A few times! When I was about 8, I no longer wanted to go swim at the duck pond wiith the rest of the little kids so, I went to the river 2 blocks away where bigger kids were swimming! At first, I was scared to go in because I didn't know exactly what to expect but, I figured, they're all going in and having fun so, it should be okay for me, too. So, I went down TO the water (they were diving in from atop this 2 story-high block of cement) and I decided to just step in right next to this huge stone railroad tressel column. My dad had taken me down there a time or two before on the other side of that column and we even went in and it was quite shallow. So, I figured, it'd be the same on this side. WRONG!!! When the water flows down river during floods, it has a tendancy to swirl around this side of the column and, therfore, wash the land next to it away! So, the water right there was probably 5 to 10' deep! I got in the water expecting it to be shallow enough to walk in and went straight down!! I made it over to the column, about 3' away but, there was nothing but round holes in the huge black blocks it was made from for me to put my fingers in. The holes were about the size of the tubes in a roll of shit paper. Even those holes weren't enough for me to grab onto and I came VERY close to drowning!! One of the older kids saw me and realized I WASN'T just screwing around and he jumped in and saved me!!
I've also had pneumonia 3 times and came close to dying from each of those!
Another time, I was spending the night at grandma's house out in the boonies and she kept a loaded pistol under her pillow in case someone broke in while she was there alone. I was sleeping in her bed that night and found the gun under her pillow while I was sound asleep! I rolled over on my back pointed the gun in front of me (at the roof) and, somehow, managed to pull the trigger!! (I was only about 7 to 9 years old.) My parents were still downstairs playing cards with their friends when they heard the shot and everyone came racing up the stairs to see what happened. I could've possibly shot my brother or either of my sisters (and, now, I wish I HAD shot those two evil, greedy bitches!!), or even myself!!
And, one night, I was walking home from the mall to get ready to go back up to my new job when some fucking asshole came OFF the road from behind me and hit me with his car and drove off!! It was right in front of a hospital but, as much as I tried to flag people down to get me TO the hospital (a huge parking lot away from me), NOBODY would stop to help me!!! They just slowed the fuck down long enough to go AROUND me!!! My leg was fractured and there was HUGE hole in my elbow that almost went to the bone!! I had to HOP all the way over to the ER!! And the last section of the trip was up a steep 12' high hill of wet grass!! I lost my new job and a couple of my newspaper routes!
On several occasions, actually. Once when I was 6 years old and my appendix burst. I had my first accident when I was 16. I could have been beheaded when my head went outside the door then back in just as the door slammed shut. I should have died with the teenage girl I was trying to rescue on a SAR mission in the Coast Guard. Again while in Vietnam. I've come pretty close on several occasions that, now, I still don't know how I survived.
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I wouldn't say cheating but more surviving:
-Well according to police & court records I survived my father's efforts to kill me after my birth in the hospital and another one when I was like 2
-I was nearly hit by a car at the age of 5
(I was running away from my father. . oh the irony)
-Also at the age of 5 I poisoned myself by playing with batteries
-I was in a car accident at the age of 14 and thankfully everyone survived, besides our car
And that's pretty much it
I dared death quite a few times but never wound up in a hospital on life support or needing resuscitation.
One time I was surfing at a place in Seal Beach that we called The Jetty. It was like a channel where waves would roll in and break at the mouth but then peter out as they went further up the channel. I was riding a wave on an 8' board and, as it began to peter out, I moved to the nose of the board to try to drop down in one more time. The waved died and, for some reason, I thought it would be funny to stand there on the board as the nose sank. So I went under and the board apparently shot up into the air and the edge came down hard on my head. If it had knocked me out I would have drown. Instead, I wound up with a gash on top of my head that needed stitches.
Another time, some friends and I were backpacking to the Shoshone geyser basin in Yellowstone. We were hiking around Shoshone Lake to get there. One end of the lake was shallow and there was a tiny island with a couple of stunted trees. Two moose were on the island feeding. I think it was a female and her adolescent offspring. I had an old 110 camera with me and decided to try to get a good shot of the mooses (or is it meese? LOL). So I walked through the shallow water toward the island, moving slowly and non-threateningly, not sneaking. I got maybe 50' away and took the shot.
