made it this far
but not without some luck

when i was two me da was taking my sister and i to a store and had put the two of us in a wagon, i fell out and scraped half my face off, would have been struck by some sort of vehicle but my dad caught me in time.

the next year he let me drown in our own swimming pool, so technically i was dead for a short period of time, lucky the fool knew cpr.

i made it several years without another attempt on my life, this time it was my sister running me over with the car, few injuries but i still stand.

finally this past summer i was struck by a truck, damn drunk underage fool.

and yet, despite all this i sit here telling you about it, isn't death-i mean life funny?
(DutchFaery, Wed 1 Dec 2004, 4:57, Reply)

As a biker, I can't say that I've come anywhere near death (thankfully)
My story happened this summer when the missus and I were on holiday in Canada driving a rented motorhome.

We'd just (barely) survived nearly two weeks worth of driving on the wrong side of the road etc, and were driving back to Vancouver on our last full day with the RV. As we hadn't had the chance to pump out the effluent for a couple of days, we decided to take advantage of a rest area on the freeway that had pump out facilities. All went well until it was time to rejoin the freeway.

As I was accelerating down the slip lane, I identified a gap that I thought I'd be able to pull into if the white pick-up that was coming down the carriageway would just slow down a wee bit. As I got to the end of the slip lane, I realised that he wasn't going to let me in, and I was forced to lift off and take to the shoulder. As the pick-up cruised by, I made out the initials "RCMP" on it's side. I'd been cut up by a copper.

Bastard.
(31 year old train driver who may or may not have just celebrated a birthday recently, Wed 1 Dec 2004, 1:26, Reply)

bo!!ocks
/rant mode

just a quicky - as an electrician i am reading some of your replys and nearly dying of laughter reading such utter bu!!shit

does this count?

/end rant mode

I thankyou.
(Aleister Crowleys Badger Nothing to see here, Wed 1 Dec 2004, 1:18, Reply)

not great but scary fer me
once at a mates house we decided it would be a great idea to play indoor football penalty shootout in a crowded living room full of blatently sharp object (obliously had a few drinks before we made this decision). Well after a few kicks, one o my mates dives and bangs his head on the side of the table, but gets up little shaken and decides to pack in the game, but i decide to continue stupidly. well cue a dew more kicks and then i dive in the same table, yet bang my head smack on the corner, but get up and laugh bout it and carry on. About two minutes later, feel tricle in my ear so put my hand there to see what it is, cue lovely handfull of blood. Go to A & E, find out have huge hole in me head, which was bout 3 inches from my temple, whihc had it hit there prob woulda buggered me good. contued to play indoor football nextweek, decided it was worth the risk

plus had good friend at school who looked like death and prob wore a cloak and scythe at the weekend

soz fer length
(Calmallama Is keeping this short and sweet, Wed 1 Dec 2004, 0:28, Reply)

Oh I forgot..
Laughing to Humpty Dumpty was Pushed "bike on bull action" nearly caused me die. I couldnt breathe.
So so funny.
( Fire & Forget it's the only way to be sure, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 22:45, Reply)

Killer Digestive
When I was about 3 or 4, me and the rest of my family were at an airport getting ready to board a plane. To keep me quiet my mum gave me a plain digestive biscuit - I went off happlily enough to watch some planes landing. Next thing I know I am being hoisted upside down by a doctor who is thumping me on my back trying to dislodge the rogue undigestable biscuit.
My mum said I had turned a few different shades of blue by the time she had found a doctor - which in itself was lucky because she was infact looking for my dad who was in the bar drinking with the doctor that saved my life - he is now my family doctor.

Longtime reader first time poster - thanks!
(multipac, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 22:40, Reply)

Queens Day celebration
Over here in Holland, young people find it interesting to travel all the way to our capital to celebrate (= get dead drunk) Queens day, our national day of celebration (comparable to St. Patricks day, everybody gets as drunk as possible).
Being just 17 or 18 years old myself, i decided to join in on the fun and me and a couple of my friends are off to the nations capital for a day of drinking.
Cue to 4 pm. I've lost all my friends and I'm walking through the overcrowded streets and decide to walk in the next bar and have more drinks. Cue to what must have been somewhere around 8 in the evening. I wake up in an abandoned train (!) on a deserted piece of land i have never seen before in my life. I try to open doors and, still stupid drunk, decide it will be a good idea to vacate the train through a window. I crawl through one of those small top windows, lose my balance, smash my head on the railroadtracks and pass out.
Next moment of clarity; i wake up on the railroadtrack, manage to stand up and look straight into the headlights of an oncoming train. I manage to stumble aside, fall over and don't remember anything untill I wake up at the trainstation of the city i then lived near, with a painfull head, a black eye and a bruised arm. I decide to visit my cousin, who lived closeby and when i walk into his house, he mumbles "what the fuck have you done?" Only then I noticed the 10+ inch bloodstain on the back of my white t-shirt.
I never celebrated queens day in the capital again.
(Bokbiertrol, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 22:30, Reply)

