Not many people can say that they've cheated death. It can happen so suddenly, and come out of nowhere, so when we escape it, it truly feels like a miracle. Here are a few stories of these miracles, told by the kind people over at Reddit.
u/indeed_indeed_indeed asked: Have you cheated death? What's your story? [Serious]
That's a good friend.
I was chatting away with a bunch of friends in high school, standing in a pedestrian-only street. Suddenly my friend's face goes blank, and she reaches out and pulls me in by my collar, without a word. A huge truck whoooshes behind me, right by, not an inch to spare. It thundered by at full speed, I didn't even hear it until it passed me.
She didn't have time to say anything or panic, just casually pulled me away from certain death. Very grateful for her quick reflexes.
They got better.
GiphyI was dead for around 6 min at the bottom of a pool and they revived me.
You are one of the few people that can actually say: "I died. But I got better."
PARKOUR!
When I was 18 years old parkour was all the rage. I climbed commercial buildings weekly with a friend. One night during a full moon we decided to climb a 12 story building under construction.
I got to the top. Jumped from an I-beam to another... except it was rounded. I slipped and fell. Instead of falling 50 meters I landed on my nuts on a post at a 45 degree angle. I slid what felt like forever backwards, further grinding my poor boys.
I may have not died but future generations may have.
Wow.
Yes! I had a massive brain hemorrhage. They said it was the biggest they had seen in my local hospital. It was 50:50 whether I would survive the night. I did survive, and that's the story of how I cheated death that one time...
My dad had multiple subdural hematomas. First day they counted 3. The second there was so many they couldn't give a count. After almost 10 years he is alive, and is still getting his meds adjusted.
Imagine almost losing your SKIN.
GiphyThere was a time where I got strep and the doctor said it had possibly progressed to a full on flesh eating disease. And if it did I was f*cked (obviously expressed in different words). Good news! I am still alive.
I got a rash on my arm that turned into what looked like acne on my arm. It tested positive for strep and i got a bunch of shots in my a** and wasn't allowed to go to school until it was gone. A few years later I learned that I was very close to losing all the skin on my body if we hadn't caught it and filled me up with antibiotics.
CW: Suicide
I'm a recovering addict, spent a little over 10 years in active opiate addiction. Towards the end of my last run I was actually trying to kill myself.. Not because I wanted to die, but because I had given up. I just wanted the mental anguish to stop. Long story short, I overdosed 13 separate occasions. I definitely consider that cheating death.. People die from an overdose literally every day in my city.
I've been sober for almost 3 years now.
That's terrifying.
I had a nephrectomy in 2013 and I woke up right before they started to remove my kidney and ripped all of my ivs out. Bled out a ton and had to have blood choppered in from Miami (I was at naval airstation Jacksonville).
Thanks, Benadryl!
GiphyHad a Brazil nut as a kid (dear parents: who gives a very young child a Brazil nut for a snack?) and immediately went into anaphylactic shock. Despite the night being fuzzy, I remember so vividly the feeling of my throat swelling and managing to say "something isn't right" before losing the ability to speak. My parents shove Benadryl down my throat and drive me to the hospital.
By my parent's account, the doctor was very, very complimentary of them for having the foresight to give me Benadryl before coming, saying I would have been dead on arrival had they not done it. I joke that we became a "Benadryl family" after that. It was in every drawer, every cabinet.
Chew carefully.
On Christmas 2017 I ate a piece of some dry meat. I was chewing and chewing it, but it was still a hunk of meat. I finally swallow and feel it just stick in my throat. I try to swallow it. Doesn't budge. I try to cough and nothing. I realize that I'm not breathing and I start panicking.
I slap my hand down on the counter to get my sisters attention and she looks at me a little funny and says "what?" I motion to my throat in the most morbid game of charades that I'm choking. She says "Oh my god, are you choking?" And runs to me and starts the Heimlich.
All I can think about is my 1 year old daughter having to grow up knowing her mom died on Christmas. I was getting light headed and finally the piece of meat is hurled out of my mouth and I'm gasping crying. I hug my sister and we're both just sobbing. It was the scariest, ugliest feeling knowing I couldn't breathe no matter how much I wanted to, needed to. Chew carefully, my friends.
Woah.
I have a rare condition that makes me prone to aneurysms. In 2018 I was helping a buddy work on a car when it felt like I was shot in the abdomen. I had my buddy take me to the ER. When I was finally seen my bp was so low they had no idea how I was still conscious. I was rushed to imaging where it was determined an aneurysm had started dissecting and I was losing blood fast.
