn’t notice for like 8 years I guess. About it.
WHAT? I must have missed it. I thought you were going comic for effect and I was going to say, “not too funny.”
Ah what the hell, today is my 46th birthday, so I’m feeling reflective.
I had a few close calls, all while active duty USN. Anyone that has worked on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier at night has had close calls. The closest actually happened on the ramp of NAS Oceana - I managed to fall off the wing of an F-14 and land on my head.
There, now you know one more reason I am a mess. :/
The Navy docs at Portsmoth told me that had I landed a couple of degrees to one side or another my neck would have snapped and that would have been the end. As it was I fractured my skull pretty much from ear to ear (across the top). Screwed my neck up where it would “pop” loudly (and totaly freak my wife out), that seems to have faded as the years have passed. And yes, I had my helmet on.
Ah, wild youth.
-CJ
I’ve also got nothing. I hurt my knee once by walking down a small mountain?
But it was Mt. Doom, and… well… we all know how that went.
Had a bad case of pneumonia when I was 18. Mainly my fault for not thinking it was anything serious until I had been bedridden for a week without eating. Then I was so weak I had to be wheeled through the hospital in a wheelchair before I got some penicillin and it all got better. A hundred years ago, probably fatal.
There was also the time I experimented with self-strangulation. I was 7 years old and nothing bad ever happened, which was probably dumb luck on my part, but my teacher noticed the red marks on my throat and I ended up being called to the headmasters office for a chat where they tried to find out if my parents were abusing me. Thankfully my mom was more pissed at them for accusing her of child abuse than at me for being an idiot.
Well, at least you got that out of your system as a kid. Michael Hutchence didn’t.
My friends and I used to play the choking game. We were fucking stupid; whoever had the longest reach ALWAYS won the choking game. Sucked cuz I was a short kid when I was little.
I’d like to play it now. I’d beat everyone.
So much explained in one sentence.
I don’t know how close I actually came but it’s the only story I have. I had just moved into my new apartment a few days earlier and I was going to walk around outside and check the place out. It was raining a little but nothing I couldn’t handle. However, I was smoking a cigarette and I didn’t want it to get wet so I waited until I finished. Then I walked outside and I immediately noticed some bald patches on the roof of some buildings in the next complex over. I hadn’t noticed those before. I walked out a little further and wondered why there was a giant pile of lumber in the parking lot.
Turns out while I was waiting a tornado had come through and demolished the office building right next to my building. Inside the only thing I noticed was the windows vibrating for a few seconds. But had I been walking around outside… who knows. So that’s why I sometimes say that smoking saved my life.
Sure does.
When I was in my early twenties, I was snowshoeing on Paradise Glacier on Mount Rainier in the winter… during a whiteout. Young and stupid, and all that.
Anyway, I leading the party, and saw a small depression, which I walked into. Given the low contrast in a whiteout, the small depression was really a 60 foot drop off the edge of the glacier. I tumbled about another 60 feet in the snow, losing my glasses in the process.
Two things saved me: I fell into deep powder snow, and I was wearing prototype metal snowshoes. Metal snowshoes are common now, but they weren’t back then. Park rangers later told me that wooden snowshoes would have probably shattered, and I would have been screwed.
I managed to communicate with the party, who headed back to the ranger station. I proceeded to do the same, using map and compass. I’d learned, through search and rescue training, to trust the compass, not my own sense of direction. That was a good thing, because that whole bit about walking in circles in a whiteout was absolutely true. There were times I swore I was going in a straight line, but the compass told me I was veering to the left.
When I finally got back the the ranger station, just before dark, I ran into the park rangers, who were coming out to look for me. When we returned to the ranger station, we checked out the map. I’d crossed three avalanche chutes on the way back, in heavy snow, and managed to not trigger any avalanches.
So, yeah, young stupid and lucky.
whoa.
Closest I’ve ever come is one of two: I guess a T-Bone car crash where miraculously the wheel hit the bumper (car+truck) and we bounced off each other with nothing but scuffs and paint damage, there was also a massive boat overturn while white water rafting the Ottawa river but tons of people do that and they never die. It sure felt scary being dumped into the water and knowing that a mistake could send me hurtling into rocks though.
BillD once gave me a lift and I didn’t end up burried in the Nevada dessert like the others…
How the hell do you top these? You don’t - one guy fucking blew himself up ( when I did my national service a fellow sergeant launched himself using stupidity and a fuel-air mix… But that didn’t happen to mé)
anyway, I’d like to win the game.
I’ve only had one true “fuck that was close” and a bunch where death was one possible outcome.
As a toddler I jammer knitting pins into a Wall socket and had to be bodytackled away.
Years later I was “fixing” an old radio and did it again.
At six I jumped in the water where I couldn’t reach the bottom and one swimming wing deflated. One of my broters friends jumped in and pulled me up.
As a teen a particular cold winter froze the ocean. We were scating near the small harbour and when the ice started breaking up we jumped from floe to floe. A large unbroken slab was still connected to the harbour so we brought saws and cut out large pieces to sail on. It was particularily fun to stand on one end and when that went under rune to the other with the piece seesawing. The ice became slippery and while doing this I slipped in the water when I was supposed to run. I also ended up trapped under a 5 inch thick floe.
But I managed to push it away, I wasn’t alone and while slippery the edge of our hole was also solid, so I climbed up and went home jeans frozen solid - had to take them off under the hot shower.
A few car accidents. None serious.
As a journalist travelling South Africa we wrecked our car at night in the midle of a township (slum).we probably weren’t in danger, but knowing South Africas crime stats, it wasn’t a great place to be with a couple thousands worth of camera eqipment.
Last night on the same trip two guys jammed a revolver in my stomack demanding all my stuff. Stupidly I argued for the return of my plastic cards… both looked baffled then the guy with the gun took the cash from my wallet, handed it back and they ran.
The one story where I knew I was close is pretty mundane and I’ve told it. Roadside breakdown at night in bad weather, truck smashes off my open door while I’m holding it only missing my ass by an inch.