Probably driving. There’s been a lot of close calls. People are so unpredictable. I’m stupid, we’re all stupid. Just apes with tools way too dangerous for our own good.
One time, I almost ended up in a knife fight, which would have been terrible. Thankfully, the other guy backed off, and nobody laid a finger on each other. It was such a stupid situation overall because it could have been avoided if I wasn’t put into the situation to begin with.
There were a few times when I was very sick, and without modern medicine, I likely would have died.
Overall, nothing really very exciting or interesting.
Driving. Someone hit me and it should’ve killed me. I was hospitalized and everything. Couldn’t walk for 6 months.
Every day is a gift
When I think about it, I’ve had many more of these experiences than I realized before.
Asides just flying out to the Aleutian islands which is always a risk. I’ll have to go with being attacked by a mother moose when I was 14 or so with my grandma. We gave it a wide berth, did everything right but she must have been terrorized recently (it was near a shitty city). We were charged on a narrow trail. I had to choose between pushing my grandmother over to run faster, or getting trampled. She was an active elder and everything. But not as fast as a 14 year old. So obviously I got trampled.
I remember the force knocking me flat, sliding forward on my back, and the huge silhouette of moose belly against the cloudy sky. Before she started stomping and spinning, which I just went fetal position.
She ended up stomping through my thigh that first stomp, didn’t break anything (idk how). She missed my nethers by about 3 inches and missed my artery by about 1/4 an inch.
Luckily my grandmother was a calm cool collected doctor. She knew it missed the artery and assured me I wouldn’t die the ten minute walk back to the car. Didn’t really calm me down.
That’s one of the predominant experiences 🙃
I misread that as ‘goose’ to begin with, which was a very different visual to a moose 😅
Two years ago I was putting the dog to bed when an old spruce tree fell on the section of house we were in. We’re talking a 60 foot/20m tall tree. Scared the hell out of us and the dog wouldn’t sleep in the room that night. It wasn’t until I went outside that I realized how close we had come. Luckily our house was made by dwarves or something (the low ceilings suddenly made sense) and aside from needing to replace roofing and some solar panels there was no damage.
Almost got dragged out to sea by a wicked undertow. I was dragged over some rough rocks and got dinged up pretty bad but a mate saw me struggling and jumped in and saved me, about 11-10 yo.
Also very young and riding home from a junk hauling job in the back of my stepfathers giant truck,. I was on top of a dresser when furniture blanket under me started sliding off the back of the truck. We were going down the highway doing 60mph and the wind pressure was just sliding me along and because of the blanket i couldn’t get a purchase on anything. My (other) mate heard my screams and grabbed the blanket as my legs were going off the edge and ice the highway. Very scary! This was maybe 10-11 years old. You might think ‘the fuck were you doing on the back of a truck going down the highway’ and all i can say is it was the 80’s nobody cared.
'Dangit, lost another kid. Well Margaret we better pop out another one!"
between my mom and stepdad they had 8 children and you really aren’t far from the mark. one of my step brothers rode the roof of a winnebago over the golden gate bridge!
Not at all close to death because I had a partner to help me out and was close to a shore near a road, but I think this is the closest I’ve come:
Capsized my touring kayak in glacial lake water without a wetsuit when a sudden gust of storm wind blew me over. Climbed back in to the kayak just fine but my cold cold arms couldn’t operate the bilge pump to empty out the water from the boat, so it was unsteady and I just blew over again.
The shore was not far but when I got there I found my insulated pants I chose for just this just-in-case were not at all the right gear; not warm at all when wet and the strong storm winds kept freezing me. (No rain — just big giant wind gusts out of nowhere)
Lesson learned: when you’re kayaking dress for the water temperature as if you’re planning to fall in because you might. Even if it’s sunny out.
Swallowed mud while on a scout camp once.
