Close Calls?

what close calls has TFP had? i recently just avoided getting kicked out of the US Air Force Academy by the skin of my teeth.

 

What kind of close calls? I've almost been killed by not one but two dump trucks. I almost caught Sammy Sosa's last home run as a Cub. I almost quit TFP after becoming a mod and being subjected to that absolute dickhead named "Analog". I almost got permanently banned by Halx about a year ago.

Want to narrow it down a bit?

 

I almost forgot to water the plants. (that is about as exciting as my day gets....)

edit: doublepost.
the merge thingy works....

 

Care to elaborate on that USAFA close call EventHorizon? Sounds like an interesting story.

I had quite a few near death experiences as a kid while riding ATVs. There are a lot of strip mines around here I was riding though an area I hadn't been through in a while and it was forested and the trees abruptly ended and I was on the edge of giant cliff. Due to angle it looks like a small hump but just on the other side was a cliff. I hit the hump and stopped while straddling looking straight down at water about 100ft down.
Another time, I was riding quite fast in a swampy area and I took a turn really fast and my front left tire just sunk down in a really muddy spot while sliding through the turn and it threw me about 30ft. I landed unharmed in about a foot of water.
Yet another time, I was wearing riding goggles that I never wore but it was really dusty out and I was riding behind someone and couldn't really see so I broke em out. Going though a path pointy tree branch poked right into the goggles and punctured them and ripped them off my head. I probably would have lost an eye but ended up with a small scratch.
There are a few more but I'll leave those for another time.

 

so here's the skinny on what happened to me (nothing life threatening, but definitely life-changing).

early April, I was sick for the second to last class of possibly the most pointless class required here at the Academy: Physical Development, as if we don't know how to work out. Regardless, the second to last class everyone was reminded that they need to bring their workout logs in the next class as it was a graded assignment, however, since i didn't go, i had a brain fart and completely forgot about it.

The next day I'm walking to class and I see everyone carrying their workout logs at which point I shit my proverbial pants because I didn't do it. So at the end of the class the teacher asks where my workout log was and to my eternal shame and stupidity I said "It's in my room" when it actually wasn't. Now, I have no problem telling people that I blew off their assignments or that I slept through their briefings, but for some insanely retarded reason, I chose to imply that I had the work done, but it just wasn't present.

This is a violation of the Honor Code here at the Academy (I believe all service Academies have an Honor Code). Long story short: the instructor brought me up on Honor violation charges to which I admitted I was guilty of doing. Since April it has been a dark cloud hanging over my head with the Aug. 4 commitment deadline quickly approaching (if i show up to class on Aug. 4 I owe the Air Force for all the education they've given me so far in either money or time in service). If they were going to kick me out, I would've like to know so that I wouldn't owe 3 years of my life to the Air Force without a degree to show for it. However, today I found out they want to retain me and put me on Honor Probation which means keeping a journal (which they will keep up on), reading "The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People", attending a bunch of meetings/mentoring sessions, and writing papers and papers about what it means to be a basically good person.

In terms of close calls life and death wise, I was almost kidnapped (and who knows what?) when I lived in Columbia

 

I very nearly died when I was born, thanks to some problems with my spleen. They whisked me off after delivery and cut most of it out, and the rest is history.

While driving me to music school one Saturday morning my dad skidded on ice in the right lane, spun across three lanes and slammed headlong into the barrier on the opposite side of the highway. Fortunately this happened in a sizable gap in traffic and we weren't hit by any oncoming cars. I was furious with him because I knew he was driving too fast and had a feeling this was going to happen before it did.

 

Been in a plane crash while in the Navy - and a couple of pretty good wrecks - as far as TFP - somewhere around 2003 I was a Mod. Halx didn't like my comments on politics and I was un-Modded. Fuck em' if they can't take a joke!

 

It is about 1998 and I am driving from the Lake district to London on one of England's 'backbone' motorways, the M1.

It is a 70 mile an hour speed limit and I am doing 60 in the middle lane.

I typically include scanning waaaay into the distance and ... something was not right. It was very not right because cars close to the horizon were looking weird. Their bodies were not facing the direction of travel, and their displacement to my gaze was variously shifting and changing. I saw one car ahead of me - it was fully SIDE ON to me .... yet staying in the lane!

For a while. As were some other cars - for a while. Until they began to behave like slow motion ten-pins or dominoes. The 'break' in a game of snooker or pool. Toppling sideways and bouncing off one another ... some caroming off the central reservation like grotesque trick-shots ... some sliding to the inside lane and off on to the hard shoulder to flip and summersault - as if the laws of physics had suddenly caught up with them. Some just crumpled when they hit the ground. Others burst into flames.

