What's the closest you've been to death?

R

Red Five

500+ Posts
Yeah, kind of morbid I know, but it's something I was thinking about yesterday. For me, it's either the time I was robbed at gunpoint (eight years old too, getting a haircut. Fun stuff.) or the time I fell asleep at the wheel driving back from Mardi Gras. Not good.
 
1. I fell asleep at the wheel before - drifted across the center line - heard a horn and woke up!


2. Jumping @ Bragg - I was a towed jumper for mabe 3-5 seconds (it felt like 10 minutes).
 
Driving southbound on I-75 in a rain storm and a guy going northbound lost control crossed the median and I broadsided him doing about 60. I broke my femur, fibula and tibia (the latter a compound fracture) and cut my patella in half severing the tendon. MD said in no uncertain terms if what happened to my femur had been 4 inches higher, I'd have bled out in my car.
 
On a dare, hung by my fingertips from a ledge at the Skirvin Plaza Hotel in downtown OKC. I believe it was about 15 stories up. The same night, on a dare, I climbed to the top of a dome-topped water tower that was dew-soaked, climbed inside, and swam around. I would like to blame the beer, but it was only 3.2%.
 
Probably two times come right to mind. First, jumping in Waller creek during a flash flood up by the Delt house. Road the rapids trying to escape all the way down the the alumni center. Second, being mugged with a bottle broken over my head in order to steal my wallet in the alley between 6th and 7th streets (was just trying to take a leak in private).
 
I dreamed once that I was driving a red 1974 Ford Pinto off a cliff. I think I stopped breathing. When the car hit the ground I awoke in a start.

Maybe it was just sleep apnea.
 
Thought I was a goner last summer at South Padre Island. Day 1 I swam out to the 2nd sand bar, no big deal. Day 2 -- I swear it was the exact same spot but I was swimming forever and couldn't find the ocean floor. Tide started pulling me further and further away, I could see my wife and kids getting smaller and smaller. I really thought I was going to drown. Then I just said, "NO" and started swimming my *** off towards the shore. Lungs were burning but I kept going until I could feel the sand under my feet. Very, very scared to even think about it now.
 
On a driving trip to New Mexico and Arizona several years ago, we ran into a serious fog bank just past Brownwood and somehow wound up driving west in an eastbound lane (don't remember the road). Nearly had a head-on with a semi.
 
1. Had some punk pull a gun on me in the lot behind Cain & Abel's late one night, asked me if "I wanted some trouble". I'd had a few beers, and just started walking towards him, told him to put his gun away and we'd have some trouble.

He looked at me for a second, muttered something, then turned around, tucked the gun back in his pants and walked off.

Don't know why I did that, but 10 minutes later it hit me how close I came to getting shot, and nearly gave myself a heart attack thinking about. Still does.

2. Nearly drowned after getting swept down a river in Montana when I was about 9.

3. Was in a roll over collision in high school, walked away without a scratch.
 
i think it's worth remembering that ol' reboot has a hard time saying "no" to a dare
smile.gif
 
Napoleon beat me to it, Chango.

In my case, three of us were driving to the Tech game in 2006. My car, but we had just switched drivers in Rising Star. We were going about 70 MPH and rounding a bend when we noticed an oncoming driver right in the wrong lane closing fast. We swerved to the shoulder and avoided a head on collision. The other driver was either alseep or insane. She didn't even realize she was in the wrong lane.

Bernard
 
Last weekend I was driving back to austin in bastrop in the right lane and hydroplaned, slid through the left lane backwards and did a 360 through the median.. Fortunately the grass in the median was long enough and there was enough water in the bottom to slow me down and I didnt go into oncoming traffic (which was heavy at the time). I ended up facing my original direction of travel, right inside the shoulder of the lanes going the other way. It took me about 30 seconds to compose myself to a degree that I could get out of my car. The fact that the entire sequence only took 7-10 seconds is the only reason I didnt **** myself.
 
Went surfing the morning after Hurricane Gilbert hit the Gulf Coast... we were surfing by the 61st street jetty in Galveston. Strong current and a storm surge that pretty much obscured the jetties. I dropped in a wave only to spot the jetty, at the very last second, directly in front of me. One second too late and I would've been toast.

