A. Riding a freight train from Midwest to California. 3 day trip, very crazy.

B. Taking a motorcycle trip to a small tribal village in Thailand, smoking bong rips with a Buddhist monk, slaughtering a pig and eating it raw, drinking homemade rice hootch until blacking out. Hiking around drunkenly accidentally ending up in Burma, running away from the Burmese military. Them chasing me until I got back to the village.

C. Getting bitten by a unknown spider in Nicaragua, swollen, blistering boil, feverish, infection. Taking a bus to san salvador, then quezaltenango Guatemala, doctor cutting a blister open and pushing out the puss, excruciating pain. Then after days of it not healing, going to a local hotspring, dunking my arm in steaming hot lithium water, and basically watching the infection fall out in one massive puss ball leaving a gaping hole in my arm.

First one happened at birth:

I was turned the wrong way as a baby and the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, choking me to death. Doctors had to perform an emergency c-section. In doing so they cut my face with the scalpel in two spots. Almost didn’t make it but have these cool scars.

EDIT: where were these experts during my birth? As the commenters pointed out, I wasn’t choking, but dying nonetheless.

Visiting my terminally ill father in hospital after he had a fall. I asked him what that huge bruise on his neck was, if it was from the fall.

“No, it’s the cancer.” Was the thing he said, and I’ll never forget it. Crazy.

Got a phone call from my Dad while I was working aboard Queen Mary 2 asking if I was alright. Confused me, because yeah, of course I was. He said something about an earthquake, so I put the news on the TV.

Turns out there’d been an earthquake which had caused the tsunami in Japan. We were off the coast of Japan. The wave went right under us, and I had no idea.

Mad.

Probably living through the Tohoku earthquake disaster. That was more than a little chaotic.

My father took up a side gig consulting for the Russian government. They paid him in envelopes of American $100 bills. Then he met a grad student and started an affair with her and then divorced my mom and left the family to move to his apartment in Russia then moved to China to raise his new child and then unsuccessfully attempted to sue my whole family and I for sharing the same last name with him “fraudulently”.

At around 10pm one night I realized I’d forgotten to walk the dog and should probably do so before going to bed. As I step out onto the street I notice a woman leaning against a car with a weird look on her face, like a grimace. It’s a big city and I’ve seen lots of weird people around here so I don’t think much of it and start walking away when I hear her whimper. I turn around and ask her if she’s ok and she assures me she’s fine, her “husband is coming”. At this point I notice she’s heavily pregnant and there’s also a toddler in her car, but she insists she’s fine so I start walking away again.

I get 20 or 30 paces down the street and the woman lets out this blood-curdling howl. I run back to her and ask her what’s going on and she just says “I need to sit down”. I lead her to the steps outside my apartment building where she sits down and I fetch her a glass of water and put the dog back inside. I’ll always regret not inviting her in to my place for what comes next but I’ve been jaded by so many con-artists and burglars trying to get into my building that I didn’t feel like it was an option.

She starts breathing super heavily and stops responding to me completely. Like I’m not even there. I’m freaking out and her husband is nowhere in sight. I have no idea what to do so I rush into the hotel next door to find a “real adult” (I was early 20s) and come out with a few other 20-somethings that “knew first aid”. We immediately call an ambulance.

The ambulance guys tell me they’ll be here in 5mins but to go and get towels just in-case she’s about to give birth. I run in and get all my towels. As I come out the woman gets off the step and kneels on all fours in the middle of the sidewalk. I place towels all around her on the floor and she screams in pain. By this point a small crowd has gathered to see what all the fuss is about and some dude tries to convince her to get on her back and starts pulling her around. She fucking screams at him to stop and he backs off. She then drops her leggings down to her knees and screams “CATCH THE BABY” at which point me and one of the guys from the hotel reach down and see a newborn baby dangling in her leggings. Ambulance guys are still on the phone and tell us to wrap the baby in clean towels and, I kid you not, not even 30 seconds later the ambulance and husband both arrive.

Apparently they had rented a place a few doors down from me for the birth but there was a problem with the keys or something. The husband thanks us and they all go into the ambulance. I’m in shock and the only thing I can think is that I need to clean all this blood and poop off the sidewalk so I clean it all off. The guys from the hotel crack open a bottle of wine and we all just stand around in shock at what just happened.

