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.

Yep, that'll wake you up all right.

ooo, then there was the time (this one time, at band camp) my front tire blew out at 60 mph with a solid line of traffic on my left and a 6-foot concrete construction barrier on my right. I held the car in a straight line by sheer force of will, as my passenger freaked out like a mammal. I don't remember getting onto the side of the road.

My day is looking better and better. As I sit here safely at my desk, endangered only by paper cuts.

I too forgot being held up at gunpoint. But I actually don't think I was at much risk of dying; the kid wanted to rob us, not kill us, and wasn't planning to shoot us, so we were only in danger if he got scared and slippery fingers.

mr. flea, at whom the gun was actually being pointed, might disagree with my sanguine assessment of the sitch.

I wonder if attending the party at the Bates Motel (this really crumbling down disgusting house long inhabited by students) on the eve of its demolition counted as endangering life and limb. There was a fair amount of alcohol inspired demolition that occurred that night. I think at least one set of stairs ceased to be.

I've had my fair share of motor vehicle accidents and could have bit it in a couple of them. Mostly though I'd have to say the closest I've been to death was after I was widowed. My grief was so intense I almost had my self convinced that the only way to be with him was to join him.