I had a 5% chance of coming out of the surgery alive, and then 10% to even walk out of the hospital within a week.
Needless to say. I'm here
Bad pupper.
GiphyWhen I was 7 years old my friend had one of those red wagons with a handle you can pull. We had the bright idea of attaching my dog to the wagon and having him pull us around (he was a very large dog).
Soon after tying my dog's leash to the wagon, my dog takes off at full speed towards an extremely busy road with me inside the wagon. My friend chased us and grabbed the back of the wagon, stopping my dog and me from hurling ourselves into traffic.
Very lucky.
Had two horses run over me whilst I was pinned into a ditch one clipped back of my head other must have just stepped on my side, got up and walked away. No pain whatsoever was super lucky.
Appendicitis is no joke.
After being misdiagnosed with a stomach bug, I had a ruptured appendix for nearly a week. My eyes turned yellow. They finally removed it and pumped me full of an ungodly amount of antibiotics. I lived.
Very accident prone.
GiphyToo many times to count, pretty sure my guardian angel is facepalming itself saying "Not again" after every incident.
The most note worthy:
Dropped 6 meters from an oak I was climbing, hitting every branch possible on the way down. Survived with a mild concussion and a few bend ribs.
Have been hit by more cars that I care to count. The worst was probably when I t-boned a car with my bike, he ran a red light, and got flipped over its roof and landing on a street sign on the other side.
Oh and for non freak accidents. Survived two bouts of cancer between the ages 19-25.
That's why those things are banned in the US.
In my early teens I was eating a kinder surprise chocolate. I guess my mouth was already dry but the choc stuck and closed off my throat, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't reach the water bottle in the cup holder. The other 4 people did not notice me. I got the attention of my sister but she did not clue in to my pointing to the water bottle or my gasping for air. I was getting close to blacking out before I was able to finally gasp out "water". At the last second someone gave me the water bottle.
At 17 I sped 175km/h in the oncoming down a bumpy country road to pass another car who was already doing 110. The other car sped up, the van I was driving was maxed. A car came in the oncoming lane, I'm lucky the other car slowed down so I could get over at the last second. Never again.
"What funny thing happened at school that caused utter chaos for the faculty?
Holy Sh*t
"2000"
"Teachers trying to stop kids smoking in the bathroom so they locked the bathroom doors."
"Kid took a sh*t on the carpet in front of the bathroom door, like right in the main hallway."
"Chaos ensued."
"Today, that kid is a pastor."
"Lol."- Jimmycapped
Cheaters Almost Always Get Caught
"It wasn't funny, but when I was in high school, there were two teachers in the school that were married."
"I was sitting in the husbands classroom waiting for the class to start when another kid ran in and said 'Hey Mr B, your wife is making out with Mr H in his classroom'."
"Turns out they'd locked the door, but about a dozen kids were looking through the skinny door window watching them."
"The guy didn't even say anything."
"He just looked crushed."
"He just walked out of the class and never came back...I mean we never saw him again."
"Turned out his wife and the other teacher had been having an affair and he'd might have suspected, but having it confirmed by one of his students in front of the whole class was too much."
"The school didn't discipline the two cheaters, but the students sure as hell did."
"Both of them had to listen to 'cheating' puns and jokes every day."
"'Hey Ms S, I'm going to copy off Joe's test, cheating is cool with you right?'" kind of stuff."
"Neither came back the next school year."- McFeely_Smackup
Cartoons Button GIF by NickelodeonGiphyWhere He Went, Music Followed...
"Hired a mariachi band to follow around our principal for our senior class prank."
"It was hysterical."- JulieFromJerz
Complicated Role Model...
"In middle school, a staff (not a teacher, he watched lunch and was a basketball coach for a high school) got arrested for selling weed to the kids."
"He won an award for 'best staff of the year' that year which had an entire yearbook page dedicated to him, but he was arrested after the yearbooks were printed."
"They had to go into each yearbook and cover that page with purple duct tape (to match the color scheme)."
"Prior to him being arrested, I was getting bullied horribly."
"None of the teachers or other staff could get the kids to stop, but once the staff who was arrested said 'leave Spencer alone'," the kids would immediately stop."
"I later realized he was threatening to take their weed away if they bullied me, and that's why he was the only one who could get them to stop."- Spencer2091
Funny Might Not Be The Best Word...
"Someone had a baby in the bathroom stall."