Damned bridges
Just remembered another one, on a subsequent canal trip when I was about 10 I decided that I couldn't be bothered to take the easy way to the other side of the boat, but, instead go around the outside on the small outcrop (about 4 inches) but me being stupid old me again didn't look very far ahead only to see as i was half way along a bridge coming into view.

Cut to me pissing myself at my on coming demise.

But out of nowhere my grandfather (then 90!) grabbed me by my jumper and pulled me just clear of the bridge. I escaped with just cut knees and a bruised pride. I never did go around the edge again.

Of course it never came to me to jump onto the bank 2 foot away, then rejoin the boat on the other side of the bridge.....
(Trogdor Teh Burninator, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 21:46, Reply)

Nearly Death, sort of
When i was 12 my father was an account manager for a catering firm who had contracts for ships and oilrigs. One of the ships galleys he had to oversee was on one of the two largest ocean going tugs in the world, at that time, which had just berthed in Leith.
For a jolly, we left the house dead early on saturday morning and he took me on board and i got to meet some of the crew & see the ship.
He then promissed to take me back through to Leith the next day to see the tug leave but he never appeared that Sunday morning. I was pissed off but thought "well that's Dad for you".
It wasn't until the police phoned to say he had been hit by a lorry when he crossed the motorway central reservation after hitting black ice. He was in intensive care (for weeks)and the car was a right off but it was the passenger side which took the brunt of the impact.
Looking back now, if he hadn't been a lazy bastard and thought "I can't be arsed picking up my son and hier and spend quality time with him" , I would be, in all probability, dead.
Although back than I didnt think of anything other than blagging the icecream from his hospital meals.
He still suffers from his injuries.
( Fire & Forget it's the only way to be sure, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 21:43, Reply)

Two for the price of one!
We were merrily going along on the canal boat my family used to rent every so often, when we decided to get off to go and see the "sites" of one of the many towns we passed.

But while getting off the small connection between me and the bank decided to give way and drop me straight into the murky depths (of about 4 foot) below. Me being only 5 I couldn't swim and sank like a brick to the bottom.

I blacked out because all I remember is some guy giving me CPR and a crowd around me. To my suprise i found out that my 85 year old grandfather saw me fall and dived in to save me, only to black out himself by hitting the his head in the shallow waters. So at least I had someone to retell the tale with to my friends.

No apologies for length as that just makes it longer. First post yay!
(Trogdor Teh Burninator, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 21:37, Reply)

Working on
Xybex's experience I was changing the bulb in the stockroom at a part time job some years back. The socket in question hadn't had a bulb in it since I'd worked there, and it was a dark corner so I figured it needed a little illumination. It went somthing thus:-

Stand on metal step ladder in order to reach light socket.

Push bulb in.

Entire world goes dark.

Eeep.

At this point I realise that as the socket is evidently faulty I have blown the power and there's no natural light in the room. I somehow find my way out of darkness into relative tranquility of daylight, through a maze of precariously staked shelves of shoe boxes away, when cue angry response from ten other shops on same side as high street.
(Captain Skippy pooed in a bag and left it on your doorstep, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 20:47, Reply)

2nd Post
Ill make it short. I was round a friends house, where we had recently bought some mini gobstoppers from the newsagents. I gave one to his little brother coz im nice, and the brother proceeds to choke to near death on it. Now these things were small i tell u, and he was able to run the whole distance of the ground floor of his house. He then tripped on the stairs, hit his face and dislodged the sweet, saving his own life. The time went by like a frickin flash for me, but lasted 3 minutes in real life.
(nickanytime, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 20:42, Reply)

Electric.
Incident 1: As a small child, just about crawling along I was playing with a bunch of keys. Key + plug socket = screaming the house down.

Fast forward about 20 years.
Incident 2: Did you know that a light fitting is still live, even when it is off at the switch? Neither did I. Cue the torrent of four letter words.

Not too impressive.
(Xybex, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 20:34, Reply)

Electricity is fun...
As a student, the first house we moved into was newly refurbished with all new mod cons etc. Except the oven wasn't wired up properly; the thing was feckin' live. So much so that if you put your hand near it you could feel the tingling of electricity through your arm. (For those of you who don't know, apparently the oven is connected with a fat cable, not just a poxy kettle lead. How was I to know that!)