Eventually, I began to see ALL the traffic ahead of me sliding to the right but not just that ... the road-lines themselves were waving like a policemen's night torch through mist. And I could no longer feel or hear the rumble of road beneath me.

It was now MY car that was beginning to Rotate. It was as if I was no longer moving - there was NO road beneath me and I was on a gentle turntable ...

I then realized full well now that ... we had ALL come upon a massive Oil Slick on the tarmac.

Goddammmmmit ....... I SO want to say ... I So Want To Say ... that I remembered my principles of skid-control "See how my experience and my reactions saved my ass"

No. I was as a gerbil, helpless in a half ton cage, at 60MPH, orbiting its own centre of gravity. And I was spectator to my own dismal alternative possible futures as they passed me at crazy angles - some upside down, some in flames.

I came to a safe halt, facing the direction in which I had come, a minor bounce against the central rail and everything was stopped for me, and I was still alive. I must have gone beyond the oil spill, and some traction had been gained.

My relief was temporary .... I was facing the way I had come .... I saw a herd of steel buffalo stampeding in my direction ... they were still in the middle of their mayhem. Their tragedies, their near misses, ALL were heading in my direction.

"Well, I kept my cool - I knew I had less than a second to ...

No. Not even that. I was waaaaay beyond 'cool', 'coward' or anything else.... my hand snaked out to the ignition ... started first time ... Slewing U turn and acceleration through the gears.

In my rear mirror, I could see Death chasing me - his army of victims trapped in rending metal, flaming, racing after me. But that day Death lost the race for my flesh.

I still hate myself for shunning fellowship with those other victims as I sped away. I felt I had abandoned them, though I know that taking my foot off the accelerator would have further lowered their probability of their survival as well as mine.

Re-reading this post, I realize, for the first time, that they never abandoned me.

 

This July actually I was going through some twisties on a locally known curvy highway on my crotch rocket when I hit a corner too fast and crashed. It was due to inexperience as I just starting riding my bike this year. Anyway I barely missed a power line pole when going off the road. All in all I was pretty lucky. But I do have quite the scars from it.

 

Almost got married to man who had a lifestyle that would have never made me happy. That was much too close for me.

 

While driving eastbound on I-94 headed into Milwaukee through a construction zone, the Freightliner following us failed to react to the traffic slowing to a stop. We braced ourselves for the worst. I had flash visions of amps, guitars, drums and musicians scattered across the road. At what seemed like the last possible moment, there was screeching and swerving and what turned out to be a glancing blow as the rig's right fender hit my van's rear bumper. The Freightliner's light sheet metal fender crumpled and it's turn signal lamp went flying past us, but my bumper absorbed the entire blow. A small scratch on the left rear fender and a dark stain in my shorts were evidences of the collision.

 

I almost had lunch at Arbys once.

 

When younger, quite often I ran across roads misjudging it, and would be shoved hard in my middle back to safety. Scarey tale Zen - I got asked what to do in those circumstances for my driving test - which apparently is a very unusual question - I had no idea, but old horse habits never die, so gave the equine answer.
Event - naughty boy. All instructors who have been at it for some time have well homed lie detecting skills - and they have heard all the excuses. You made a contract, you have to keep to the terms dont you - that coming from mrs 'heres something I knocked up on the train' - mrs 'my dissertation is due in two days, I think I had better make a start on it'. (Dont recommend the latter one - was so strung out - but it IS possible.)
Hiya Poetry - I didnt listen to my inner voice (aka rational mind). On the way to the registry office I nearly got lost, I had been so filled with doom and foreboding that morning........ listen to your inner voice. Best day of my marriage was the divorce, the second best would be the day the worm turned and I attacked him back - just shoved him hard and his back bone hit a door knob. He was scared then, because he knew I had it in me - he made me that person, not someone I ever wanted to be.

 

While I was waiting on a corner to cross the street to go to College, an out of control driver jumped the curb and crashed into the light post six inches to my right.....

 

I had a time-slows-down movie effect as I watched an RPG fly past me and the vehicle I was standing next to at a checkpoint in Iraq. Other than combat, I had a habit of climbing really high into trees when I was younger. Had several times where I had a branch break or slipped and almost fell several stories.

 

I had a similar thing happen about a year ago on my way to work. A car coming through the light clipped another car turning right. The swerve to avoid the collision and the following clip, changed the car's path directly into mine on the corner where I was waiting to cross. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to jump out of the way. The driver swerved at the last second and narrowly avoided hitting me and couple of other pedestrians.

At the time, it kind of freaked me out.

