Ever have a Near Death Experience?

[Niveous]

I just had one yesterday. I was riding the train with a co-worker and her boyfriend. We were just standing and talking when all of a sudden, the window that I was leaning against fell out of the train and I nearly fell as well. Quick reflexs saved me from either crashing to the ground, getting run over by the moving train or smacking into a pole at high speed. When I pulled myself back in, my co-worker immediately said "I saw you dead". From that moment on, the whole train was staring at me wide-eyed. It was surreal.

Has any other Songfighters had a Near Death Experience?

[GlennCase]

While I can't recall having any near-death experience like that, I am glad that you are alive for what it's worth. That sounds like a frightening scenario.

ROCK!

Glenn Case

[furrypedro]

holy crap dude.

sounds like you ride to work with a friendly bunch of characters.

[WeaselSlayer]

That's some Final Destination shit right there, glad you made it.

[bz£]

sounds like you ride to work with a friendly bunch of characters.

Yah, mean ones would have pushed you out the window. Um, got in a really nasty car accident back in high school. Nobody was hurt, so that's good, but, well, let's just say that not much compares to the feeling of spinning out on a major highway at midnight, in driving rain, at a rather excessive speed. Headlights taillights headlights taillights headlights guardrailsuddenstop.

[Dan-O from Five-O]

Too many to list from simply riding a motorcycle. It's almost become passe. "Oh look, another dumbass turning left right in front of me in the intersection. " Motor skills take over at that critical moment. Downshift, front brake, check mirror, emergency lane change, flip the bird at the offending moron.

The one time I didn't quite get it right was when an old man in a P.O.S. Dodge Maxivan (about a 1/4 mile long version) was pulling out of his driveway. Now get out your compass kids, because these details are important. I'm traveling North on a sidestreet that has cars parked on both sides. He is pulling out from the East side of the street and heading straight out of his driveway trying to turn South. (That puts the driver’s side nearest to me BTW) He can't quite make the turn and chooses to simply stop, right there in front of me. Before I can even comprehend the ineptitude of the maneuver this jackass has just completed in front of me I'm on both brakes hard and trying to swerve through the foot and a half wide hole he left for me at the front of his van.

I don't make it.

The rear tire comes out from underneath me and the bike and I slide under.....that's UNDER the van.

The scariest moment was realizing that I was pretty much physically unhurt for the moment but thinking as I'm staring out the 3 inch tall hole of my helmet at the bottom of his van that this guy was going to panic and try to back up thus running over me. I'm screaming at the top of my lungs "STOP! STOP! GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

The old man and his son get out of the van and tell me to just wait while they call for an ambulance. Yeah right. I'm trapped underneath Mr. Magoo's van with the still running and hot motorcycle lying on one of my legs and they want me to wait.

I reach over to the twisted remains of my handlebars and turn the bike off. I ask them to help me out from under the van. "No" they reply. “Just stay where you areâ€

[Bjam]

We(Miller family + Caravan Ray) saw a pretty nasty motorbike+car crash on the way to San Jose airport. Did not look like there would be a good ending.

Some drivers are real dicks to motorcyclists. But then again, with no strict helmet rules in the US, motorcyclists who decide it's totally okay to just wear normal clothes on a bike are pretty stupid. Full face helmets = Your friend. (Dad used to have a BMW K1200LT in the UK, and before any of us could ride pillion we had to have all the proper gear on.)

[rone rivendale]

I've had 2 so far.

1st happened in 1992 when I was 12. I was in the backseat with another kid, my Mom was in the front passanger seat and one of her friends was driving. We were going through an intersection at 35 mph when we were hit by a drunk driver going 75 right through a stop sign. Our car went down a hill, through some people's yards and then stopped a few feet from hitting these ppl's house. Just looking at pictures of the car we were in, it's a shock no one died. I got a bruised sternum(sp?) and a bruise that went down the whole inside of my right leg. My Mom broke her right knee into 3 pieces. My Mom's friend who was driving ended up with brain damage.

The 2nd one was in 1994 on a plane ride home from a month long vacation during the summer. We were flying above Dallas when our tiny 20 seater plane got caught in a thunderstorm. It shook the hell outta the plane and even the flight attendents were screaming for their lives. We ended up having to stop in Dallas and stay in a hotel for the night and then continue the next day.

Glad you are okie, Niveous.

[sausage boy]

Not lately.

When I was about 10 years old, I was at the beach. Important note for non-Australians, a lot of Australian beaches have these red and yellow flags that you should swim between. The flags do nothing to protect you, but it kind of gives the Lifesavers one spot to concentrate on.

It is generally understood, at least where we lived, that you swim between the flags, and things like surf boards and the like go outside of them. Because there are usually little kids at the beach. And kids and hard fast objects mix.

At the beach, 10 years old, between the flags. Not too sure what happened exactally, but a fellow on a surfboard managed to find his way into between the flags, riding a wave. Obviously small, fragile Sausage Boy's are not something that surfers usually look out for, and I got a pointy fibreglass front of surf board in the face.

All I remember after that is being pulled out of the water by a very frantic Sausage Boy's Father. Thats mine.

Glad everyone is ok.

[Denyer]

I once walked into the door at Subway. It was meant to open when I walked toward it, but it didn't.

[Leaf]

I once walked into the door at Subway. It was meant to open when I walked toward it, but it didn't.

One of your cheesier, but strangely better jokes.


