My Brushes with Mortality

You ever almost die? I almost died the other day. It was last friday and I was driving to a friend's house to play poker. Before I went I stopped at a gas station and bought a Cherry Crush. I was really excited because I'd never seen a Cherry Crush before and, as everybody knows, any kind of Cherry flavored soda is really awesome and sweet.

So I was driving on a county road, happily swilling my cherry flavored beverage, and loving life when all of a sudden I got a really bad ear itch. It was something that needed scratching immediately. So I started itching my ear. To do this I had to transfer the cherry pop to my left hand. I was now steering the car and clinging to my pop with one hand. Then the pop started to slip out of my hand. Being that it was a terrific, new, potentially rare kind of pop that I may never have the opportunity to drink again, I instinctively clasped my legs together so that I could catch my soda between my knees before it fell on the dirty interior of the car and spilled all over the place.

Unbeknownst to me however, my left leg was resting directly against the underside of the steering wheel, so slamming my legs together caused my knee to turn the wheel left very violently, aiming the car right towards the concrete divider in the center of the road. Now, because I was lucky I managed to catch my pop, grab it with my ear-itching hand, and then grab the steering wheel with my other hand and correct my direction back towards the middle of the road all in the same motion. I came about a millimeter from the divider and I spilled a little pop on my crotch, but other than that I was fine. But it could have been way worse. I could have whacked the divider going 55 and then overcorrected trying to get back on the road and flipped my SUV and crushed my neck and died face down in the snow, and nobody would have ever known what the hell I was doing.

It got me to thinking about how many times I've almost died based on pure stupidity or weird luck. I thought of about three different examples.

1.) Age: 9
Nearly died from: Hanging/ or serious head trauma

I had just finished playing a rec league basketball game at my elementary school and, along with some friends, was getting ready to watch the game after us. It featured 3rd graders from my own school, so it held a certain level of interest to me. We would sit on the stage facing the game and cheer or boo, or whatever. While the teams were warming up we spent most of our time screwing around on the stage. There was a big port-a-pit back there for reasons unknown, and it was always fun to launch yourself onto the port-a-pit because it felt really comfy to land on. So during one of my forays onto the pit, I got a really big running start and dove, but because I had such a head of steam, I dove a little far and hit the corner. Landing on the corner made the port-a-pit shoot me off at a weird angle, backwards, and towards the edge of the stage. Realizing that I was in trouble, I tried to flip my body around in mid-flight to see where I was going. Just as I did that, I got caught by my neck in the rope that was used to pull open the stage curtains. I was officially hanging myself. Just as I started to die my neck dislodged itself from the rope and I landed on my butt, about two inches from the edge of the stage. Now the weird thing is, if I hadn't almost hung myself, I would have flown off the stage backwards and probably cracked my head open. (Side note: My mom was always warning me about cracking my head open, usually wide open. Until I was 24 I believed that you could actually hit your head and it would crack wide open like an egg, and your brain would just fall out with a loud "PLOP" . I'm glad I never saw that. Ick!) Anyway, I only hung myself a little bit, and I didn't fall off the stage and crack my head wide open so my brain plopped out. Instead I ran back and jumped on the port-a-pit a little bit more.

2.) Age: 16
Nearly Died From: Crushed by a Semi

I was driving to school one spring day. I had just gotten my license about two weeks earlier and I was feeling pretty geeked about my new found autonomy. To drive to school, I had to drive through Highway 7. There was no overpass or anything, so you had to wait for a stop light. I got about 3 blocks from the stop light, when I heard a buzzing coming from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and I saw, to my horror, that there was a hornet flying around in my back seat. Now, people that know me know that I hate hornets more than just about anything, because they've always loved to sting me. For some reason mosquitos love to bite me because I taste good, and hornets love to sting me because I must feel really good on their stupid hornet butts to sting. I immediately started to freak out, roll down all my windows that I could reach, and pay complete and absolute attention to what the hornet was doing. This meant I was paying no attention to where I was going. Then I heard a bunch of honking, including one big giant horn honking. Screw you people, there's a hornet in my car. I finally looked up to see where I was after the hornet stopped flying around for a minute and was instead crawling around on my back window. I was all the way across Highway 7, I had gone right through the red light, and I had come within about 2 seconds of being smashed by a semi-truck. The cars in the left lane had stopped and honked at me but the semi probably couldn't stop that fast so instead he just honked really loudly. I stopped my car and got out to ponder all this, and also to give the hornet a chance to leave, and then when he finally flew out I stood there a minute, and then shrugged my shoulders and got back in my car and drove to school. Let me just say this for posterity: Hornets are punk ass bitches!

Age: 21
Nearly Died From: Broken Throat.

I was at baseball practice and we were all in lines playing catch before the actual practice started. Next to me was a teammate of mine named Pat. Pat was a young kid, and we loved making fun of him because his name was Pat, so we'd yell stuff at him that the androgynous "Pat" character from Saturday Night Live, played by Julia Sweeney, used to say, such as "I forgot my travel baaaaggg" and "My partner's name is Chris". Hey, baseball practice is pretty boring, it was something to do. In this instance, I threw the baseball to my partner Mitch, and then turned to Pat and said, "PAAAAAATTTTTTT!!!!" He did not appreciate this which made it even more fun. So I was staring and laughing at him, and I forgot that Mitch was throwing the ball back until he hit me directly in the larynx with it. Instantly I forgot about how much fun I was having teasing Pat because I was very concerned with the new reality that I could not breathe. You ever try to breathe and you can't? It's gay! So I bent over, holding my throat, and started to die. After about 10 seconds my throat opened up a little so I could sort of breathe, but still not well enough to not die. In the midst of slowly dying of asphyxiation, I thought to myself, "Hmm, the throat is sort of flexible, I wonder if I could choke it open?" That's what I did. I began choking myself and in doing so I opened up my esophagus more so that I could breathe well enough to not die. After about 5 minutes of sitting on a training table choking myself, my throat opened up enough by itself so that I didn't need to choke myself anymore. I never forgave Pat for that. He almost killed me!

It's kind of weird when you think about it. I bet the graveyards are full of people lying there dead just because they were acting dumb at the wrong time. And here I am. I guess that means there must be a greater plan for me. Either that or it's just a big coincedence. Whatever, I don't care, I'm going to go eat a bagel.