hmmm

Pretty sure all of mine would be from leaning too far back in a chair.

Does anyone else remember the “there was a kid that leaned too far back at his desk and cracked open his skull” story (if you went to school in the US)?

Me almost choking 5 times.

When I was 4, a bull charged at me but I got picked up from over the fence and it slammed into the fence instead. I remember the guy falling us back into cow poo and I got upset by this. I did not know a bull got out and was charging me.

I went off a cliff on a motorcycle. I was in a mountainous area and low-sided on a turn, going under the barrier and off the mountainside. I got caught in a tree 12m down and the bike was located 70m down. I only broke a few bones but one was the femur.

I had my board leash snap surfing a cyclonic swell (about 12–14ft day). As we used a riptide to get out faster, it was hard to swim in and the waves were so big I couldn't swim out. I was being sucked out and dragged in, stuck in the breakzone for about 20 mins until I was so exhausted, I had to choose to swim north and hit a rock shelf. Surprisingly, I didn't get cut up and eventually the rocks protected me from swell. I could dive down and hold onto them as sets would roll over. I collapsed by the time I got out and took about 30 mins to recover. I threw up a lot and almost blacked out a few times.

Recently I was almost t-boned by someone running a red. They were doing about 90kph and did not slow down at all. I thought they were driving suspiciously fast for a red so braked enough to miss them ahead of time.

I can't think of a fifth, but I do a lot of extreme sports and outdoor adventuring. There has been a lot of high-risk situations but have always been in control, putting safety first and being well prepared.

I feel like the top five would leave off so many good ones. And would probably include a bunch of times that, to you, it seemed like absolutely nothing happened.

I ran into a pick-up truck once. As of right now, I believe that would be my #1 near-death.

Also appendicitis.

Who says this isn’t what actually happens?

I want a killcam when I die

Trying to kill myself by atypical hanging. Went unconscious and my body must have thrashed around, loosening the cable around my neck saving me

Then doing that same thing again 10 minutes later

Smoked heroin and took lorazepam. Was too much and I fell into a unconscious trance, my breathing being very slow and shallow. My girlfriend stayed up the whole night checking if I stopped breathing or similar

Running into the street, and my mom caught me, preventing a frontal collision with a car

I've thought about this many times, who knows how many close calls we've had

And David Letterman presents it

It'll be something really innocuous like almost choking or walking somewhere a couple of seconds before another nothing event would have just happened to kill you

1. Fell asleep while driving on a snowy mountain pass on my way from TX to WA (I was trying to get home by Christmas to surprise my dad) because I couldn't find a safe spot to pull over). I gasped awake, gripped the steering wheel, saw the speedo at 65PMH, then I saw treetops with no guard-rail between me and them; I was close to the edge of the road and approaching it at a right angle, so I had to turn my wheel left or right —with the wrong choice sending me off the mountain side— and all the information I had to work with was the momentary glint of my headlights off of a curvy road sign. I forget which way I cut my wheel but I know I laughed hysterically when the road came back into view. I found a rest stop like 2 miles later; fell asleep in my seat and woke up twice, each time after 10 minutes, because I thought I was back in the moment.

I dunno what 2-5 are; I've got a lot of other stories like putting out a vehicle fire with anti-freeze, dodging a rattlesnake that was aiming for my face, my dad contemplating killing me because I told him I was trans at like 5 years old, a heavy equipment tip over, something about being at the top of a small rockslide, any of the dozens of times I've almost drowned at a public pool as a kid, and a handful of driving stories, but that was definitely my #1.