We all have close calls in life – mostly metaphorical, thank goodness – and they can really help us take stock of our lives and what we need to change.
These close calls were big enough that there’s no way these people were the same afterward.
Check it out and see what I mean!
1. That’s as gross as it is scary.
A few years ago I had pneumonia, but my whole family insisted that it was just post nasal drip, (Which runs in the family) after a week or two I woke up in the middle of the night when I couldn’t feel my arm. After I got to the ER the doctor said that it was the worst he’d ever seen and he was surprised I wasn’t d**d.
I had 3 lbs of mucus cut out of my lungs and another two weeks in the hospital siphoning out the rest.
For three months afterwards I could barely walk half a mile without starting to pass out and I still can’t run for more than 200-300 yards without collapsing.
2. Someone was looking out.
My newborn needed to be rushed to a super high level NICU to be put into a state of induced hypothermia, because he only had hours before he would suffer permanent brain damage. I live in a small town in the middle of no where.
The small town next door just barely upgraded their hospital to have that hypothermia suite, one of only a few in Texas.
He’s doing great, no sign of any damage.
3. That’ll get your heart pumping.
Around 30,000 pounds.
I was driving with my wife in town one snowy evening and we had pulled up to a stop light. I happened to glance up at the rear view mirror and saw a city bus heading towards us… and rotating sideways.
I hit the gas and pulled ahead into the intersection and left into the turning lane, and less than a second later, the bus went sliding through right where our car was.
It came to a stop on the other side of the intersection and fortunately didn’t hit anything, but one second or two feet difference and we would’ve had some nice spinal injuries.
4. Thankful he was there.
I stayed up all night before a daytrip to Hong Kong. You know that daze when you haven’t slept, you’re just kinda robotic and doing the human stuff, nearly zero awareness of anything?
Well, I went to cross a street and my friend behind me SNATCHED my shoulder and yanked me backwards just in time to feel the WHOOSH of a doubledecker bus breezing past us. I just looked at him like “oh, thanks man” and it took a whole extra minute for my brain to process I would be f**ken ded had he not grabbed me.
5. A harrowing afternoon.
ears ago I lived in Vancouver and liked to go for long walks (beautiful city to do so). I was heading to a friends first to drop something off and and cut through a neighbourhood with a lot of south east asian immigrants ( the ones I got to talk to were mostly from Vietnam). I was aware of a van behind me but it was mid day and there were people out, so it was only a passing thought.
A lady was working in her garden and as i approached her house she started to look behind me. Then she came out onto the side walk and started talking to me in her native language. I understood none of it but her body language was adgitated. She kept jestering to me to come with her up their walkway.
As I looked behind me I see three men getting out of the van, which is now parked just behind me. By this point the woman has a good grip on my arm and and has me dragged almost to her porch. She kept talking to me and pointing to stuff in her garden and i just listened, nodded, and kept a good eye on the men and van.
I dont remember how long we were there but the men finally left. Both myself and the woman let out huge sighs of relief. She then patted me on the arm, said something, and then went back to her gardening. I booted it to my friends house.
On the news the next day was the story of a woman who was kidnapped and gang rape. The victim was grabbed on the next street over from the woman’s house, not long after my encounter with her, by 5 men in a van. The men were distinctive and the decription of the men and van fit the ones I had see.
That woman saved me from something horrible and I am forever thankful.
6. Heroes are everywhere.
I think I saved a baby’s life once. It was in a city center, crossing a main road with a while bunch of other people. The dad was pulling the pram behind him onto the pavement while he texted on his phone, and the dumb f**k didn’t realist he’d left the pram just… there on the road while he himself was on the pavement.
Everyone kinda ignored it while the traffic lights kept that section of road clear but then the lights changed and the f**king moron still hadn’t looked up from his phone while a huge double decker was bearing down on his offspring. Out of the whole crowd I was the only one to push forward and pull the pram onto the pavement.
The complete imbecile gave a grunt of surprise and dropped his phone as the bus whooshed past and he realised he’d utterly failed in his parenting responsibilities, which was some consolation. I hope it shattered.