Anyway, I obviously thought the best thing to do was not turn it off and phone an electrician, but sensibly, to test the appliance by touching it with a screwdriver.

Next thing I know is finding myself being shot backwards all the way across the kitchen onto my (now buzzing) arse and having to spend the next couple of hours lying down recovering from the shock.

Now someone calls an electrician, who in complete disbelief at the incompetence, calls the thing a "fucking death-trap" and if there had been any water on the floor that I could have been "a goner", which was nice.

But I tell you what, the sensation was fucking brilliant. You can feel the current shoot up your arm, up and down your spinal cord, around your nervous system and into your brain. If you've got the balls or are stupid enough, I'd recommend it to anyone.

As for the gizmo that was in lastweek's newsletter (No. 159), those sparky's have got nothing on me; 100mA - not a problem.

Bring on the current.
(Roy Horn, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 18:53, Reply)

I work for a particular supermarket chain
one where the customers think they a slightly better than your average Joe public. Anyway my duties include unloading the delivery lorries that turn up regularly throughout the day, the loading yard also happens to be situated under a multi storey car park. On this particular day it seems some of our town's more helpful chavs wanted to assist in the returning of one of our beloved shopping trollies... By hurling it from the top floor of the multi storey. As i stood there pressing the down button for the scissor lift i turned just in time to see the trolley land roughly half a metre away from me. After the twisted metal remains settled i looked to the sky for an answer. I saw the burberry becapped heads of what i can only assume were, in my bosses words "the little bastards responsible".
I then proceeded to crap myself. Non literally.

Still they didn't get their pound back.
(Robot. Home of the greasy bucket., Tue 30 Nov 2004, 18:27, Reply)

Not a very nice experience....
I used to live with an alcoholic who was gradually getting more and more paranoid and more and more schizophrenic as time went on.
I eventually decided that helping him out of it was beyond my abilities and arranged to move house.
A week before I moved, delusional, he stormed into my room with a 4-foot decorative samurai sword (still fuckin sharp), and held me hostage for approximately 30 minutes with the sword at my throat, telling me that I was evil, and that he was a soldier of God and it was his destiny to 'put me down'.
At some point he'd put the sword down and attacked me with his bare hands, during which struggle I got a broken hand and a few other bruises, but I got really lucky when he thrust the sword at my middle, as somehow I managed to half-grab, half-deflect the thing away from my body. It still punctured my skin, leaving me with an inch-long scar to show for it, but if I hadn't reacted so quickly, that sword would've gone right through my stomach, killing me for sure.
As I was sitting there, with the sword at my throat, I had all the 'life flashing before my eyes' stuff, and got a chance to evaluate my life and decided that if I actually got out of the situation (I genuinely believed I wouldn't) that I'd do everything possible to make a better life for myself.
Now I'm in a fantastic job in a fantastic workplace, surrounded by fantastic people in the fantastic city of London, in a wonderful state of mind (if a little wary of some personality types - I believe they call it emotional scarring).
My advice to everyone?
Don't try to help psychotic delusional alcoholics... no matter how good and virtuous you think you're being, the cunt's bound to hate your your guts for trying... if they even notice you're trying to help them.
Twats.
Now I deliberately avoid anyone that gets even the slightest bit aggressive after a few drinks. It's just not worth it.
( Lempraadon, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 18:24, Reply)

About 3 or 4 years ago
I was round my mates house, and we decided to make pancakes, with one of those hand held blender things. well, i thought it would be a great idea if i put my hand on the bottom of it and pressed on. I'd assumed the blade would whizz harmlessly above the soft tender flesh of my hand. sadly they didnt, they sliced in deep. So i try and call my parents, but can't get in touch with mum, who should at least be in the right town. So i call dad, asking him to take me to hospital, as i've cut myself. He says, "ok mat, i'll get the car from the garage, its in for a service", not quite getting the fact it was a blender that did the cutting... eventually i get to hospital, have stiches, and then 4 days later go camping, where it proptly get infected. I am still scared on the palm of my hand.
( blenderboy, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 18:02, Reply)

Close but no chandelier
Many, many years ago I had a brief and not entirely successful stint working as an air conditioning engineer. One day I was working in a big factory, on top of a "cherry picker" hydraulic platform thingy, about 40 feet up in the air, fiddling about with a fuckin huge industrial air conditioning unit mounted under the ceiling.

What I had to do was, get on the walkie-talkie to my mate working up in the electrical control room, get him to disconnect the power to this aircon unit, then undo the covers and work on it in perfect safety without having to worry about the huge wires carrying large amounts of very dangerous three-phase electicity.

