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QOTD - July 9th, 2012

Greetings, children of Elm Street.

Today is a question from me, and one I'm sure will provide some interesting stories.

Any near death experiences? I myself have only had one, thankfully.

I was 14 at the time, and I live in Washington. One thing we have an abundance of is bridges with rivers/swimming holes. So, my friend wants to go to one, and although swimming in areas like this isn't my thing, I venture along. 




Now, when you arrive, there's a rope swing. However, you have to cross the river to get to it, and the only part you can cross at has an EXTREMELY strong current. If it catches you, it'll drag you out to much deeper, faster areas, and you'd probably be good and fucked. So, the way you get across is walking very, very slowly, so you're always planted on the ground. Then, when you get to the otherside, there's a giant rock with a rope hanging down that you have to grab. Well, my friend and his girlfriend make it, now it's my turn.
I'd always had a fear of places like this because my mom had a fear of places like this, heh. She's not the neurotic type, but the one place she never allowed me to go was swimming holes like this. So, I lied and went anyway.
I step in the water, and it's pretty goddamn cold. I take a few steps and can feel the rocks that are on the bed shifting beneath my feet. Every time a strong wave of current rushes by my legs I think it's some sort of fish, or tentacle or something ridiculous. Once I'm in the middle of the lake, it's about up to my armpits, and I'm anchored to the ground by a thread. You know that ep of The Simpsons where Homer is Mr. Plow, and he's about to fall of the ledge, but changing the radio dial pulls him back up? That's about the difference that was keeping me from being rushed out.
I'm almost to the rock, when for some reason I start to panic. I don't know if it's because I was so close and wanted to get it all over with, but either way I tried to move fast, and that was it.

BAM! The current takes me.

My friend screams "GRAB THE ROPE!"

Here it is, my only chance. I miss the fucking rope.

Time slowed down to a fucking crawl. All I could think was "I'm going to die. This is it. I'm truly going to die. My mom is gonna be so mad at me".

I feel the current dragging me when all of a sudden I see it. A second rope. It was extremely thin, about the thickness of twine almost. It was against the rock, and damn near invisible.

My hand shot out and grabbed it. With the current being so strong, and the rope so thin, it started to cut into my hand. I didn't care. The only way I was letting go was if that rope cut my damn hand off. So, I grab the rope, and the current is so strong it whips my body against the giant rock, knocking the wind out of me.

I was peaked on adrenaline and didn't care. I hear my friend & his girlfriend screaming something, but all I cared about was holding on.

I whip my other arm to the rope and slowly but surely pulled myself up to the point where my friend could grab me. I then laid there and thought how Indiana Jones all that was. I damn near die, and I compare it to Indy.

My friend said he'd been to that swimming hole a bunch of times, and he, nor anyone has had ever seen that second rope before. So, I'll assume it was some sort of magic rope, to ensure my survival so I could one day over-rate wrestling matches and have non-sexual crushes on Stallone, Van Damme, and Schwarzenegger.


Comments

  1. I had a near being-blinded experience


    Was playing 'pencil wars' with my bro and friend when we were like 8 or someshit, basically just chasing each other around with pencils and stabbing (more like poking) each other. Eventually they teamed up on me so I ran to the bathroom to hide and locked the door. I took out the key from the keyhole so that I could peek through and see if they were still standing outside waiting for me. I peeked through the keyhole and they were there. Literally seconds after I moved my eye away from the hole, my brother jammed his pencil through the keyhole.


    I stood completely stunned for ages. Fucker would have taken my eye out...

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  2. I was driving back from a Metallica concert at Giants stadium. I was about to get onto the Holland Tunnel to get back into the city and was oblivious to the fact that there was actually a cross-street before the tunnel. I must have had - pardon the pun - tunnel vision, because I completely ran the red light. There were cars coming from both directions that somehow both managed to avoid me. I was driving a 1977 Buick Skylark at the time (this was 1998), which was a tank of a car, but I don't think even that thing would have survived a total t-boning.