Looking back, I realize how risky that was. A moose could have stomped me into the mud. And we were several miles out in the wilderness.
One time the right side of a delivery van I was driving got broadsided. I saw it coming and heard the crash. The next thing I knew, I heard sounds and realized that I was lying in the back of the van with two EMTs next to me. Upon impact (no seat belt), my head had bashed the metal part of the right seat back and I had been thrown into the back of the van unconscious. I must have been out for quite a while. No major injuries, though. I dodged a bullet on that one.
I've climbed rock cliffs. If I had slipped I would have died. I've done crazy shit on skateboards and bicycles and driving cars. Lots of other death defying stuff when I was young and stupid that thought I was immortal.
While working international human trafficking profiling in the 80's, got entangled in a 'pissing match' with a Montreal-to-Boston contraband cartel. Local 'Capo' was a machismo Latino, named Ramone.
They tried bribing me openly in a Winooski, VT night club to have someone get photos for subsequent extortion, failing that, they took a shot at me while on my motorcycle home from work 2:30 am from same club trying to get me to dump the bike on a curve, ... another occasion tried running my car off the road with an unlicensed & unlit white Ford F-150 (til I started carrying a 12 ga. with '00' buckshot) and finally the attempted car bombing occurred on Labor Day 1987 at the Shelburne VT Ponderosa restaurant, UVM parents Weekend.
VT State Police ascertained the car bomb's detonator ignited but the main charge fouled. (My 'guardian angel' draws combat pay!)
State Police removed the bomb wedged next to my gas tank and elected to detonate thermos-bottled-sized PVC pipe bomb in a nearby unoccupied drive-in's parking lot.
The steel -cabled blast mat rose 20 feet off the ground and the concussion nearly took out the bay window of the restaurant... not much left for Forensics.
If the gas tank had 'blevied' as they'd planned, all evidence would have been destroyed along with my one year old Camero Berlinetta and anything within a 30 ft radius~
That was Ramone's egotistical mistake. "The Devil's BEST argument is... that the Devil doesn't exist" ... figments of one's imagination, DON'T bomb cars! The names of the local shills my Protectee named were 'well connected'. So they remained untouched.
Disrupted the cartel's 'invisibility' for over a year and a half, costing them $$$ revenue; I heard Ramone got a chance for a one way 'swim' in Lake Champlain for his egotism.
And I, decided a permanent change of scenery might be 'wise', so I moved to Florida by 1996. Chittenden County State Attorney buried any further 'attempted homicide' investigation. Politically 'good' for HIS career. >:(
I'm not trying to sound cool, here. In fact I'm very, very, very ashamed of it. But maybe about 6 years ago I was driving home from class at or near dusk. I would take this two-lane road that travels between two towns. It goes through this sort of country area so at dusk there usually isn't a lot of people driving it.
At the time I liked to be efficient with my time so I'd speed to get home quicker. But every once in a while there'd be a car in front of me. Usually they're going a bit faster than the speed limit so it didn't bother me. I didn't pass people a ton, I could probably count on one, mayyybe two hands as to how many times I've done it.
But one night there was someone who I guess just wasn't going fast enough for me. We were approaching this curve in the road to the right, of which went around a hill so we were unable to see what was around or beyond this curve due to the hill blocking our view. So I wanted to pass this person, however, I did acknowledge the riskiness of doing so when I can't see if there is a car coming in the other lane beyond the hill, but I tried to pass them anyways. I just figured it's dusk and people usually aren't taking this road at this time, so it's unlikely that there will happen to be a car coming on the other side of that hill.
So I make my way into the other lane to pass the car and unluckily enough, there was another car coming. Stupidly, rather than playing it safe and slowing down to go back behind the car I was just behind, I double-downed trying to make it past the car before the car driving towards me gets to me. Well, apparently that car driving towards me was going pretty fast, too (and no, I'm not blaming them for going fast. This was entirely my fault). So I sped up and made it between the two cars, thankfully, entirely unscathed. But I'm not exaggerating when I say I came literally just a couple feet between both of those cars when I made it back into the other lane.
