...and You Lived to Tell About It

I once was trapped in a parking garage elevator for several minutes, alone on a Friday night. You think of all the movies and news stories you’re ever seen of people trapped in elevators.

My worst nightmare!!

And then the doors just inexplicably opened.

What has happened to you?

My mom, who was a *terrible* driver, decided she wanted to take flying lessons. She made me sit in the back of the plane while the instructor let her fly for the first time.

I was about 10 years old. I thought, this is how I die...

I grew up in Missouri and I was on the east bound side of railroad tracks near my house, waiting for a train to pass. Anyone who knows Midwest trains knows they're 675 miles long and they take forever to go through. So the train finishes and I put my head down to sprint across the tracks. But a westbound train was following the end of the east train and the engineer was STOMPING on his horn. I froze dead in my tracks. I didn't even pick my head up for a minute. I was probably two steps away from getting waffled. I'll never forget it. That engineer probably plotzed in his cabin when he saw me running.

Thanks for the post......it brought back some other cool memories like my mom cowering under the kitchen table during a tornado, playing with my neighbors dog in my yard, and my dad letting me drive his Delta 88 up the driveway.

got stuck in trunk of my dads car when i was 6. Stuck in a little sportscar trunk for hours baking.

Eventually someone heard me screaming and let me out.

Then I got screamed at and smacked for being in the trunk. 1980s parenting i guess.

We were vacationing in Utah. It was super hot so we decided to wade in the colorado river. Unfortunately I couldn't see that the river bank was a cliff not a slope. I slipped and fell into the river while holding my 3 year old. A friend was right there and asked if I was okay. I said yes and then realized I had nothing to stand up on. I am a strong swimmer so I was able to pass my 3 year old to my friend, while I thought I was going down river. Once my daughter was safe my friend threw a dog leash in. I grabbed it and he pulled me out. It was extremely traumatic for me at the time, but now it's just a story we talk about.

I got stuck in an elevator, too. Also on a Friday night. I was leaving a creative writing class at 9:50 p.m., deserted campus, and the elevator stopped mid-floor. I pushed every button. Nothing. I sat down and tried not to panic. Sat there for 5 minutes, then the elevator jerked and it moved. *Whew*

I got sucked into a riptide in California, and was being dragged out to the ocean, until I was rescued by the lifeguard. It was really scary.

splitimage

My senior year in high school, a friend and I were thinking about attending Northern Arizona University so one weekday evening she drove us in her Subaru Brat to visit the campus. The road between our house and this university was extremely dead and cold--we did not see a single car that night (to give you some perspective of how unpopulated the place was--the care died south of Happy Jack, Arizona). The engine in her car went dead. We discovered that we could get the engine going when the car was going downhill by putting it in 1st gear but soon learned it would die after a few minutes of running. We turned it around and started pushing it towards home (elevation of our home 5800, elevation of where we were going 7000 ft). We pushed for hours. It was so cold that pushing was the only way to stay warm. On the home stretch, it is all down hill but the curves were even more scary than usual because when the engine died, so did the power brakes which she managed by leaving it in the lower gears and using the parking brake. My dad was a fire chief and pulled many a dead body out of cars/trucks that had gone over the cliff in this area of the road. I never ended up visiting the university because I eventually decided to go to a university located in the desert rather than the mountains.

the only thing I can think of was when I was at gym class, and the teacher had us all climb the bars

I remember getting to the top and thinking... ****

I'm not going to make it down.... the bars are going to break, that or I'm going to lose balance- then I said a little prayer...

and made it down- or rather, the teacher decided to put a beam across where I was standing, giving me easy access back to the ground (not easy access, but better access)

oh yes.

I have been trrapped in a burning house as well- that was scary, seeing flames everywhere and the flames making it hard to breav

where my trigger of fire comes from

Me and two other fellas were surrounded by 8 or 9 Nazi Skinheads - with a gun to my head and a knife to my throat - in a parking lot late at night.

The leader of a notorious gang back in the 80’s was yelling all sorts of profanity and death threats at me - calling me by a name other than my own. He had the knife; another Nazi had the gun aimed at me.

