Your Faces of Death

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

 

Damn, I was going to put how I was inches away from getting pummeled by an SUV while crossing the street (guy had a stop sign and I think the sun was in his eyes) and the time I fell out of a cabin with tarp for walls on to a pile of rocks about 6 to 8 feet below, but between t_b_f and Tiger I feel like I'm bringing a pea shooter to a tank battle.

I'm glad you both are alive, and thank you t_b_f for risking your life to save others.

 

10 years-old at the swimming pool. I'd just jumped off the diving board and was under water when a high school guy jumped right in on top of me. I hit my head on the bottom of the poll. I managed to reach the surface and struggled to the side where the lifeguard finally noticed what was going on and helped me out. Ended up with a concussion.

 

T_B_F chose to put himself in his situation, for all of our sakes. Save all your respect for him!

 

July 1972. Five of us in a Pinto headed west on I-90 at about 8 in the morning. Back tire blows completely out, car goes into a skid, ends up broadside, stalled in a lane of traffic. Driver somehow gets the car started, hauls ass onto the shoulder. Guy who saw the whole thing stops to help, asks us if we call crapped our pants, and says he can't believe there was enough of a break in traffic that we didn't get hit.

This was before the news came out that Pintos were firebombs in collisions.

 

One of the neat things that resulted from my accident was that I got to participate in a study conducted jointly by Vandy Med School and its School of Divinity. They took NDE survivors from around the country and probed our experiences, to determine if there was any sort of proof of the great hereafter.

I was in the group that had no recollection of "walking towards the light" or any such stuff. But what was amazing was that there were more than 50 or so people in the other group -- the group that thought they had some God-like experience.

 

Second grade. We lived on a farm in rural Columbia, Mo., next door to a small pond. That winter, ice formed on top -- and I thought it cute to see how far I could walk across. Mid-way, I fell through the ice but managed to pop back up in the same hole. My brother came out near me, took off his coat, extended to me and pulled me out.

Sophomore year in college. Fell asleep at the wheel, crossed two lanes of oncoming traffic and came to rest wrapped around a concrete pillar in the middle of a ditch. Every segment of metal on my Ford Ranger was crumpled save the passenger door. I escaped with a broken leg.

 

For the record, I'd like to point out that I was stone sober when I fell off my terrace.

 

After TBF's and TigerVols' stories, I kind of feel like I walked into an amputee support group and said, "See THIS!? Nicked myself shaving this morning. Took me FOUR pieces of toilet paper to clot the sumbitch!"

 

Pulling a combined dozen or so kayaks and canoes with a van full of kids and an Australian counselor, a tire blew out on the trailer. We were going about 55 down a grade and I just eased it to the shoulder. The counselor is looking at me white as a ghost. I guess I did not realize how close we came to rolling the van full of kids.

 

The first time I was really constipated, I was praying for death.

Does that count?

 

After getting really drunk, I was spewing from both ends. I both prayed for death and seriously considered calling a paramedic friend of mine. So I sympathize with you bro.