Oh... and a few days ago, I almost stepped in front of a bus in Rome. As much as I've been there, you'd think I'd know better. It wasn't the typical "walk into traffic to cross the street" situation - it was more of a situation where I was looking the wrong way and almost got flattened.
 
Probably when I was born. I was 2 months premature and weighed 2lbs, 5.5 ounces. I wasn't supposed to have lungs. For anyone who knows me, i most definitely do.
 
Last year, three friends and I were driving back to Knoxville from Tunica. There was a few inches of ice on the roads so we took it slow. Once we got on I-40, it got to the point that there were ruts in the ice as long as you stayed perfectly in the lane. I got up to 65 feeling confident of my precision. What I didn't account for was my attention span. They were watching Wedding Crashers on the DVD. I turned to watch for just a couple of seconds and lost the ruts. We did some crazy **** all over the road in my F-150 but, somehow, didn't crash. My friends were pretty pissed at me.
 
Drunk in Cancun, 3 am, at Senor Frogs. 1993. Aware that I've had too much to drink, feeling like I just need to get back to my hotel and pass out. Waiting at taxi stand, girl behind me (who was much hotter than I deserved and who I had never seen before), grabs my arm, and tells me in XXX language that I am going home with her. Cannot quote her directly as I am going to keep this story PG-13. We get back to her hotel room-- her room is on the 3rd or 4th floor. Soon we're standing out on her balcony making out.

She says, "Let's go down to the pool and go skinny dipping!" So she leaves me on the balcony while she goes in the room to put on a bikini. While she's in there, I'm looking down into the courtyard beside the hotel at the outline of a pool (they had turned out the outside lights, so it was hard to see). I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to just jump off the balcony into the pool and I'll be down there waiting when she gets there?"

So I climb over the railing, I lean out holding to the railing with one hand, and a split second before I jumped, I had a moment of doubt: What if I was jumping into the shallow end of the pool? I strained to look, but I couldn't tell how deep the water was. So I abandoned that idea, climbed back over the rail, went inside to find her half-dressed.

We never made it swimming.

Fast forward a few hours (Aww, hell, who am I kidding? Fast forward 30 minutes). Now I'm down in the lobby of her hotel making a "deal" with the cab driver to take me back to my hotel, the Cancun Playa, for all the money I had left in my wallet. I didn't know where I was and I only had about 10 bucks. So he agrees to the deal, he slips the money into his shirt pocket, and then drives me about 200 feet to the doorway of the Cancun Playa and lets me out.

I stumble to my room and pass out.

The next day, I wake up and look out my window to the hotel next door. I look down into the little area between the two hotels where the "pool" was, and realize that the "pool" was just the outline of some shrubbery planted around a grassy field.

p.s. I have had much closer calls with death, but I like this story more.
 
When I was about 8, I didn't know how to swim. Dad took me to a big water park (Whitewater in Oklahoma City), put those floatie things on my arms, and then proceeded to let me wander free. I immediately took the floatie things off because I looked like a tool.

I got on one of those inner-tube slide/tunnel things. When I was at the top I put the tube in the water, but I wasn't strong enough to hold it with the force of the water. The inner tube took off and I got in the tunnel to go after it. Unfortunately, I couldn't catch up to it.

At the bottom, I hit the water and fell to the bottom of the pool. I remember looking up and thinking "I need to get up there but I can't."

A lifeguard saved me.
 
Coming back from Reynosa after a night out. Headed up north back to Falfurrias up 281. 281 was two lanes at the time. My drunk friend veers left into oncoming traffic, we barely sideswipe the oncoming vehicle. I **** myself, tell my friend what just happened and to pull over and let me drive. He doesn't believe me, doesn't realize what just happened. I point out the fact that his driver's sideview mirror is gone. He keeps going. Ten minutes later we approach the Border Patrol checkpoint. He drives right into the back of a Greyhound bus waiting in line. Not hard enough to hurt anybody, but hard enough to have the bus driver get out and walk back to yell at us. We get up to the agents and are waived to go into secondary where a DPS trooper awaits us. Friend gets DWI. I get a ride to county jail by Border Patrol, where I am allowed to call my Dad to come pick me up. No criminal charges against me, but a close call no doubt.
 
My appendix ruptured when I was 12. Was running a 104 degree fever and hallucinating the night before they went in and took that sucker out. I was a tiny little kid, too.
 
