OK. Here's a random question: Anyone ever have a near-death experience? Like an accident, a near accident, or perhaps a medical condition where death was likely? If so, did it change your outlook on life? Did it make you glad to be alive, want to embrace life and all that?

I had a semi merge into my lane during a snowstorm and force me off an embankment, but luckily neither I nor my car were damaged. No particular outlook changes aside from "don't drive near Little Rock when it's snowing."

Whoa, Teppy. I ruptured my spleen sledding when I was 12 and definitely could have died, but no one told me. I only found out how serious it was years later, when near death from a spleen rupture was part of a Marcus Welby rerun.

Went to a play written by an old friend of the DH's last night and it was SO BAD, y'all. Just an egregiously self-indulgently bad "comedy" about sex and relationships, including fake orgasms onstage and terrible staging and the oft-repeated "profound" line "everybody lies...in bed."

the driver's side window was closed before I got hit, and then when I regained consciousness I realized that a policeman was talking to me through an open space where the window should be.

My sister and her GF got into an accident - my sister was driving and lost control on a patch of ice. Her car (a Tempo) rolled over a few times. Sis's GF was knocked unconscious - when she came to, she saw her dog was outside the car. At first she was confused as to how the dog got out, but then she noticed her window had shattered.

Relatedly, try not to be treated for an accident at the New London, WI hospital. What a bunch of fuckups.

I almost drowned when I was five. I've never been a fan of swimming since.

I've haven't been in any car accidents that were really bad. There was only one where the car couldn't be driven afterwords, but even then there weren't any injuries all the way around.

I realized that the impact had shoved the driver's side bucket seat over into the passenger side hard enough that the passenger seat was pressed into the door.

Yep, same thing with mine. The passenger side door was still "latched" but was pushed out at the bottom from the car frame by the passenger seat which was sticking out about 3 inches. SO NOT RIGHT. Also? I drove the crinkled up car (it was sort of in a U shape) away from that accident to get to my mom's office.

I've been lurking along as usual, thinking I was lucky to have nothing to add to this conversation, but Gudanov reminded me, I almost drown when I was 5 as well!

It was at a neighbours pool, but then my parents built a pool that year (?) and I was a water baby ever since. So no lasting changes to my outlook on the water, anyway.

My dad was in the freakiest car accident ever when he was a teen - car was going too fast to make a curve, flew into a bean field and rolled six times, coming apart like a snap-together model and flinging all its occupants out in the process. Dad got thrown out on the fifth roll and landed in the field with an unbroken side window in his hands and no injuries.

Scrappy, that line would be funny if House said it. But so would my grocery list. Near death, besides birth, I was almost hit by a very slow-moving car in college(she saw me at the very last second) My life flashed before my eyes and shit...it was very tiny, like looking in the wrong end of a telescope.

Well, as Freakonomics taught me, it is far more dangerous to your kids to have a pool in your yard than a gun in your house. Not that I have a pool. Or a gun. or kids.

But think how safe they'd be if you did have kids.