So, I checked with him that the power was off, took the cover off, and reached inside. Now then, who remembers that episode of Only Fools & Horses where they have to catch the chandelier in a blanket but are stood under the wrong one? Well, there were two big fuckin ceiling-mounted aircon units in this particular factory......

I have the faintest memory of feeling as if somebody had threaded huge red-hot wires through my body from my head to my feet, and was pulling me around like some kind of epileptic puppet. Whilst simultaneously setting fire to me. And hitting me with lots of hammers.

No tunnels with white light, although a lot of brown shite came cascading out of my own back tunnel I'm told. I don't actually remember a great deal about the next few days except shaking and crying a lot.
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 17:36, Reply)

Aberyst....Mid-Wales 2003
my friends and i were on a beach in wales for someone's birthday...

there were some very tall cliffs on this beach and we were all sat underneath them. one of blokes (who was showing off to some girl we wanted to shag) decided to climb said cliffs. now these were covered in huge pieces of *heavy* slate rock.

up he goes...almost to the top...

...DOWN comes a single *massive* boulder of slate...

there were about 30 people in the group, all sitting under the cliffs. the boulder thunders down the cliff hits a lip and is flung, sharp corner first, into *MY* back. Cue loud scream from me.

*blood*

*rushed to hospital*

boulder *just* misses my lungs and spine. i refuse to sit under cliffs now...but i have a great scar!

i kept the slate. he's called mick jagged and he lives on a rockery in my garden. he weighs just over 5stone :)
(Nos coeurs cocaine Montparnasse Le mix de gelée vodka et le beat, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 17:24, Reply)

living in swaziland
driving north from nhlangano(where we lived) to mbabane part of the journey goes through a nature reserve. 12 foot fences on either side though. im sitting on the back seat looking between the 2 front ones when my father goes "look - springbok !!" so i turn quickly to look out the side window to see a herd of springbok leaping over these fences.

BANG ! at that precise moment one of the feckers lands on the roof of the car and caves it in, the rear view mirror shoots out through the rear windscreen.

roof and rearview mirror would have definately done nasty things to my head, had i not moved a second beforehand. survive? i think not.

we continued the rest of the 200KM on dirt roads with my father hanging out of his side window like one of those dogs you see in the movies.
( pregnantfridge, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 17:17, Reply)

Boxing day disaster
Driving back home to Glasgow last boxing day with my father driving, me in the front, and Mrs me in the back.

The year before, my father was driving to work on his motorbike, and sadly was hit by another car - his arm was torn off all but a few threads of skin, his face was crushed and his leg was snapped like a matchstick (the chocolate kind), but thanks to technology and a few kilos of titanium he's now a walking talking cyborg.

The poor bastard went and crashed the year after - last boxing day. As we were all driving back home to glasgow like I said, he took a wrong turn off a roundabout, hit a bit of gravel, hit a slope and smashed headfirst into a tree - the car was pretty much cleaved right up to the dashboard, but amazingly nobody was hurt!

One of the presents I had bought him was a churchill nodding dog - my father was insured with direct line at the time. I'm convinced that they're connected...
(Louis Cowan, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 16:48, Reply)

Irate father...
...I had stayed the nite in a seperate room at a girlfriends parents place (let's call her Nicola from Bucks) and was attempting a dialogue with her rather sullen dad in the kitchen the next morning. He wasn't at all receptive and kept on cleaning his rabbit hunting gun.
He then pointed it at my forehead and pulled the trigger.
No bang - just a loud click.
He then loaded the gun and and said "Try anything sexual with my daughter and I'll fucking kill you".
I dearly wanted to tell him of the rather excellent oral sex of the previous evening, but decided not to. When I mentioned the gun/kitchen incident to my girlfriend and her mum they both laughed and told me that "Oh, he always does that".

I have a daughter of my own now and am contemplating taking up rabbit hunting before she hits her teens.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 15:26, Reply)

It was my friend's 18th
And after the party a few of us decided to go on to Strathclyde Uni Student Union in Glasgow City Centre. We're mostly sobered up by this point and we call a taxi, but of course given how long it took to arrive, we were pretty much wasted when we climbed in.

So this taxi's speeding along through the busy streets of Glasgow, the driver merrily chatting away to three drunken teenage girls in the back, quite often turning all the way round in his seat and not watching the road at all. The state we were in, nobody really noticed, so when the guy went speeding through a red light only to notice and stamp on the brake pedal a split second before another car would have slammed into the side of us, it took a good few seconds to realise we had almost died.

