virus at 2 weeks

passenger in car wreck, suburban vs. semi truck full of gravel

driver in car wreck, broadsided 3 inches behind my seat

various college nights blacked out

- not really sure which would be closest to death, but I feel lucky to be mostly unscathed.

I can't say I've probably ever felt close, though gawd knows I've put myself in some situations where it would've been a fair point for darwin (mostly involving ridgelines, mesa tops and lightening. Gravity's had a few targets of opportunity as well.)

Cute, fluffy kitties!

When were you the closest to dying?

Hmmm... About 13 or so, I tried to ride my bicycle across a busy street. I looked right, but didn't look left and got hit by a car. Trashed the bike and I flew about twenty feet. I was bruised and scraped up quite a bit, but I lucked out and didn't even break anything. The bruise on my calf where the bumper hit me lasted for a couple of months, and the weird, gristly feeling of my calf in that spot lasted a few years after that.

So physically, not all that close to death, but the car wouldn't have had to be going much faster to have seriously injured or killed me.

I was just doing this with a friend of mine the other day, as we tried to figure out how many parallel universes there are in which we are dead.

At 14, misjudged distance and rode my bicycle directly in front of an oncoming car. Missed me by a foot, maybe.

Fell asleep driving over the Smokey Mountains at night, and woke up headed for the guard rail above a sheer 3000 foot drop. Two seconds more and bam, fiery death.

In the passenger seat of my car as my previously-referenced psycho boyfriend drove around and around the interstate loop around Nashville, yelling about how he was going to kill us both and be done, and why I was crying? Fortunately, we ran out of gas.

Four years ago, woke up with a funny feeling in my chest, two weeks after minor foot surgery. Can't explain why I knew it wasn't just too much caffeine. Turned out I had a pulmonary embolism, and they kept me in the hospital on heparin for a week, wouldn't let me up even to pee. I didn't fully realize until later that I probably would have died if I hadn't called the EMTs.

Probably some other random stuff too, especially with psycho-man, but, at least four alternate universes in which I am dead. I feel very lucky. I used to belive in karma, but I don't anymore. And like Strega said, I used to think I deserved the shit that happened to me, and now I know I don't.

brenda, how do you forget a gun to the head? You must be a very calm person.

various college nights blacked out

Oh yeah, there's probably a night or two in my past where I almost drank myself to death and didn't realize it until the next day.

Right. I mean, since no one here has actually posted their tales of revenge on these people, presumably we've all had our reasons not to give in to our worse instincts.

Or reasons to avoid incriminating ourselves in a public forum.

The closest I've come to dying is probably Feb 14th, 2004 when I was driven off a snow-covered highway outside Little Rock by a semi merging into my lane before it had passed. My car did better than a 360° tailspin in traffic before zooming off the road at nearly a right angle, just barely missing the following car and a big metal roadsign. I ended up unhurt though, and only had to cool my heels in the snow and mud a couple hours until a towtruck arrived.

Scariest medical thing for me was the blood pressure incident a couple months later where I swelled up like the Michelin Man and had several days when I was too weak and lethargic to pack or do much of anything that needed doing. I've been weak from flus or exhaustion before, but that's the only time I can recall feeling I actually didn't have any muscle power rather than just being too worn out to use it.

I have a friend who's driving style if very "interesting" to say the least. I think that anytime I've been in the car with her may be my closest to death. This ISN'T the same person who spun out on black ice back in February. (That may have been my most recent brush with death.)

ION, check out the very fluffy kitten at the bottom of this page!

I was about to say "never that close to death," but Zenkitty's Smokey Mountain almost-plunge story reminded me of the time I fell asleep while driving on I-55 and woke up just as my car was aiming itself at the 4-foot-high barrier in the median while going 60 mph. I swerved just in time to only have scrapes on the driver's side of the car from the reflectors embedded in the barrier. At least I wasn't sleepy anymore!

various college nights blacked out

Mmmm...no black outs but I definitely courted alcohol poisoning once or twice.