 

i got hit in the shoulder by a swinging excavator bucket on one of the projects i was running. i flew a few metres. had the bucket been a foot higher i'd be dead.

a few years ago i was almost in an accident where my car did 700 degree spin without hitting a single car on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

when i was a kid i was drowning in the river. had it not been for my dad, i'd be dead. ironically i went on to become a great swimmer, and now im a swimming coach in my spare time.

 

My brain blew up.

 

this sounds interesting. care to elaborate?

 

It was morning, and I had gone downstairs and put the kettle on for my terrible tea addiction, and I picked up a light box with a few videos in, turned and put it on another surface and whack! Like being hit in the head with an axe - the blade still embedded. I cried out, and I cried inside because I thought 'this must be what dads strokes felt like. Anyway, took a couple of strong prescription painkillers and went to bed, thought sleep through a bad headache - didnt work, took two more lots of pills and phoned NHS Direct. Do you have pains down your left arm - thats a good one as I have damage to the left arm anyway. They suggested I shouldnt drive myself to hospital - perhaps my son could drive me on a provisional licence - not realy legal I explained. Got a taxi to outpatients, sat there for a few hours, was put in a side cubicle on a chair - could not get rid of the pain - wet paper towels helped. I could hear stupid drunken teenagers winding up the doctor, whe finaly told them what he thought of stupid people like them. Doctor came to see me, and said he thought he knew what was wrong, but would need to do a lumpar puncture - and he actualy got the thing done without too much pain. Back to my cubicle, and the doctor came and said they were calling in the radiographers - by now its about ten at night. So I got shoved in a cold tube thing and they scanned my head. Back out to bays, but now I am on a trolley. Scans were sent to neurology at Southampton, and the surgeon wanted me there. This happened whilst I was in an overflow room, loads of us on trolleys. In the morning they gave me a toothbrush as I had expected to be told I was silly and it was a headache and sent straight home the afternoon before. So, surgeon is waiting for me, and the ambulance is due to take me there. Should I ask my son to bring me clean knickers and a nightie? Hes about 40 mins away? Figure he would miss the ambulance and I would be gone. Ambulance turns up after about 3 hours. By the time we get to southampton, my surgery cant be fitted in. They decide they want to do their own lumbar puncture, but this time the doctor comes at me from the other side.
They dont like patients behind curtains on the ward to be screaming things like 'what you trying to shove in my back?! A corkscrew or a lump of lead pipe?!
Enter The Consultant - he says they cant be doing this to me, and has me sent down to x ray to have my spine photographed, then back to the ward. Then they come tell me its scoliosis of my spine, and the doctor had indeed been hitting bone, and they were going to do it again, but under x ray and on morphine.
I tell you, it was so lovely floating along on my trolley down to the bowels where x rays live.
So, I have these three men working around me - or was it four? I could feel something vague like, tech said am I okay, and I reply 'Is it in yet?' - at which point the chortling started, and the chap with the needle said, 'thats what we like to be asked isnt it chaps - and its all over and I have pulled out already - glad you didnt feel anything.' - obviously, going by the naughty boy chortling, there is still the boys within the men.
I asked surgeon what my options were, and he said you have none. You have had one aneuyrism and have two more on the point of going. If you dont have surgery, the fluid will collect and get infected, and in about ten unpleasant days, you will be dead.
I have to stay on the ward that night, next to an old lady that kept screaming for jesus to come cut her knickers off with a pair of scissors all night. When they took me off for surgery in the morning, they said dont worry, we wont bring you back here, you will need rest.

My son came to visit with my old college chum Robert. They had been unable to shove their drain cleaning equipment down my left leg (they go all around and through your heart if they can as its non-intrusive) I slurred, bet I look like Divine - to which Robert replied, no Divine is too glam, you look more like Sideshow Bob. (By the day after next I smelt like rank black pudding apparently. I now have no sense of smell)
I was moved regularly, ward to ward. In one side room I was there when the surgeon told the old lady in the bed opposite - an ex nurse, her husband was sitting with her. The surgeon came in to tell her there was nothing they could do.
I have a horn now, where the two bits of skull didnt align properly, and memories are like silver fishes shoaling and racing along a stream, and sometimes one will catch my eye, but catching hold of them is random. I often feel lost.
Its going to go again. I know it will. Minor headaches scare me. I have arranged an option for next time - because how much of me will be left by then. Memories are like things you learn or whatever on your road in life, you know how you got to where you are. I know I am here, and I know many things, but I have lost a lot - memories of the journey. I have lost much of myself. I have never wanted to be caught trying to feed myself by shoving brocoli in my ear.
Lucky to be here. Many die from it.
Do I get the award for most cheerfull post?