7. That airport is a menace.
Many years ago, my flight had just landed at Chicago O’hare and the plane was taxiing when the pilot suddenly slammed on the brakes. People were literally thrown forward against the seat in front of them.
A few seconds later, another plane (taking off I think) went screaming by right in front of us.
No explanation was given, though our imaginations provided a lot of gory details.
8. Hot Pockets can be heroes, too.
Hubs, my sister, and I were hanging out around my parents’ house on a very boring 4th of July. We decided to wash my husband’s new car sitting in the driveway because it was hot out and an excuse to play in the hose.
We were literally walking out the front door, and I said “eh, we should eat lunch before we get all wet and stuff”, and everyone agreed, so we turned around and went back inside.
I was warming up something in the microwave (a hot pocket I think), and all of a sudden I hear the loudest BANG I think I’ve ever heard, from the direction of the front door. Hubs and I look at each other wide-eyed and run outside.
I was greeted by the back-end of a Crown Vic, smoking something fierce, plowed into the tree in the middle of our yard. For a split-second I was just stunned, then screamed to my sister inside to call 911. I looked over to the driveway, at the car we had been planning to wash just 5 minutes ago.
Totaled. Completely totaled. Brand new 2011 G6, destroyed. Guy hit it so hard it did a complete 90 degree turn across the driveway. He actually hit it so hard, it ended up ricocheting and hitting the other cars in the driveway, mauling 2 other cars. Yard was f**ked, Crown Vic was f**ked, tree was f**ked.
We immediately assumed it was drunk driving, being the 4th and all…I went over to the driver’s side and found a very old man, very bewildered, unable to comprehend what I was saying but conscious. I will never forget the look he gave me – confused, helpless, scared. I was on the line with the paramedics as they sent over the ambulances, and tried my best to follow their instructions. (My sister was only 14 at the time, so I handled the call)
Turns out dude was diabetic and had passed out behind the wheel due to low blood sugar, hit the gas pedal with his weight as he passed out, and was plowing down our residential street at about 65mph. He jumped the curb, drove down the sidewalk past another house, then slammed into my husband’s car, and subsequently, the tree.
If we had been anywhere near that yard/driveway, I have no doubt one or all of us would have been seriously injured or d**d. It was sheer dumb luck and timing that saved us. Huge bullet dodged…or should I say, huge car dodged.
9. Deep thoughts for a kid.
As a kid, after running errands in town with my mom, I was climbing into the backseat of our family station wagon.
A semi-truck hit a power line pole down the street causing the still-live wire to fall, bounce off the roof of the car and hang across the open door just a foot or two above my legs.
Raised catholic, I wondered for a while after if I had actually d**d that day and that the rest of what I thought was my life was my purgatory.
10. Little fires everywhere.
Was going to move to a different apartment complex last month…got injured at work and lost hours; therefore, couldn’t come up with the deposit money in time.
Last week some a**hat was cooking meth and caught the building on fire.
11. Some wives would have done the opposite.
After i had a stroke, i was in a coma and it didn’t look like i’d wake up.
The drs asked my wife if they should let me go. i only exist because she said no.
I didn’t dodge a bullet so much as my wife blocked it for me.
12. My parent heart just stopped.
My dad was a truck driver in the oilfield in Canada. He worked a lot of long hours and every single day. So on weekends he would bring me and my younger brother on some of his jobs. We were on location and my little brother (3 yrs) and me (10 yrs) were waiting for him playing in cab of truck. My little brother opened the passenger door and my little arms closed it.
Jobs done, we start our trek home going about 35 km/hr and the door flies open and I get sucked out of truck. I remember doing about 10 back flips as I tumbled out. Hitting the ground on my back a few times and rolling my way to a stop. I stood up before the truck was even stopped in absolute shock.
Next thing I see my dad looking for me and he burst into tears. First time I ever seen him cry. I’m 33 now and he still won’t talk to me about it. Luckily the rig was in a farmers field. So when we were leaving I landed on softer dirt.
