Our time here is not guaranteed.
We know that people die––death is all around us––but the fact that we could die at any moment doesn't usually hit us until something really sudden or terrible happens. It's times like those when we realize that absolutely nothing is within our control.
After Redditor Sponge-iopotortoise asked the online community, "What is the closest you have come to dying?" people lined up to share their stories.
Warning: Some uncomfortable reading ahead.
"Experienced surgeon..."
Appendix burst. Experienced surgeon said it was one of the two worst cases he'd ever seen. Sepsis almost got me.
"When I was 2 years old..."
When I was 2 years old I started having random seizures. A really bad one put me in a coma for 2 weeks. During that one week doctors were struggling to find out what was wrong with me. They had doctors fly in from other states to run tests n stuff. Everyone thought I was never going to wake up and die while in a coma. Turns out I had a rare iron deficiency that caused blood to clot in my brain. The doctors had to go in there and get rid of it. One misplaced snip would've either killed me or left me mentally handicapped. Luckily the doc snipped the right spot and all was well. I woke up a while after that but had lost all of my memories and forgot how to do everything. I learned quickly though according to my parents.
"What I remember..."
One time when I was 10, I was at a public pool on top of the highest diving board. I tried to be cute and jump as close as possible to the edge of the board.
What I remember is seeing the concrete of the edge of the pool JUST miss my head by millimeters. I seriously was panicking at the bottom of the pool thinking I was dead. My Mom thought I was dead. The lifeguard probably thought he was gonna be sued for not seeing me be this stupid at the board in the first place.
But I'm still here, twenty years later, and I like to think in an alternate universe I'd be dead from cracking my skull.
"On the interstate..."
Driving home from college. Exhausted. On the interstate, going through the mountains. I was driving, and the I woke up going 70 mph straight down a switchback, on the wrong side of the yellow line and careening right for the edge. I was able to slam the brake and wrestle the car away from the guardrail that certainly wouldn't have stopped me going over the edge at that angle of impact. If I'd woken up a half second later I wouldn't be here.
"The worst part..."
Nearly being strangled by my batman cape when it got caught in the elevator door at my grandparents house. The worst part was having to explain the giant red mark on my neck the next day at school.
"I fell off..."
I fell off a 175 foot cliff in the desert. The ground I should've landed on was hard dirt. There happened to be one singular bush as far as I could see and I landed on it. That bush broke my fall just enough that I only broke one rib. I was totally fine. Then as I'm laying there in shock, I see that the quad I was riding before I fell was falling down as well and coming right down on me. I was in too much pain and shock to move and by some miracle, the quad landed upright with the wheels on either side of me. Barely even grazed me. I was convinced that god was real.
"I'd been out for a night..."
Choking.
I'd been out for a night on the town with a friend. We bought some food and got in a cab to take us home. We were both sitting in the back. The cab driver said that it was OK if we ate the food in the cab, so I started eating mine (a mixed kebab). My friend was talking to the driver and he said something that made me laugh, just as I put a piece of steak in my mouth, and I involuntarily inhaled it and started choking.
For the first 30 seconds or so, I was trying to either swallow or cough it up, but neither worked. I couldn't breathe at all. At that point I started to panic. I was trying to get my friend's attention, but he was still talking to the driver. I started whacking him and pointing to my mouth, and thankfully he realised what was going on. He grabbed me and twisted me round and started whacking me on the back, and just as I felt like I was about to lose consciousness, I coughed the piece of steak up.
"When I saw..."
Crushed in a head on with a semi and actually felt myself leave my body as my bowels tried to void themselves... Every sensation was that of death and in my state of hyper awareness and more real than real perception I was floating in a void knowing without question I had been killed.
When I saw the stereotypical light at the end of the tunnel I realized what I was seeing was what my eyes were seeing through my slumped over body. In the image I was seeing, I saw my cell phone on the floor of my truck and had a thought that if I could get to the phone I could say goodbye to my family before I pass. With that thought, I was pulled forwards and back into my normal perspective within my skull where I got to experience every degree of pain and shock while bleeding profusely.
Since I had revived and was in a normal state of awareness again, I decided it would be pretty awful to call my loved ones and let them listen to me bleed out so instead, I grabbed for my exposed arteries and squeezed and screamed until help arrived and I got bandaged together enough to ride in the back of the job site ambulance for some 300kms before meeting the real ambulance and getting some gas...
"My car was full of glassware..."
Clipped a barrier in my car. Spun five times and the Pontiac flew backwards up a hill. My car was full of glassware so it was a broken glass tornado. Got out without a scratch and worked a 12 hour shift. May be indestructible.
"I had to be rushed..."