So that’s the story of how I delivered a baby on the street outside my apartment. I can’t watch any birth scenes on TV or movies anymore either because of what I think is probably mild PTSD and it makes me feel instantly sick to my stomach and panicked.

TLDR: delivered a stranger’s baby on the street outside my apartment with zero prior experience

When i was at my first job in a factory as a trainee, they decided to remodel a manufacturing line and had to move some 40t hydraulic presses. They hired a crane, and the crane guy did the proper mounting of the presses. A 20cm steel beam through the mounting holes of the press, attached to the hook of the crane with these nylon carrying ropes. All fine.

As he lift the press through a hole in the roof, the steel beam just fucking breaks into two pieces. The whole 40t press falls to the ground from a height of 3 meters, leaving a crater of 50cm in depth in the concrete. The broken off piece of the steel beam slams into the driver cabin of the crane, which luckily was reinforced with a steel cage behind the window. This cage saved the crane operator’s life.

We were on a smoke break and watched everything. Fucking crazy.

Never step under heavy load hanging from a crane. Never ever.

I was carrying some HVAC equipment down some stairs last year when I accidentally slip a little and the equipment cut my wrist wide open and blood started rushing out like crazy and my hand went numb instant. I immediately put pressure on my wrist to stop the bleeding and my brother drove me to the hospital. That ride there was so intense, I genuinely felt like i might bleed to death, or even have to lose my hand. It was so surreal, I kept thinking how horrible my family, friends, and my girlfriend of 5 years would feel if I died. In that moment I realized they’re what matters. My job didn’t matter, my social media accounts didn’t matter, my materialistic items I owned didn’t matter. Just the people who I love. After arriving the doctors did a great job at assuring me I’d be fine. I had surgery 2 days later, however, I couldn’t move my wrist or hands for a while. Even now, about 14 months later, half my hand still feels mostly numb all the time, it’s super sensitive, the scar is massive and hasn’t fully healed, and I can’t close my pinky finger no matter how hard I try. It definitely sucked a lot, mostly because I was in between jobs because I had was moving, so I couldn’t work and my girlfriend had to cover so much expenses and guilt took over me like crazy and I felt so worthless. Then I felt even worse cause it caused me to gain so much weight, I even started feeling suicidal for a bit. I’ve learned to accept it though and my life is pretty much back to normal. I wasn’t able to do so many simple things like wear pants with buttons, tie my shoes, using toilet paper was a struggle, driving was hard, locking my door was almost impossible because I needed my other hand to pull my door to get it to lock. Late last year I got a job in a retail store and have since gotten 2 promotions and making the most money I’ve ever made in my life. Around that time I also started eating healthier and I’m down 60 pounds! I’m glad I beat the suicidal thoughts and kept going. Life is awesome.

Being young and exploring an abandoned farm area quite late at night, entering a hut with a friend, the door jammed as we entered and we got stuck in small box like room with caged windows for a few hours till someone heard us.

Just traumatising childhood things.

Saw a 2 person banner plane take off and then instantly crash into a bay while living in florida. Was smoking weed on the beach playing guitar when it happened. I moved closer to confirm it because of the crazy disbelief I felt and ran into a coworker who saw it aswell

So many things, but for ease of sharing I’ll just go with the time I drove off a cliff in a car.

I’m getting ready to umpire a ballgame when I’m like 20. Come out of the room five minutes before game time, and both teams have gone sprinting to the dugouts because this massive swarm of wasps (bees? Maybe bees… it was over 20 years ago) came buzzing right over the field the game was supposed to be on. Heading southeast. Partner and I nope back into the room for a while.

Anyways. The insects continue on doing whatever wasp- (or bee-) like activities they were doing and we play the game.

Game goes well. I get changed and go home. Home is somewhere between 5-10 km southeast of the ballpark.

As I park and get out I notice that the family is freaking out. Swarm of wasps (or bees) had just buzzed their way over from the northwest and taken up residence in one of the walls of our carport.

The war in ukraine i suppose

I had a psychotic break. Of course, I did not know I had developed a mental illness. I thought the Russian mafia was coming to kill me and my family. That made for a very crazy year before I finally got treatment.