Welllll... There was the time that I was in a car crash as an infant. Drunk driver ran a red light and destroyed the passenger's side of my family's car. The drunk driver broke his pelvis; my father died on the scene and my mother broke her hip. I broke my shin, but was discharged from the hospital a few days later.
Then there was the time that I nearly fell face-first into freshly-laid, 260-degree asphalt at age twelve; probably would have asphyxiated after it stuck and hardened. Instead my reflexes saved me and I landed on two hands and one knee. Ended up clawing off a good portion of my palms because of the pain. Walked home, collapsed a couple of times sobbing, then struggled with the telephone clumsily before just giving up and trying to destroy all of the burnt nerves with my fingernails and a steak knife. My mother discovered me thirty minutes later and tried to get me to the ER, but got stuck in traffic. Time elapsed until medical treatment: sixty minutes.
Lastly, there was the time "I" nearly attempted suicide as a result of mental illness. The whole situation's complicated, as I don't really fit any conventional mental illness diagnoses, but the simplified version would be that I have a fragmented internal narration, leading to multiple identities sharing a brain, only one of which is typically in control of our body. Loooooong story short, one of the identities is actively malevolent, and tried to kill off all four of us by supplanting the controlling identity and committing suicide. It got as far as outlining various veins in my hands and wrists with a pen, making sure nobody else was nearby, and sharpening a knife before I wrested control back.
Smile for me!I've had three instances. One when a car was speeding down the road and I didn't look whilst crossing. Two, as a kid I ran out into sea to try and grab my spade, doesn't help when you can't swim and seem to sink in water and thirdly in a German swimming pool on a school trip I'd gone further than I thought and when the wave machine turned off the water level was raised to it's usual height. Ended up being rescued by a friend.
Preferred mode of transport: On a flight of whimsy.I've been "lucky" so far: The closest I got to dying was when I fell asleep in the bathtub, but woke up when my face hit the water. I had another time when I thought I was dying, but it turns out I was just drunk. On Night Quil.
...I have lost what little faith I had before in the ability for schools to deal with the crap their students do to other students.
Lessee... I think there's only been two. First was when I was about ten or so. We were in Hawaii and I had a battle with the undertow. To me it felt like just forever, but looking back I think I was just trapped underwater for a half-minute or so. It still scared the piss outta me.
The second was late last year when I had to grab my dogs and dive off the sidewalk and into a ditch because a drunk driver decided to ignore where the road was. He crashed into a tree a hundred yards or so past me.
Well, OK, it wasn't an actual incident... but it did bug me for quite some time afterwards: the thought 'Fuck, I might as well have died then and there'.
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...It's best to assume the truth and be compassionate to a liar than to be skeptical of such a thing & risk offending someone who's gone through that. Besides, why the hell would anyone without a serious personality disorder lie about that?
edited 23rd Jan '12 7:22:30 PM by 0dd1
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.Let's see here...My childhood dentist's building was in a large tower that shared its building with that of an easy listening station. Once when I was walking out of the dentist, the letters from the sign of the station fell off right in front of me. What stopped me from dying was the fact that my brother was a bit of a weakling when it came to operating push doors, so I don't know what my life would've been if he wasn't.
Either that or one time as a kid I almost touched an electric fence to see if it would shock me while I was wearing gloves.
Someone wake me from this nightmare, I've become my darkest fear...Actually, I've been pretty lucky injury-wise. But there are a few noteworthy incidents.
- When I lived in Beijing, I caught quite serious cases of bronchitis both of the winters I was there. I was off school for about 3 weeks in the latter case, and got a touch of pneumonia. I suspect that it would have escalated if I'd stayed, due to the very polluted air and my weak chest.
- When I was 10, we were doing prints in art. When I was cutting out the outline of my print with a knife, the knife slipped and I cut straight to the bone on my left index finger. That's the only time I've been to A&E - I had to get stitches, and I had a rather large scar for quite a while.
- On a cycling holiday in Laos last year, I parked my bike at the side of the road in order to let a car pass, and didn't realize the side of the road was on an incline. I fell off the edge of the road, with my bike. Luckily I was wearing a helmet and wasn't too badly injured (I fell about 5 feet down a dirt incline onto some small rocks), but if I'd fallen any further than that, I would have gone over the edge of a cliff and died. Despite the fact that I wasn't injured very badly, that was probably the closest I've ever got to dying.
edited 24th Jan '12 6:39:17 AM by YonTroper

When I was a small kid - I guess I was 7 or 8 years old - I crossed a road near my home on my bicycle... without looking left or right before. The speed limit on that road is 80 kilometres per hour. I got off fine, but there might as well have been a truck coming at me, and I'm pretty sure that would have killed me.
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...