After I had my first daughter, my cervical tear started hemorrhaging. I had to be rushed into surgery, then a bunch of blood was transfused into me. Scared my poor husband. I always joke I would have died in Victorian times.
Unlike introverts who tend to shy away from engaging in random discussions, those who are comfortable–or too comfortable–in their own skin love to get all chatty.
That doesn't mean they have anything significant to say.
"What’s the weirdest thing someone casually told you as if it were totally normal?"
People whom you don't know tend to overshare as these Redditors experienced.
A High Request
"A story from a friend - in Colorado, someone once asked, 'Could you watch my wolves, I can pay you in weed.'"
"There's a lot to unpack in that question!"
– surlymoe
"You don't unpack wolves, you keep them together."
– hwarang_
Unsolicited Prediction
"Husband (30) and I were pushing our shopping cart out of the grocery store when a random man (who honestly looked like dumbledore) looked at my husband and said 'take my hat, you're gonna need it, you'll be bald very soon.' Obviously my husband didn't take it. It was super odd of him to say because my husband had a FULL head of hair."
"Three months later, my husband was diagnosed with a condition that made him lose all of his hair. Weird coincidence."
– hollyjollyaf
Self-Casting
"A guy once told me how he loved the feeling of wearing casts, so he'd put casts on himself- for days or weeks on end. Even if it meant he couldn't drive and would be stuck at home the entire time. He'd use vacation time just to wear full leg & arm casts."
– Present_Dust_2308
Homophobic Homosexual
A homophobic guy I know: 'Being gay is a choice.'"
"I said something like - ok, choose to be gay for a day, an hour, a single minute if you can."
"Guy - That's easy, I'm attracted to men all the time, I just choose to only like girls because I'm not gay."
"Me - Ummm..."
– discostud1515
Longheld Grudge
"Once, an older woman came up to me on the street, took hold of my wrists and simply said 'they ripped out my afterbirth', and then carried on walking."
– JennyW93
"It's strange to grab strangers. But one day in Walmart, my granny walked ahead of me, and reached to grab me to show me something, without looking and she was pulling on an old lady's arm obliviously, and the old lady's eyes were like O.O."
"My grandma didn't even apologize, she just let go and yelled at me to stay closer."
– chzygorditacrnch
A Hairdresser-In-Training
"I was getting my hair done this last weekend by my daughter at her cosmetology school. One of her fellow students was excited to meet me. She talked nonstop and eventually told me that she has hemorrhoids and that she has her husband push them back in. So much TMI from a stranger!"
– Digjam823
You never know about the personal lives of people you see on a regular basis.
Squeaky Clean
"I had a college professor on the first day of class say that she is obsessed with Q-tips and cleaning her ears and that her family has to limit her to 3 a day-"
– lokeilou
Here's The Story...
"That they have 6 kids, all with different dads & each dad is in prison."
– ChyCgx2
"I once had a coworker who had seven kids with five different women and he'd constantly complain about how most of his paycheck went to child support. You uh, dug your own grave, pal. I'm really not sympathetic to your plight."
– apocalypticradish
It's the end of the world as we know it.
End Of Civilization
"I know a guy, we don't talk often but due to business we cross paths on occasion. More or less every time we talk he asks if I'm ready for the total societal collapse coming next week, or Tuesday, or at the end of the month.. and so on."
"I just tell him that it's not gonna happen; he usually then asks about my "crystal ball" so I remind him that I've been right every time."
– rkpjr
Zombie Apocalypse
"I went to a ComicCon type event in my city years ago(Walking Dead was a new show, first season for reference) and went to a panel about zombies. They talked about historical zombie lore, the first zombie movies, and the exciting first season of the new show Walking Dead, with some actors on the panel. When they opened it up to the audience for questions one of the first ones was, 'what kind of zombies do you predict we’ll have in a real zombie apocalypse? (Fast vs slow)'…panelists don’t really know how to answer, each gives their personal favorite or worst case scenario. Then we get to, 'What do you think the timeline is for the start of a coming zombie apocalypse?' Panelists are kind of like….? Talk about how things usually play out fiction."
“'No, but exactly WHEN do you think we’ll need to be fully prepared for zombies in real life?' Like, guys, these are actors and media studies academics, first of all they don’t have the level of belief you do and second, the people you should be asking about this stuff are probably biologists."
– AlternativeAcademia
Whenever I feel threatened by a homeless person who is pressuring me to hand over them cash, I tell them, "I''m allergic to corn."
The random phrase throws them and in the brief moment they assess what they heard I'm afforded more time to distance myself from them.
It always works, especially when they realize I'm all kinds of crazy and not worth targeting.