My adrenaline was pumping (not from speeding, I don't find it adrenaline-inducing, but from how close of a call that was), so the potential fatality of the situation didn't hit me until a few minutes later. I noticed that immediately after what I had done, the car that was in front of me that I tried to pass pulled over and just sat there (I could see them in my rear-view mirror). It was dusk so they weren't writing down my license plate, and even if it wasn't dusk, I doubt they'd have the mental clarity to gather my license plate during that incident. So I'm only left to believe I scared the living shit out of an innocent person, causing them to pull over and gather themselves. I not only risked my life, but the innocent lives of two other people at the very least, possibly two whole families
I do feel guilty about it. I could have taken my life, leaving my family and friends in grief. Or the life, or lives, of other innocent people, leaving their family and friends in grief. I'm not scared of passing people now, or anything, but I don't think I've passed someone ever since.
I've cheated death many times. Not due to my abilities or intelligence, but due to luck, the hand of God or maybe predestination.
This is my most mysterious incident. I was learning how to ride a motorcycle one summer. I was mindlessly riding with no situation awareness. There was a bus in front of me that had stopped but started moving. What I didn't know was that the bus stop was 25 feet roughly from the cross street. When it stopped at the Stop sign, I was totally unprepared. To make matters worse, it was a hot summer and the asphalt pavement had buckled. There was no way I could stop before hitting the bus nor could I swerve because the buckled pavement was making the bike bounce. I have no recollection of what happened or how it happened. What I do remember was that I was still on my bike, being between the bus and the curb, my right foot on the curb, not a scratch on the bike or me. I'm fairly sure a stunt rider couldn't have done that and that the laws of physics were probably suspended momentarily.
I had a cold, the doctor prescribed me an antibiotic, which I took other times.
My body had a severe side effect, anaphylactic shock, I had itching all over my body, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. My tongue started to swell and it was starting to make my breathing harder. I no longer had the strength to stand up and a feeling of nausea kept intensifying. I sat down on the sauce and started screaming with the few remaining powers, my parents could hardly hear me in the room I was in, but they managed to hear me.
After they found me and lifted me off the floor a few seconds later I fainted for a few minutes. At that moment I had the most real and strange dream of my life, I had never dreamed in my life with such clarity and awareness.
I was woken up with a few slaps and sprayed with cold water, only when the ambulance came and asked them to move me to a larger space, at that moment I fainted for the second time.
The ambulance doctors saved me with certain injections, an infusion and my emergency transport to the hospital.
The doctors, when I recovered, said that I was in great and real danger of dying and that I was lucky that the ambulance was contacted and they managed to arrive on time.
When I was a kid I spent nearly 2 years in hospital due to my weight dropping rapidly, I was
On NG tube for most of my time there, I even had to take speech therapy to retrain how to eat, and even after getting out of the hospital and still to this day, I fight to gain weight, if I get sick i lose weight rapidly to the point that itās life threatening and I have to be hospitalized (I have a compromised immune system). Iāve always struggled with my weight and Iāve been hospitalized on and off for nearly 14 years. Even my weight now is under 110 pounds , and Iām currently limited on what I can eat due to newly diagnosed medical issues involving my stomach. There have been moments where I didnāt think I would survive, itās not a way of life anyone should go through.
I decided to cross the street one day without looking. There was a fast moving tramway like 5 meters away coming towards me. I had to jump forward and it barely missed me. The bad part was another one happened to arrive at the same time from the opposite direction. In my rush to avoid death I almost jumped under the other one. I ended up between the two for a couple seconds as they were speeding away both at the same time, completely horrified.
But the worst part was that once the street was clear I had to walk towards a battalion of grumpy old ladies waiting on the other side pointing at me and making gestures to let me know they think I am completely insane.