Not a single scratch on me. Dad thought he ran over me with trailer. Don’t think we ever went to work with dad again. I work for the company now.
13. Some friend.
A friend had lost his job under suspicious circumstances. A few weeks later he asked me to take him to the bank, as I got near to pick him up I caught a train. He called to say never mind he would get someone else.
A few days later a friend sent out a message to a large number of our friends, this guy lost his job and was running a check cashing con – Can you cash this check for me?
I’ll pay you $50 if you do.
The check is $500, he has no backing funds, you eat the whole amount.
He did this to several friends in a few day to amass a few grand and was about to skip town when the cops got him.
14. Thank goodness for that.
I fell out of a farm truck with I was a about 8, going about 35 down a “just out of town” stretch of highway.
I bounced a few times and came to a stop just about to the shoulder of the road. I remember overwhelming certainty that I was going to d**, and I rolled to the ditch.
Missed getting run over by about 10 inches.
Got up, my mom had come back for me and immediately took me to the ER where I was given a total clean bill of health. Not a bump (tho I did have a nasty bruise where I hit the road initially).
Who knew kids were made of rubber?
15. Better listen up.
Not me, but I had a field service engineer working on one of my big robotic liquid handlers. He decided to bypass the safety pin that prevents the heads from moving while the cover is open while he had a diagnostic program queued up on the computer. What he didn’t know was that the instant he reinserted the safety pin the machine would execute the queued instructions and start moving, and he had a hand inside it right in the danger zone.
I grabbed his shoulder and yanked his hand out an instant before it was crushed. He stopped ignoring me when I told him to stop bypassing safety lockouts to save a few minutes.
16. Your mom was right about your headphones.
A literal police car. The police were chasing someone and I was crossing the road and my dumba** was walkin slowly and the police car nearly grazed me.
Look both ways and take off your headphones when you cross the road kids!!
17. Luck was on his side.
I had a cardic arrest about four years ago. Dropped d**d(ish) in the middle of my shift. Found out after I woke up about a week later that:
A) the manager who saw me fall was a former life guard and knew proper CPR
B) an ambulance happened to be passing about two blocks away
C) probably the best cardio unit in my state was a ten minute ambulance ride from where it all happened.
Walked out of the hospital about two weeks later, full recovery.
18. A happy ending.
This is a weird one, but the family that adopted me probably helped me dodge a huge bullet. I was born to a poor teenager and she just happened to go to a particular solo adoption agent who just happened to know my adoptive parents personally. My parents were only in the state for such a short amount of time (military fam) that it’s wild they’re the ones who managed to adopt me. They also were the mom’s second choice at first, as other families were trying to get me. From what I understand, it is a miracle that I ended up with the parents I have now.
Anyway, they’re the best family I could ask for. Seriously, they’re saints. Supportive and kind and hardworking people. My mom is my best friend. My sister is on the spectrum and taught me more about accepting myself than anyone else ever could. My dad and I didn’t have a perfect relationship, but he taught me some much-needed lessons about adulthood that I probably wouldn’t have understood so wholly without him. I often think about what kinds of families I could’ve ended up with, maybe a wealthier one, but I got them instead.
They’re all a bunch of loving weirdos and I grew up with so many friends who had abusive parents, parents who hated each other, siblings who were downright cruel, etc. They never made a show of me, like lots of adoptive parents do, and they’ve always supported my far-fetched ideas. They were just… this amazing blend of structured and chill. For example, I loved farming and horses as a kid, so my parents homeschooled me and allowed me to spend every other week at our family friends’ farm, helping take care of the horses and just having fun doing farm stuff, while making sure that I was always on top of school.
Also, I was born with some health issues— my mom was a nurse and my dad a medic, so they took amazing care of me. They’ve also always respected my extreme introversion and shyness, when other people have tried to push me to pretend to be something I’m not. My brothers and sisters were much older than me, so they were able to look out for me when I was a dumb teenager, while relating with me and showing me a lot of empathy.