The rest of the journey was spent in shocked, burnt-rubber-scented silence.
(SusK, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 15:08, Reply)

When I was 14
I was cycling with a mate by a river in France. We noticed some bloke carrying a bag and a twin barrel shotgun walking ahead of us.
My mate turned to me and said "I think we should go a different way"
Just as I was about to concur, the man (who was about 15 yards away) turned towards us, pointed to gun in our direction, and fired.
Everything went in slow motion, the bang reached my ears about 3 seconds after I saw it happen, and about 3 seconds after that came the stinging pain...

Luckily for us, he had loaded shot, not wild boar killing rounds, which are the norm round there. The shot mainly hit our bikes, but my mate got a few pellets in the calf, and I got several ricochets to the face, which was nice.

Two hours later the local Gendarmes had taken him down, but only after he changed ammo to wild boar killing rounds and put three men out of action! Turns out he was a local madman who had robbed a bank. Before he was caught he concealed the money in a drain pipe. The money was never found, and he's been in a padded cell ever since :)

Sorry for length and girth, I've been told its hereditary.
(lat297, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 14:13, Reply)

Nothing too exciting
As a kid, riding along the pavement at the side of the A4 next to a mate, decided it'd be a great idea to hold onto each other's handlebars and steer the other bike. Within approximately half a second he'd veered off to the left into a wall and I went in the opposite direction, off the kerb, off the bike, diving horizontally towards the inside lane. Instantly there was a huge roar, something big and red flashed before my eyes, and I kind of got spun around in a bit of a gust and landed in the gutter with my ears ringing. Got up, picked up the bike, and realised my mate was staring agape at me. Apparently a car doing about 60 had sped past, and the 90 degree-ish corner of the roof/side window had fitted almost exactly into the 90 degree-ish gap between my head and right shoulder, missing me by about an inch. He thought for a second the car had passed right through me and that I was some kind of indestructable superhero, before realising that we were in fact about 12 and old enough to know that such things are not really real, really.

Funnily enough, as soon as I understood how close I'd just come to having my head taken off I realised that I had seen a big tunnel with a white light and a stereo, mug, ice cream van etc etc, oh actually I can't be bothered to carry on with this last bit, I'll just stop now.
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 13:56, Reply)

Swing when you're winning
Aged about 7 one of my daily chores was to open the kitchen storm windows. This involved the careful use of a chair to climb on and occasionally, standing on the kitchen work surface to reach the window handle properly. On one occasion, I stood on the kitchen work surface and turned to face my adoring crowd (elder sister, younger brother and mother). Looking up I saw the flourescent light tube and as a dazzling finale to my act I decided to swing like a trapeze artist into their midst. All went well until my hands somehow, probably being damp from the condensation soaked window, short circuited the lights before the flourescent tube gave way sending me and the tube crashing to the kitchen floor, not before I had completed a deaf-defying dance on the ceiling whilst the current was still flowing. When I came round, the rest of the family were trying to separate the shards of flourescent tube from my skin and wondering why the lights had suddenly all gone out !
(pricema1968, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 13:23, Reply)

I went canyoning in Switzerland in 1999
It was a nice day in Interlaken. We did a bungee jump and some jumping off rocks into rivers and pools. It was a lot of fun.

One day later there was a disaster which killed 21 people. The river flooded and washed everyone away, including our guides.

Later still, they put the wrong rope on the bungee and someone died of a very sore head.
(guinea, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 13:00, Reply)

My Second
When I was about 5 my mum left me alone in the living room for a minute.

In that time I managed to get some fuse wire out of the drawer and wrap it around the pins of the plug for the HiFi. I plugged that in, and then put the other end of the fuse wire into the headphone socket, after which I plugged in the headphones.

Putting the headphones over my ears, I turned the stereo on... then things get a little hazy.

I remember three big sparks about the size of footballs (well they appeared to be) and me waking up over the other side of the room and my mum running in.

Then we bought a new stereo.
(kna has forgotten everything., Tue 30 Nov 2004, 12:35, Reply)

Once there was this witch....
...And she turned me into a newt...




..well.. I got better....

(burn her burn her)
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Tue 30 Nov 2004, 12:28, Reply)

two worth mentioning
when I was about 12 I was racing my friend down a hill. I went to turn into a side road at full pelt. The handlebars turned but the front wheel didn't, so I yanked them as hard I could which caused the bike to flip over and me to bounce across the road across the path of an oncoming vehicle, which managed to stop. only for me to be runover by my mate who was following closely behind.
oh and Ive been mortared by the IRA!!
(snelly, Tue 30 Nov 2004, 12:13, Reply)