YOU ARE GOING SOFT DENYER.


Niv... strangely, isn't the whole thing kinda awesome though? I mean, cause you had that moment, but survived. I think you are lucky for the experience as well as the survival.


On July 1st, I was setting up the sound system for an outdoor show, and the lighting rig fell where I had just been standing. I walked forward, and it fell right behind me. I'd call this more of a "near-miss" as I was so focused on the problem I was trying to solve that it didn't even occur to me that I had avoided definite injury and possibly worse until a few hours later...

[fodroy]

The closest I've had is this...

When I was about 14 or 15 I went to Cedar Point with my family and some of the families in our neighborhood. I was in the pool at the hotel, in the deep end (this is not a near-drowning story). I was diving down to the bottom of the pool and pushing off the bottom as hard as I could and doing sort of the opposite of a dive and seeing how far I could get my body out of the water. At the same time one of the younger kids in the neighborhood, who was probably about 8 or 9, but quite chunky, decided to do a cannonball into the deep end. His cannonball came at the exact time that I was rocketing up from the bottom of the pool. So my head left the water and his weight (which was easily more than I weighed, even with the age differences) comes down on the top of my head and takes me down. I remember immediately thinking "I'm going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life." So I floated back up and people helped pull me out. I turned out to be alright, but my neck hurt like hell for the next week or so.

[Bjam]

Not so much a near-death but an 'Oh god, I'm totally gonna die if this doesn't go right' moment. For my school's production of Les Mis we needed a gate that one of the characters could climb over without it breaking. The dad's doing the building had just finished building the 8ft tall frame of the gate, but hadn't started adding support beams until they knew where it was stressing(or something like that anyway).

All the guys building it were rather heavy, so they decided to get me to test it(I was the only student there, I think I was doing set painting or something). I climbed up 8ft of planks and a few nails with about 10 guys standing around going, "Oh, that bit is wobbling, we'll have to fix that. Oh yeah, that bit is totally unstable. Bethany, don't stand there, quick, go further up!" Very frightening. That said, it ended up being a marvelous looking and very strong gate.

[Märk]

I flipped a car off a steep embankment (about a 20ft drop) at probably 60mph. The first impact was on the roof directly above my head, and it rolled like 8 times. My girlfriend was fine, but I had cuts and bruises, concussion, severe whiplash, and an almost severed ear (it was hanging on by a bit of skin and cartilage)

You know how stuff doesn't hurt right away? I thought I was fine, but got talked into going to the hospital, where a doctor stitched my ear back on and bandaged my head up. Fun stuff. I was picking glass out of my scalp for weeks, and couldn'r sleep properly for a couple months due to the incredible neck pain. Yep, I almost bit the big one there.

I know, it's an accident story.. boooring.

[Denyer]

My girlfriend was fine

You're lucky you didn't land on anything sharp, she might have deflated!

[Märk]

My girlfriend was fine

You're lucky you didn't land on anything sharp, she might have deflated!

HAR HAR

[deshead]

Heh heh, that was pretty funny Denyer.

Niv's story, a little less funny. Did you find the world looked a little different afterwards, Niv? Like the movie Fearless?

I think the closest I ever came to dying was that time our car caught fire at a gas station, with the noozle still in the tank, and we ducked behind a dumpster waiting for the pump to explode. I'd spent the afternoon drinking Leine's Red, though, so the experience didn't impact me the way yours did. i.e. We played rock-paper-scissors to decide who should grab the fire extinguisher, rather than scattering like all the sober people did.

[Niveous]

Wow, some of these are.....wow.

To answer your question, Des. I've never seen Fearless. But has it changed the way I look at things. It's been strange. I look at my life. I look at the previous year- where I was in and out of the hospital, fighting depression, fighting suicidial tendencies. And here I am, in a better place in my life- rebuilding all my relationships, starting a new band, finally getting closer to 100% and then out of the blue- bang. What if I hadn't had such good reflexs or balance and tumbled out of the train? What if I would've hesitated and had the back of head smashed against a concrete pillar in the tunnel? It was as if death was suddenly back in my house. I don't know. It's been odd.

[roymond]

Nothing so near, Niv. Glad you're ok!
I had a visitation once though (yes, atheist me...convinced), and it still makes me think about the final moment and the moments after the final one.

[Caravan Ray]

I got bit by a snake in south-west Queensland.

I didn't see the snake - I just woke up with a bruised and swollen ankle, and matching fang marks in my leg and trousers. It wasn't really a near-death experience I suppose, because the snake obviously didn't envenomate me - I just like telling people I was bit by a snake.

The coolest thing is that I was bit in the area of Queensland (east of Boulia) that is the right in the middle of the only known habitat area for Oxyuranus microlepidotus (aka the Fierce Snake or Inland Taipan) which is known as the snake with the deadliest venom on earth. I think it helps the story somewhat if I casually suggest that it was one of those that bit me - though it's highly unlikely that is was. The main candidates would be a Death Adder (though quite a small one due to the fang spacing) or an Eastern Brown Snake (which is actually a far more dangerous snake than the Fierce snake anyway).

In actual fact - the chances of being randomly killed by a snake are virtually zero - so, as I said, it wasn't really a near death experience.

Unlike this bloke who has a much better snake story to tell.

[Niveous]

I'd still freak to wake up to a snake bite.

[fluffy]

I got lemon juice in a paper cut once.