Another cool thing— my parents have said that they love having a young kid at an older age, as they’re old enough to be my grandparents. I’ve introduced them to things they would never have known about otherwise, and dragged them along to places and trips and events that they ended up liking a lot. One time, my dad drove me for five hours (and let me skip school) to see my favorite band on their last tour.
The show was at a bar and we had an incredible time, and my dad was hit on by tons of gay dudes all night; he was very flattered and it was so fun. We also toured some local gastropubs that day and it reignited my dad’s passion for farm-to-table cooking. If we didn’t have each other, we both would’ve missed out on so much. We all just… complete each other. I feel like I really was born to be in this family.
Finally, they are black, and I am half-black. We live in an area that’s like 99% white and I was teased quite a bit as a kid, but they always had my back. They gave me a lot of perspective, as my mom literally grew up under Jim Crow laws. They taught me to be kind when it’s hard to be, and to defend myself when no one else will.
I’m so lucky.
Sorry for the “hypothetical bullet” answer, but yeah.
19. What on earth.
Just before starting HS, I got hit by a car doing 35 mph, while riding my bike. (T-boned) My bike went under the car, I was thrown up, smashed the windshield out with my back, was flipped over the car, and landed a perfect no hop landing, on my feet, like a gymnast (minus the arms raised flourish at the end).
The entire accident was witnessed by a firefighter who was watching out his window, literally standing right next to his emergency radio, and called for an ambulance.
The lady who hit me got out of her car, yelling, “I’m a nurse, I’m a nurse, lie down.”
I had no breaks or fractures, just a bruised ribcage.
20. Wait for it.
My GF and I were going to see Cats, the movie. Our Uber pulls up and straight away we notice something about the driver. To this day, we can’t articulate what it was, other than to say he just felt “off”. We got into he car, already hesitating and a touch anxious. He looks at us in the rear view mirror and makes a comment like “two lovely ladies in my car tonight” or some weird sh%t.
A few minutes in, he makes another semi-s**ual innuendo comment about “riding” with him. My friend notices the handle of a knife just poking out the side of his jacket. She says “hey can we stop at 7-11, we need to grab a Gatorade real quick.” So we go in and refuse to come back out.
We’re considering whether to call the Police or not (it was so creepy, but what would we say? “Ah, some dude was creepy to us?) And while we’re hesitating, he winds down his window, brandishes this f**king hunting knife at both of us, screams something about devil-women and then just tears it out the parking lot.
To this day, my GF and I are so thankful that we got out of that Uber. Otherwise we would have made it to the movies in time and we would have seen Cats.
21. Life isn’t always fair.
I had a high school math teacher survive an aortic aneurysm.
IE his aorta, the blood vessel carrying oxygenated blood out of your lungs gets a hole in it and the blood starts leaking/shooting into your thoracic cavity. This is very fatal. It was Friday afternoon (payday).
He was in line at the bank. This bank was next door to a hospital. A trauma surgeon and EMT crew were both in the line behind him. They called him the miracle man. Teacher was a prick but lived.
22. It wasn’t meant to be.
7.92 Mauser rifle bullet.
When I was 15ish I was very depressed and got very drunk, found my great grandfather’s WWI captured German rifle, found some bullets from that time, loaded it, and put the rifle in my mouth and pulled the trigger.
Thankfully the bullet was not loaded properly / was a dud for being 90 years old at the time, and did not fire.
23. What a relief.
Almost proposed to a girl who had been cheating on me with a pile of s**t that called himself my best friend.
This was years ago, and I’m getting married at the end of the month to the love of my life. Life has a way of working itself out.
24. Sends a chill straight down your spine.
My first husband and I were separated. He showed up at my apartment building unannounced and someone let him in because they recognized him from when he lived there. He wanted to come upstairs, but I met him in the lobby instead, where there were cameras and other people. He had never been violent towards me, but it didn’t feel right to allow him into my space.
He asked me to go for a drive with him and I refused. I offered to help him get help (mental health issues that he refused to treat). He declined and drove away.