When I was 11 I lived in rural eastern washington and lived a "stand by me" childhood. Two buddies and I headed out one cold march morning to go to the "Fort". The fort was a 30 minute hike through the dense forest to an abandoned wooden boat. The boat had an interior cabin that made a sweet clubhouse. In the rear was a rotted porthole that was the only exit. The boat was in various stages of decay. Cracks in the hull were filled w/ hundred of sheets of newspaper and shop rags to keep the wind out .

Well we got the bright idea to make a fire pit in the back of the boat using our only escape route as a chimney, The fuel of choice was pine needles and and sticks, other wise known as indian kerosene. Well it didn't take maybe 30 seconds to realize
that was the worst idea ever. the paper was quick to ignite and the wood was starting to catch. Panicked, we started to kick at the hull hoping to break free. After a couple of minutes of desperate kicking the entire back of the boat was engulfed. As it became harder to breathe one buddy and i decided to give up and put our faces close to the cracks in the bottom of the boat, content to have plenty of O2 as we burned alive. My other buddy, the smart one, thinking quick grabbed a large piece of sheet metal left in the cabin and threw it on the part of the fire covering the exit. this gave us the opportunity to quickly exit the boat. After a quick stop drop and roll the only things that got burned was our clothes and a little hair.
 
Several times, but one time I had that "give up" moment. In college, floating the guadalupe, very intoxicated. I was looking behind me yelling at some friends (didn't realize they were telling me to stop). Turned around frustrated, only to go down some "rapids" and fall off the tube. I'm underwater, little air because of how quick it happened, and other tubes keep hitting me on the head as I try to go up. Also, the little undertow, suction thing water does is for real. After what seemed like a minute (probably seconds) and several attempts to get out of this little underwater tomb, I had this feeling of giving up. Can't really describe it, more of a resignation.

I kind of relax, stop tensing up, and in a few seconds was shot back out and up by the current. Still don't know how I "got out", but am damn grateful.

Scary business, and I never floated that damn thing again. I here they have people stationed at those dropoffs/rapids things now to help folks who fall off their tube, but I still won't go.
 
When I had just turned 18, some senile old woman ran a red light and broadsided me. It spun me completely around and threw me into oncoming traffic where I collided with a car in the oncoming traffic. I survived with only a broken arm. The lady who hit me wasn't so lucky, died a few hours later in the hospital.

I now slow down and look each way when entering an intersection, no matter how fast traffic is going. Just a nervous reaction I can't shake, I guess.
 
Paddled out into what locals on the beach in Kauai said were waves with 10-12 ft faces. Had surfed for several years but never anything that size.

I try to get up on my first wave, start to stand on the lip but wipeout terribly and the power of the wave slams me into the water. The leash to my surfboard snaps off my ankle from the impact and I'm driven several feet underwater (30ft deep where I'm surfing).

Get my bearings, water is clear so I can see fairly clearly, but the harder I try to get to the surface the more the undertow from the "crash zone" seems to be pulling me down. As Tex-Ex mentioned, I too had this very relaxing feeling come over me, no panic at all, and I remember thinking I wasn't going to make it as I couldn't even get within a few feet of the surface. I paddled up a couple more strokes and somehow got my head above the water for a breath. Swam back to the beach and didn't get in the water the rest of our vacation.
 
I got held up at gunpoint twice. Once in Houston and once in Venezuela. For some reason, neither scared me much.

I almost drowned at Schlitterbahn when I was in 5th grade. It was on a river style ride with slides dispersed throughout. I fell off after one of the slides and the holding pool was packed with people. I got stuck under them and couldn't get out. I was a tiny kid, but after about a minute, I finally exploded through some man and knocked him out of his tube. I was in a panic.

The most scared I've ever been was when I was 16 in Moscow in 1993. I was an exchange student. The guy I was staying with was helping an AWOL soldier get away from this other group of soldiers. I should have walked away then, but I didn't know where I was and I was drunk as hell. We were hiding behind dumpsters and newstands while these soldiers were looking for him. They saw him and came our way, carrying machine guns. I bolted and so did the guy from my host family. Luckily they didn't chase us or squeeze off a few rounds. After I sobered up, I was anxious as hell thinking about how I could've been in a Russian jail or gunned down over there. It was like the Wild West over there then.
 
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