    The next 15 minutes or so were a blur but somehow managed to get to the city, and to a bar where I was meeting my friends, and enjoyed a cigarette. I was and am not a smoker, but needed one then.

    One other near miss was when I was 11. We had just moved from the upstairs to downstairs apartment, and the new landlord was doing some renovating. We were in the backyard. I got up from my chair and not even 3 seconds later this giant brick comes crashing down right on top of the chair. I can still see the horrified look on my landlord's face, his scraper in hand.

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  3. Maybe doesn't qualify as near DEATH, but two weeks ago I hit a kangaroo going about 80kmph, the roo was huge but it just bounced of my windscreen. If it had smashed through I'd have an adult roo thrashing around the front seat and would've most likely been knocked out and crashed. Not near death, but a near near death experience I guess :P

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  4. When backpacking on an island off the coast of Malaysia I went exploring got lost and ended up having to walk across some large stones by the ocean. ..I slipped fractured my leg and smacked my head. I was basically injured on a rock in the middle of no where. The tide was rising as I lay on this rock and the roasting sun went down..was convinced this was the end laying there in the pitch black I also started going into shock. Longest 9 hours of my life as I was also dehydrated and hullicinating, fortunately a fishing boat saw me the next morning and saved the day. It's amazing the emotions you can feel in such a short space of time from shear fear and panic to acceptance and almost inner peace.

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  5. Getting married! HEY-O!

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  6. awesome! (you know what I mean)

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  7. Thanks mate.

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  8. In Soviet Russia it is 'knife wars.'

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  9. In Soviet Russia, pencils play 'human wars'.

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  10. Yeah I remember it, We were investigating a robbery at the First National Bank of Toontown.
    Back in those days, me and Teddy my brother liked working Toontown, thought it was a
    lot of laughs. Anyway, this guy got away with a zillion simoleons. We
    trailed him to a little dive down on Yukster Street. We went in. Only he
    got the drop on us, literally. Dropped a piano on us from fifteen
    stories. Broke my arm, Teddy never made it. I never did find out who
    that guy was. All I remember was him standing over me laughing, with
    those burning red eyes, and that high, squeaky voice. He disappeared
    into Toontown after that.

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  11. I don't have a personal story so figured I'd post an amusing ER story. Last year I started my ER doctor residency at this hospital in St. Petersburg Florida. If you're not familiar with Tampa/St.Pete/Clearwater are, there are very affluent and rich pockets of town, but there are lots of other areas with trailer parks, free medical centers, etc. I was working in an ER in the latter. Anyway, a couple walks in and I take some basic information from them. They were in their mid 50s, didnt have health coverage, and lived in a trailer park (nothing against trailer parks.). They had gotten in an argument 2 days earlier, so the women decided shed get revenge by stealing his dentures and hiding them up her vagina. She somehow FORGOT they were there for 2 days and ended up getting some crazy bacterial infection plus vaginal tears. She was hospitalized for the infection for 3 months and ended up with some pretty severe internal organ damage from the bacterial infection.

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  12. Wow, crazy. How old were you? You went solo? I often imagine drowning as the worst possible way to die. Thank goodness for the fishing boat.

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  13. Fuuuuuck that. I have the weirdest irrational fear of kangaroos. If I ever saw one in the wild i'd have a stroke

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  14. I used to have a 77 Skylark, it took quite a beating.

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  15. i once wore a justin bieber shirt to a slayer concert.


    100% shoot.

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  16. I like how you keep recycling ideas from the message board no one ever went to and they get over... shows if people would have just went there it could have been a thing...