He was missing for a few days but turned up several states away visiting a friend. A few days after that he took his own life using a handgun. We found out later that he’d purchased the gun here, and headed straight out of town when I refused to get in the car with him. To this day, I am thankful that I never got in that car with him. He’d never even talked about buying a gun before, I had no idea he was armed. Who knows what would have happened.
25. He was supposed to live.
My great grandfather was in the merchant navy in the war. He was in the engine room at the bottom of the ship and his friend came down to take over the shift early. Minutes later a torpedo struck and everyone at the bottom of the ship couldn’t escape and d**d.
My great grandfather would’ve been one of them otherwise. Then, he was in the sea for a while and happened to be picked up by some Portuguese fisherman who saved him.
Then, all part of the same tale, he escaped d**th again. He was meant to be on a flight back to the U.K. but got kicked off last minute to be replaced by VIPs. That plane got shot down and everyone d**d in it.
26. Lucky he was there.
Literally. I was walking back to our barracks in Afghanistan talking with my peers and my staff Sergeant. We get to on part my staff Sergeant grabbed my collar and pulled me back.
Right there was a unexploded 40mm grenade projectile from a launcher sitting where my my foot was about to land. Big yikes.
27. I’m holding my breath.
My dad was going through severe depression 10 years ago and my life was equally s**tty for a whole multitude of reasons, and it was rubbing off on me.
I spent what felt like half an hour crying on the floor and working up the nerve to pull the trigger, then when I finally did, the safety was on; I sold my gun the next morning.
Wish my dad was able to say the same 3 years later (R.I.P.)
28. Violence always escalates.
Well, about 15 years ago I dated a guy for less than a year. It was an awful, abusive relationship and I was happy to get out of it when I did.
About… 8-9 years ago, I saw him on the news. He strangled his girlfriend to d**th. He then dismembered her and lived with her body for a month or so before he was caught.
Edit: wow. Thank you for all of the awards. I’ve actually written about this before on askreddit under a “have you dated a serial k**ler?” Question. Here was my answer which gives a bit more detail on it.
“Not a SERIAL k**ler… but I dated a k**ler.
He was not a k**ler at the time.
We were young, and met on a dating website. He went to my high school but graduated a few years before me. The first… month? Was ok.
Then he changed.
We had a huge fight one time because he said something silly. I don’t even remember what it was, but I playfully threw a pillow at him. He immediately flipped out, punched a hole in my door and told me he’d make it so I would never have anything to come back to.
Another time, he FINALLY got a job. Didn’t have one when I met him and I was paying for everything. After job searching for months, he got one. It’s his first few days at his new job, and all of a sudden he doesn’t want to go in. No reason, he just doesn’t feel like it. I tell him he better get to that d**n job or he’s going to lose it. After a lot if arguing, he gets ready and we both get in the car so I can drive him to work. As I’m driving, it gets MORE heated and he starts strangling me while I’m at a red light. The red light was right next to a gas station and I pull in there while his hands are around my throat. I manage to get him off me and I get out of the car and scream, “what the f**k?!”
“I’m sorry. I blacked out. You just… pissed me off so much! I told you I didn’t want to go to work!”
The relationship lasted less than a year. He cheated on me with some girl, and for the first and only time in my life, I was GLAD someone was cheating on me. You can go live with her and be someone else’s problem now.
Then years later when I saw him on the news, I felt really bad for that thought.
He had handcuffed his then girlfriend (who had just had his baby) to the bed, and strangled her to d**th. He thought she had cheated on him. He then dismembered her body and lived with it for a month in their apartment. Eventually, the smell tipped some people off along with his gf not being seen by family in a bit.
The baby was ok though and was taken in by the girl’s family.
He went on the run, but was later caught and is currently in prison.”
No news article though. I have posted a news article with it before and got banned. Hopefully with all the info I gave you, plus someone guessed the state below, you can find it for yourself so I don’t get banned again for “posting personal information” by posting a public news article. Lol.
I’m all for taking stock of my life, but I’m glad nothing like this has forced my hand!
If you’ve had a close call in your life, share the details with us in the comments!
