I Shouldn't Be Alive!! Your Dances With Death.
 

Another thread got me thinking about various brushes with death throughout the years. What is the closest you have come to taking a dirt nap, kicking the bucket, cashing in the chips? Did you get hurt, or did it just scare the hell out of you?

I had one incident where I had a car going sideways around a corner at about 100 MPH. (No damage to me or the car) I have been bucked off several horses and landed in strange positions. (Bruises, but no broken bones) I have had an ATV on its side being drug along a pine tree, one sharp branch and I would have been toast. (Very lucky there) I have had guns pulled on me three times, knives twice. (Never shot or stabbed) Hell, I'm just getting warmed up here.


Dances with death, there is going to be some stories out there, lets hear them.

:reaper:

I came within about 20 feet of getting plowed under by a train when I was 17. I was "cruising" in the small town where I grew up and didn't look when crossing the tracks...didn't even see the warning lights. I get right in the middle of the crossing, look to my right, and all I could see was the grill of the engine. I about soiled my droors.

I once tugged on Superman's cape, spit into the wind, pulled the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger, but, at the last moment, I came to my senses and decided not to mess around with Jim.

That's good, because Jim is a bad bad man! :eek:

I've had a few brushes, mostly during my idiot youth or during my time serving with Uncle Sam's Misguided Children.

Slim would disagree with you. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jim+cro..._10149470.html ;)

Why do people pull weapons on you?

Only had a few times. The normal ones when I drove home drunk with friends (in college when i was stupid)

I was sick once and for 20 seconds my airway was closed and couldn't breath. Scared the crap out of me.

While I was a teen, I was driving home from my girlfriends house at night on a two lane road that intersected a railroad with no signal/barrier. I must have had the stereo up cause I did not near a train whistle. I was going 50-60mph and all I saw was the headlights of a vehicle waiting on the train on the other side. If it hadn't been for that nameless/faceless person I may have died that night. Chances are I would have driven right into that train had they not been there.

Heh! Various reasons.

Heh! Various reasons.

Guns:

1. One guy had road rage because I had passed him on the Interstate.

2. One guy that owned a hotel accused a bunch of buddies and I of wrecking his screen door to access the hotel hot tub. The guy was drunk and we weren’t even around his hot tub.

3. Don't get liquored up, followed up by walking around downtown with buddies on the way back to the truck flipping hookers crap. That happened when I was 21.

In cases one and two, I was armed and the other person didn't have a clue. In the hot tub incident, I thought I was going to have to drop him.

Knives:

1. I was at a bar and a guy pulled a knife on a friend. I got involved.

2. I was walking into a bar with a girlfriend and some bum got agitated when I told him I wouldn't give him money and pulled one.

I was at JRTC when it was still at Ft. Chaffee and we were doing a live fire trench clearing exercise. Went through the whole bit... arty popped smoke on the hilltop, engineer detachment breached the triple strand with a bangelor (sp?)... lots of noise and smoke basically.

My fire team was first though the wire so when it was breached I led my guys through, hung a right just as we'd rehearsed, went 50 or so feet and found the trench just as they'd described it and we proceeded to clear. Tossed in grenades, made more noise, entered the trench and cleared a bunker. We were having quite the good time until I got up the the first corner.

I knew something was up because the corner went to the left when everything we'd rehearsed showed it going to the right. I stopped everyone and took a quick look around the corner to figure out where we were when I realized WE weren't all there. As I peeked around the corner I saw a silloute target just down the trench, fire opened up and rounds proceeded past my head.

I ended up getting everyone that was with me pushed back into the bunker we'd just cleared as I screamed into the radio for a cease fire.

Everything got stopped, we re-grouped and tagged onto the end of the clearing force and finshed the objective. We had our after actions review and everyone figured out what went wrong. It turned out the breach was in the wrong location and the amount of smoke on the target when I entered it made it impossible to see so I followed instructions. After half the company went through the breach the smoke had cleared enough to see and someone noticed the entry point wasn't in the right place so they went to it and started clearing toward us instead of staying together.

Then the most typical Army thing happened.

The Brigade commander had been monitoring the radios during the mission and apparently my 4 letter tirade while trying to get a cease fire called wasn't proper radio protocol. So he came up to the objective and proceeded to chew my @ss for my cursing on the radio.

Afterward the Brigade Command Sergeant Major took me aside and told me not to worry about it and that he'd make sure I didn't get in any trouble over it. He said "Had that dumb mother******er been shooting at me I would have shot back as I cussed him on the radio".

So, to make a long story long thats one of my most memorable near death experiences.

I got into an argument on the internet once. Afterwards I was like, "Whoaaaaa."

When I was 5 or 6, my Father took my brother and myself out fishing in a row boat, on this pond.

A huge Gator climbed into the boat and my Father beat on the gator with the Oar, after a while it went away. I was very scared, don't know how close to death I was...

A Grade III Anaplastic Astrocytoma, in the left temporal lobe of my brain, the size of a softball; very nasty brian cancer, a full recuperation 1 of every 3 who have it.

I have been hit by a car, only left with a broken hand.

That would have been a good time to engage the PTT button on your radio
:cuss: :D

Holy crap! Do you still have all your fingers?