Iāve been in some crazy car wrecks I mean literally rolled a car about four times and walked away from it I walked some red iron about 80 feet in the air during a freak hail storm to grab a 4 inch thick sheet of rigid foam before it flew off the building and hit a car or somebody and when I grabbed it and turned to walk back the wind caught it and almost sent me flying I froze and couldnāt move I guess I remembered I was afraid of heights cause my body wouldnāt move until a laborer climbed out with 2 dudes holding him and I was able to turn enough for him to grab the sheet of foam then I could move my legs again that was probably the scariest but Iāve been stabbed and Iāve been shot at and actually was in 2 kinda shootouts a couple more incidents where things could of went real bad
Yea was in a terrible vehicle accident. As I'm driving going around 65or 70 mph my tie rods in my car broke sending me into on coming traffic then smash head on int an 18 wheeler sending me flipping 3 times end over end I broke my back in 3 places fractured my spine7 broke ribs both hands were broken collar bone broken and my Bone pop out of the elbow I was in a coma for 53 days and had to learn to walk and talk again. It took me a yr an 4 months to walk again. My two daughters made that happen even when I didn't wanna try they made me lol they were 5 and 11 years old af the time
I used to climb and boulder a lot as a young adult, we went to one quarry that had treas and lose shale around the top so we would absaile down and climb out, one day we were doing a 40 meter wall and I got to the top and couldn't scramble the shale but I couldn't grab a tree because of the rope, stupid me unhooked myself and started trying to run and only narrowly grabbed a tree before I would have fallen.
I did find a young jumper (suicide) victim in the same quarry a short time later.
Also narrowly avoided death on the UK motorway was a passenger in a truck that flipped onto its roof and was pushed across all 3-4 lanes of the motorway in bussy traffic.
Been belted with 240VAC a few times too, including from the unfused side of a consumer unit (fuse board) up to 100A.
I got stuck by a honey bee, thought nothing of it, and drove to a convenient store to get coffee. I hit the ground and motioned for someone to call 911. In the ambulance, my life flashed before my mind was in fear and darkness. I cried out for help and I saw a light in the distance. It was not a person, but more of a place, but not really a place either, a spacetime beyond space and time. There are helpful entities there who can hear you crying out in the void. I woke up with an IV in my arm and a really cute nurse.
Yes I was in high school at that time my best friend was driving four of us, Dallas freeway can be scary and dangerous at times. I still get nightmares, About this. We got into a car react , Two of my friends died that day. I almost died from what my doctor told me they almost lost me.
Many times... guns that didn't fire. People who wanted to kill me but changed their minds and told me later. Falling into 40 foot deep water at maybe 12 years-old without knowing how to swim and just wading out like it was a bathtub. Jumping off a 4 story building onto a downslope and not breaking any bones.
2 actually. 1 was my 2 friends and I were standing at the edge of sidewalk, ready to cross, a small truck was zooming by a little to fast, it hit a hole, the box tilted towards is, I pull friends back at the last moment.
Second time, I went to Cuba, rented snorkeling gear. We went into the sea. So in enjoying myself looking at how beautiful it was under there. Suddenly, I hit one fin with the other and it falls off. Sinking pretty fast, so I did not want to lose my deposit. I swam 20-30 feet to get it. As soon as I grabbed it, I was running out of air. I swam as fast as I could back to surface. When I got to the top, I gasped for air. It was not over. The waves pushed the boat so far away. I was so tired I don't know how I made back waves kept pushing at me.
Not so much cheated, just been lucky.
as I spent most of my adult life in the military and on Operations, then a number of days where āthere but for the grace of god go iā.
had a lot of near misses, close calls, random stuff, it goes with the job really.
I cheated death on my 5 year oldās behalf (thank all that is holy). He tried to disobey me and run into the street and I grabbed him by his collar moments before a cop car speeding down our street would have obliterated him. The cop would have never seen him because he was in front if my suv. A parentās true worst nightmare.
Oh yeah a few times most interesting one though was as the time I was putting away birthday decorations when I fell off a ladder. My head hit a glass shelf that shattered and the metal bar holding the glass bent down luckily I didn't get a scratch somehow
Well, maybe not exactly death, but I had a few incidents with wrong-way drivers, some at slower speeds, two at higher speeds. Itās interesting how one just reacts in such situations.
Skidded of iced roads on three occasions, always quite harmless, but could have been dangerous in other circumstances.
Full cardiac arrest last year. Took 4 hours to resuscitate me using CPR. I'd been in a coma 3 months from Covid so it's a miracle the team even tried
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