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  17. Back when I was 20, I had just moved back here to NY at around the same time my childhood best friend Shawn had gotten home from Iraq where he served in First Cav. Neither of us had jobs or anything else going on so we mainly got loaded on his unemployment checks. One night we go out to this kegger, and Shawn was one of the only people there over 21 so they had him pick up the keg. This is the asscrack of winter, and on this particular day its about 10 below zero and the roads are fully coated in ice, in fact most people wouldn't have even driven on them. So at the end of the night, someone pretends that we had floated the keg (dumbass kids there didn't know the difference) and we took it to someone elses house. After getting even more tooled up, plus doing shots (and playing WCW Revenge, weirdly enough) we follow another car full of our friends back home down the highway. Already we're fucking idiots to be driving drunk at all, let alone in his weather, and Shawn and the other driver decide to make it downright suicidal by racing each other. Shawn's topping out the governor in his Alero and the other car is still out in front. On glare ice. So of course the other car starts to spin out while were about to rear end them. Shawn yanks it off the road, blasting through someone's yard, launching snow everywhere. We almost crash into the side of the house, which would have probably killed us right there because it was old stone brick, and then we swerve again and have one wheel just kissing the edge of a huge drop off that went right down to the river, where we'd have either drowned or gotten hypothermia. Shawn just barely got us back on the road, and he was acting like it was no big deal. Well after spending a year getting mortared in the desert he was probably used to

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  18. I was big into autoerotic asphyxiation when I was a teen. I think I almost hanged myself once or twice.

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  19. *near death esperiences, but I was fucking freaked out. Since then I've never driven that drunk and definitely not in the winter time. We should have died, and some would argue we deserved to.

    Fuck Disqus.

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  20. Well, at least you had the welfare checks to look forward to.

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  21. .......................................................................moving on........

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  22. This one isn't really that exciting, nor do I know how truly close to death I was, but close enough let me tell you.

    I lived in the mountains for a while when I was in my early 20s and the only sure fire way home from work, which was several miles down the highway, was to catch a bus from work that only ran until like 6 or 7 o'clock. I had friends in the same town as work and often times I would stay in town and then walk out to the highway and hitchhike home. Usually I would do this only as a plan-ahead because I would wear extra layers. Night time hitchhiking in the Rockies in February is cold stuff.

    One day I did it on a whim, and wasn't properly dressed. It was usually pretty easy to get a ride, as there were a lot of people in the area that were carless and the car owners were usually pretty good about helping out. I hitched almost every day out there, and generally you'd smoke a joint with them, or whatever. This night though, there was NO ONE picking me up. I don't remember just how long I waited, but it was quite a while, and it was a particularly cold night. I jogged, I jumped around, I did everything that I could do to keep warm, but by around midnight I was frozen to the core. A car finally stopped and I started over to it but it was just a Dad switching places with his son and told me "just a driving lesson, no rides, sorry."

    My vision started to blur, my mobility decreased to pretty much zero, and I couldn't think remotely straight, my brain just felt dull. I fell over into the snowbank, vaguely conscious that that was a really bad place to be, but unable to do anything about it mentally or physically at that point. I have no doubt in my mind that my body would have been found in the morning had a woman not finally stopped, physically helped me out of the snowbank and again physically helped me out of the car and to my cabin. I couldn’t even speak, I was just numb mentally and physically, I just felt like I was shutting down.

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  23. I one ate one of those packet things that said "do not eat"

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  24. A friend of mine and I once stole a forklift from a Mexican Circus when we were hammered and drove it out to the main streets. Then we left it and ran like the wind, laughing the whole way at how perfect the plan went.

    About 45 seconds later we were surrounded at the McDonald's drive-thru we walked up to. Surrounded by about ten angry Mexican Circus members.


    The strong man took a swing at me but I matrix dodged him. Not because of agility, mind you, but because I was completely wasted.


    If the people working the drive-thru weren't there, I have no doubt they would have at least put us in the hospital or possibly killed us.


    I know this because one of them said "I would kill you if there was no one around, you know. If you come back again we WILL kill you."


    The end.