I realized that he was looking for someone very specific, and that I wasn’t the object of his wrath.

I was able to convince the lot that they had the wrong guy.

I lived.

Did you ever see the Geraldo episode where the Nazi Skin threw a chair and broke Geraldo’s nose? That Skinhead was part of this gang, though I don’t remember if he was part of this little party.

I fell in the middle of a highway once because I was wearing flip-flops in the rain

This is a very fuzzy memory. But it's one I've always had. It seems more like a dream now than something that actually happened. But I do believe it actually occurred. When I was around age 4 or 5, I guess it would have been, I seem to recall a group of us kids around that age were on the first floor of a new house that was just starting to be built in our neighorhood. We were standing in a group. And someone said everyone should back up to form a circle. In doing so, I fell backwards through the open stairwell into the basement. The floor of the basement was dirt I believe. No stairs had been built yet. There was a ladder down into the basement.

I don't know if I was unconscious for any period of time. But, at some point, I climbed up the ladder. I have this memory of one of the other kids saying something like: "How are we going to get him out of there?" But when I reached the top of the ladder, I guess I simply stepped off onto the floor of the structure. At that point, I walked home and sat on the front porch of the house where we lived. (I think it was possibly a duplex where my parents rented. I know they never owned a home there. I doubt the porch I sat on was even our porch.) I guess one of the other kids went & told my mother what had happened because she came out to see if I was okay. I guess she must have decided I was because, so far as I can recall, I wasn't taken to the doctor.

I almost died from choking when I was 4-5.

I remember lying on the couch just about to pass out.

Something or someone told me to get help. My mom got it up.

It’s still very anxiety provoking how close I was to dying. I should talk to my therapist about it.

I nearly fell off of a cliff-like rock at Brice Canyon when I was 22. I was screwing around with binoculars and and trying to jump from one rock to another. Really stupid.

When I was 17 & stupid, I accompanied two high-level drug dealers I didn't know well (friends of a friend) to pick up a a few pounds of weed. The pick-up point was to be an apartment in the projects. Before we reached the apartment, two guys on either side of the street walked into the street with guns drawn. The driver turned the wheel & accelerated, hitting one of the guys, while the other guy got off a shot, but missed us. We sped away. Thinking the ordeal was over, the driver stopped, went into his trunk & started passing out guns to everyone in the car - he was going back to look for the guys & seek revenge. I refused to take a gun & we never found the stick-up men, fortunately. That was the last major drug deal I ever played a part in!

I was attacked or about to be attacked several times in my life. Escaped every time.

One time I was about 12, and I was tiny. I was home alone. Door bell rang, I asked who is there, the answer sound like my brother, I opened the door and it was big man a total stranger and he tried to get in. He appeared unsteady perhaps drugged up or drunk. He shoved his leg inside the door and tried to get in and I hit his leg with my shoe (don’t recall why I was wearing shoes inside), he screamed and withdraw his leg in pain and I pushed him ( I guess he didn’t expect that) and I closed the door and turned the lock. He was banging the door for a bit and then left. I never told my parents. In fact 40 years later they still don’t know

My ex husband and I were attacked by neo Nazi in Berlin (where stuff like this is absolutely illegal) in 1990 at night after the Unity Day (day of east and west Germany reunification). It was a wonderful happy day celebrating the beginning of a new era for Germany and everyone in Europe.

And here they were, one was wearing a flag with swastika on it, he pulled it out of somewhere as he wouldn’t wear during the day. He was very tall. My ex husband got into physical fight with him. It was so terrible and scary. Other guys stepped away but one of them kept fighting but the guy was drunk so eventually my ex pushed him to the ground and we ran.

Unfortunately that terrible ending of the day ruined my good memory of it

I was driving in Minnesota and it had just barely started to snow, not enough to worry about, well I guess it was cold enough to immediately form black ice, I went from the fast lane on the freeway spinning around through traffic until I landed in reverse on the shoulder on the far right. I still have no idea how no one hit me.

I fell down a waterfall when I was 17. I landed in a pool and got out. Good thing, because the next waterfall was a 60 foot drop and ended on a boulder.