"I wish I was making this up."- JacobCStowe
baby GIFGiphyLegs Are Legs!
"They banned shorts because they were not professional enough."
"So all the boys wore skirts as a protest."- Haboobalub·
Or Did They Just Have A Time-Turner In Their Pocket?
"One of the classrooms at my school was a prefab hut, and over time it developed a hole in the floor at the back of the room (developed, or was helped, unsure)."
"Every lesson I had in there for a good few months before they fixed it, someone would arrive, greet the teacher, and sit down."
"Then after a few minutes they'd arrive again, straight-faced 'sorry I'm late sir', and sit down."
"Then again a few minutes later they'd arrive again... etc."
"The fun part was watching the teacher playing the memory game of figuring out who'd arrived too many times."- telnorp
Depends On How Short We're Talking...
"Freshman year one of my friends wanted to me run for student body vice president as a part of his counterculture party."
"He insisted on having me be his VP, to the point where he got all the necessary signatures for me to run without my knowledge and just went ahead and signed me up."
"We had to write speeches to get other kids to vote for us, and those speeches had to be approved beforehand by some faculty member."
"So I wrote a very disparaging speech about the validity and purpose of student council, laden with curse words and personal attacks towards our administration, thinking it would get screened ahead of time and they would disqualify me."
"I guess no one actually read my speech and just rubber stamped it, so on that morning they pulled me aside and handed me a printed out copy of my speech."
homer simpson drinking GIFGiphy"I went ahead and gave my speech and I guess none of the faculty knew what to do because no one stopped me but they were clearly panicked and furious."
"I got a lot of laughs and applause."
"I assume it was too late to print all new ballots because when we went to vote my name was crossed out with a sharpie."
"I also got suspended for 5 days despite my explanation that I did not want to run and submitted my speech for approval, on time, fully intending to be disqualified."
"I was also told by some older student council members involved in the ballot counting process that I won by a landslide due to write ins and people just circling the black line of my name, but I have no idea if that's true."- pieonthedonkey
Ladders Must Have Been In Short Supply...
"A student got ahold of a LOT of explicit pictures and taped them to all of the school clocks, suspended from the ceiling. None of the teachers were tall enough to pull them down, so they were up there for a bit."- Unlikely_Use
A Hard One To Erase From Memory (...Pun Intended...)
"My wife is a school teacher, and a couple years ago the senior prank was them sticking a bunch of those suction cupsex toys to the windows."
"And let's just say that the school has a lot of windows."
"It was the brain child of some douche bag architect who thought building a high school with no walls just windows was good idea."
"Any way, they managed to get the largest of the them stuck to the 3rd floor outside window, of one of the classrooms."
"So the male assistant principal gets a ladder, but its not quite long enough so he's teetering on the top of this ladder trying knock a 2-foot long purple d*ck of the side of the school with a broom handle."
"She said he was beating that thing as it owed him money, and it was just bouncing around, flopping and banging against the window."
"While everyone watched through tears of laughter."- Nutesatchel
What The Hell Comedy GIF by Paramount+GiphyDid ANYONE Find This Funny?
"Someone in my high school sent letters to everyone they deemed 'virgins' parents saying their son or daughter was tested for and found to have an STD by the school nurse and that they needed to come to the school immediately."
"Used the school letterhead etc so they got charged with mail fraud lol."- B__Malz
When In Doubt, Follow Moses...
"In my HS, there was a solid week where somebody set a trash can on fire daily."
"Nobody knew if it was one person or a group of people, but I think after day five everyone got pretty tired of having to stand out in the football field while the fire department inspected the area.
"It stopped after that week with no explanation and no word from the culprit."
"Second best was definitely the senior prank performed by the class two years ahead of mine."
"They bought crickets from our local PetSmart and set them free on our school’s main staircase."
"It took forever to get rid of them and I can remember sitting in class and hearing faint chirping coming from seemingly every direction."- Livingroxets
"A boy in my class brought some locusts in to show and tell."
"They escaped and got into the air vents."
"This was just before summer break."
"School came back to a full-on plague."- Big_Explanation_8803
Bugs Insects GIF by The GuardianGiphyNeedless to say, one has little doubt that any of the planned occurrences in these stories were ever meant to be found funny by the faculty or staff.
Even so, one also has little doubt that they've all looked back and laughed about some of these with the passage of time...
A deleted Redditor wanted everyone to share about the times we've been left red in the face, so they asked:
"What is the most embarrassing thing you've ever said to someone you were trying to impress?"