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  25. Unemployment, not welfare. And getting an unemployment check because your tour of duty in the Army is over is, like, the highest form of unemployment.

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  26. Haha. I have so many questions...we're the Mexican circus performers in costume at the McDonalds? If so, what kind of costumes? What is a Mexican circus exactly? We're there midgets involved? Did you watch them drive the forklift back?

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  27. This was in Edmonton and every summer the Mexican Circus came with all their tents and stuff to a mall parking lot. I don't know if it meant they were all Mexican but I would imagine so.

    No midgets or costumes at that time but this was around 2am and likely well past the end date of their last show for the day. I could see a strong man (because he swung at me), a really hairy dude, and a few others with large mustaches.

    Yes, they drove the forklift back. We were not close by when they located it but could hear it start back up from our safe vantage point.

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  28. Ha. The image of Mexican circus performers driving back a stolen forklift from McDonalds just kills me.

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  29. I was 25 or so I went backpacking around Asia for a year or so by myself, travelling is far more fun solo as you get to meet so many people (as you are forced to talk to others!). It was all my fault anyway for going off the beaten track. I'm more cautious these days, this was 2008.

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  30. Man, lucky you guys didnt get arrested. Guessing you just booked it outta the persons yard? Glad you got off injury and police free

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  31. You're cool with sharing near death experiences but not masturbation mishaps? What kind of man are you?

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  32. Is it really as good as everyone says?

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  33. I was actually going to include a link to the board with this post, because it was another QOTD that I'd asked in the general discussion section of the board, but I forgot. However, there is always tomorrow.

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  34. Man, I thought the story was gonna head with the husband screaming "and all of a sudden, it was trying to eat ME!"

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  35. The Ghost of Faffner HallJuly 9, 2013 at 6:59 PM

    I had an asthma attack on a roller coaster once. My asthma is really very mild--the only time I really have trouble breathing is around a lot of cigarette smoke, and I don't know many smokers, so I rarely have my inhaler with me. That day, I don't know if it was the thinness of the air from being so high up, or the adrenaline, or enjoying myself too much or what, but I had probably the biggest one I've ever had before or since. I couldn't even tell you for sure if I would have died, but it sure felt like it at the time--I couldn't breathe at all and had nowhere to go, no inhaler to help me, and being tossed around seemed to aggravate it more. Of course I couldn't really explain anything to my friend who was with me, and he likely couldn't have done much anyway. Luckily just before the ride ended I caught my breath, but I was so shaken up that I needed help getting off and had to sit on a bench for about twenty minutes. I haven't ridden a roller coaster since.

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  36. Haha, well, I like that you learned not to necessarily stop driving drunk, just not drive that drunk.

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  37. I had a friend named Styles who tried to get a keg once. The clerk was a hard-ass and wouldn't do it because he didn't have ID, so I had to do it. I ended up using my inner werewolf to score the keg. And some twinkies.

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  38. Wow, that's hypothermia alright. You are lucky.

    One of my dreams is to live in the mountains, away from general society. How was it? And why were you living out there?

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  39. I've had dreams before where I couldn't breathe, or it was hard to catch a breath, and it's the most God-awful experience. I can't even imagine having to go through it like you did, especially in an instance like that.

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  40. Ha. That woulda been awesome.

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  41. Not into David Carradinig.....

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  42. As far as humans go they'll hop way, but man do they have an obsession with taking cars on

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  43. Because one of my dreams was to live in the mountains, away from society, basically.

    I didn't stay out there all that long, just about a year, but I lived in a cabin on the side of a mountain with no running water, and heated by a wood stove. I did have electricity but it was sort of sketchy. There was a building about a 10 minute walk away where I could get a shower, and there were other people living, so it's not like I was TOTALLY isolated, but it was pretty remote, all told. When it snowed, which was often, I would spend a good chunk of the day digging out to get to that building, and the highway to catch a ride.

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