Back when I smoked and was an unexperienced driver, I was having a cig in my car. I stuck it out of the window to tap off the ash and I drifted off of the road with my right side tires. Instead of slowly moving back I jamked the wheel and almost had a head to head collision with traffic in the oncomming lane. Escaped death by half a meter.
The first time I got hit by a car as a child
Posted this recently on a similar but different question, may as well include it here because it fits:
Exploring an easy cave with a friend. Nothing tricky at all, just one way through, standing room all the way, about 1m wide, ankle deep water flowing through the whole way (walking against the flow).
As we went, the water very slowly became harder to press forwards against. The change was so gradual we were second-guessing it the entire time until it got really strong. We figured it was better to walk against it than with it - at this point it was rushing against our legs, and the thought of slipping and being swept through, bouncing off of the walls, was not great. It felt much easier to keep our footing facing the flow, and also it seemed like we were much closer to the end than the beginning (the cave had an exit at both ends, it was basically a small fork of a river that cut through a hill).
So we pressed on, until we got to a point that should have been a small scramble up a few bits of rock - except now there was a massive flow of water hitting us at chest level as we tried to climb it. We were both completely unable to push against it and get up. We were also now convinced that the cave was filling up with water so we had to get out - which now meant turning around and doing the whole length again but with the water hitting the back of our legs the whole way.
Oh and the water was freezing, coming off of some snowy mountains. So for about an hour, we held onto the sides of the cave and slowly tried to move steadily through, while by this point I had almost no feeling in my frozen feet to help with keeping my footing. It was like guesswork every step.
By the time we got out, the water had risen by almost a metre I’d say. Not much but the extra force was insane, and the feeling of a cave filling up with water behind you was not easily ignored. Anyway, turns out there was heavy rainfall way up river from us, always check the forecast and think beyond where you are when dealing with rivers and caves!
- Almost got abducted by pedo but a cop rolled by
- Mom and I got rear ended by a dump truck that left us hospitalized for weeks
- Renal failure due to something wrong with my kidney (I was too young to understand what) but surgeons were able to fix it without removing kidney
- Almost drowned surfing…at least three times
- Hit and run when on my bicycle. That got me a nice new bike, which was nice.
- Near miss with a car while bombing a hill on my Powell Peralta skateboard. It should count as multiple because, in hindsight, bombing a hill that steep, that fast, on that board, with no gear or helmet, was in itself a near death experience every time.
- Near miss with a territorial tiger shark while surfing.
- Near miss with a territorial moray eel while scuba diving
- Wrecked my motorcycle
- Rode off a cliff while back country snowboarding…alone. Please don’t be this stupid. That was very dumb and 100% on me. Always bring a buddy. I should know better.
- Hit a hidden rock while snowboarding that caused me to whip the back of my head into the ground so hard that I almost passed out. When I checked my helmet I saw that my head must have landed on another hidden rock because there was a quarter sized hole where the rock had pierced. It was very likely a fatal hit had I not been wearing a helmet.
- Suffered from chronic and acute insomnia that almost drove me to suicide. Reality gets tilted when you don’t sleep at all.
- Felt not good. Went to the ER and was rushed to surgery. Turns out most of the arteries on my heart were blocked 93+%. One was 99% blocked. Ended up getting four stents but at least I dodged a bypass and a heart attack. Close though. Had I waited, maybe even a day, I would have had a massive heart attack. *Got cancer. Beat cancer. Fuck cancer.
EDIT: Reading someone else’s comment reminded me of a time when I was very young (5?) where we had an aquarium on top of a tall dresser. I opened the bottom drawer and climbed on the lip so that I can could see the fishies. The whole thing toppled over on me. The dresser landed on my lower body and the aquarium landed on me, shattering. I clearly remember my mom screaming in panic, my neighbors lifting the dresser off me, the terrazzo floor cover in bloody water and me yelling at the top of my lungs for someone to save the fish that was dying next to me. It didn’t make it. Oooh boy, there’s trauma there. That memory hit a nerve for some reason.
Fiancee and I were hiking into and camping at a state park. We got a little turned around and low on water, so I was a bit out of it and tired. I saw an interesting looking log across the trail and stepped over the smaller end of it. It was around 9:30am, so things were a little cold. I stopped and turned to wait for my fiancee and right as she was about to step on the log I realized it was an enormous 6-ish foot long rattlesnake. I grabbed her arm right before she put her foot down on the bastard and yanked her as hard as I could and backed up a step or two. Somehow the snake hadn’t noticed me yet, but it noticed me wrenching my fiancee away from it and it went into full coil-up-and-rattle mode. Had that thing bitten me I would have been in a bad place because I was already dehydrated. If it had bitten my wife, both of us would have been in a bad place because we were closer to our destination with fresh water than to our car.