I once fell off of a treadmill trying to flirt with my high school crush.
I was running way too fast to show my "stamina."
I destroyed my Discman and my dignity.
Oh My
Licking Ice Cream GIF by MLB NetworkGiphy"Crush in High School worked at an ice cream store. When she asked for toppings I said 'I’ll have Reese’s penises please.' The store laughed."
WhaleyWino235
Tom Morello's Hometown
"I worked at the local guitar shop in town in high school. It happens to be Tom Morello's hometown (of rage against the machine fame). The owner used to babysit him when Tom was little and he'd always stop by to say hi when they were in town on tour. This was around the time of the evil empire and they were at peak popularity."
"He came in one day while I was there and asked if John was in. 16-year-old me just looked at him and asked 'Do you know who you are?!?!' He just laughed and said yes. Humiliated I went and got the owner and then tried to hide and die from shame."
matthewmichael
Echoes
"I was around 15, going through the receiving line at my cousin's wedding. This was my first 'grown-up' wedding and I wanted to act it. As I hugged my cousin I blurted out 'I'm so excited to be here! The last wedding I was at was your first one!'"
"That has echoed in my head for 30 years."
"E: This was my cousin's second wedding. The groom's first."
LGBecca
No Tip
"A server trying to get a tip: I went to clear a shared dessert dish from a table of 4 - mom, dad, and 2 sons. One son jokingly pointed at his mom and said 'She ate most of it.' I, the braindead server who was/is terrible at banter, but trying to get a tip said the first reply that came to mind: 'I can tell.' No idea why. Terrible reaction, as expected. No tip."
1nd1anaCroft
Snap
Buffering Back To School GIF by Rodney DangerfieldGiphy"I can do a Kickflip, then proceed to elegantly snap my ankle."
Mrlightyboy
Why do we risk our lives?
Have we really lost the ability for a simple flirt?
Where?
The Beautiful Game Thumbs Up GIF by World CupGiphy"I did once (truthfully) tell a girl from Austria that I didn't know what the capital of Austria was - which wouldn't be too embarrassing, except that I was wearing a t-shirt which said 'Vienna Rocks' on it at the time. She thought I was joking."
Ok-Fudge8848
The Red Lights
"I told everyone I knew about my plan to go on a trip to Europe. I had planned to tour different countries by train with a special visit to… Amsterdam. My intention was to visit a marijuana cafe, but in my ignorance, I thought that these were all located in the red lights district. I would tell people I was going to the red light district and they would understandably pause and ask me… why?"
"Trying to be sly I would say something like 'to do what the locals do of course,' believing that this meant smoking marijuana in a cafe… I was actually telling everyone I knew, friends, teachers, relatives, coworkers, that I was going to cross the Atlantic so I could hire a sex worker."
Virtual-Elderberry31
How Far You'll Go
"Was on an airplane years ago with my girlfriend and her parents. My girlfriend couldn't get a seat next to me and sat directly behind me. During the flight, I thought I would surprise her and reached my hand back onto her knee. Slowly I kept extending it up her thigh until I heard giggling."
"Looked behind through the seats and saw that my hand was on the leg of the guy next to her. He saw my face and said, 'I just wanted to see how far you'd go.' Of course, my girlfriend was in on it and started laughing along with the rest of the row. Was so embarrassed."
Ladon1949
Not Cool
"I was skating at a school and my girlfriend calls me and says she wants to hang out. Tell her I'm skating but she can meet me at the school and we can figure out what we're doing from there. She shows up looking cute AF, so clearly I need to impress her. There was a little two stair where she was waiting for me and I went to do a BS 180 down it. Instead of just landing normally, I thought I would look more bada** if I stomped the landing."
"As I landed my lead foot came off the board and I landed with all of my weight on that ankle... Immediate excruciating pain ensued and I'm on the ground rolling in pain. My sad attempt to look cool skating had turned into one of the worst injuries I received and an extremely embarrassing moment. The pain was so bad I could barely drive my car back home because I severely injured my right ankle."
"Didn't break my ankle but I did have a severe ankle sprain. I've had surgery on it and it's much better, but it just has never been quite the same. As far as the girlfriend goes, we're still together and have been married for 10 years."
DJAXL
Listen Again
Go Away Beyonce GIFGiphy"I told a musician I like that I liked a specific song. It was not his song."
Naca-7
We are so silly.
Why can't we just say 'Hey' and get on with it?
Such drama.
