Close calls..yours or your kids..

[SoCalDem]

A thread in GD about a toddler drowning in a toilet :( got to me.. My kids had sooooo many "Oh My God" moments, that I sometimes wonder how they survived their childhood..

Here's one that comes to mind..

Steven, youngest, catapulting himself HEAD FIRST out of his crib.. Landing on concrete floor covered with cheap padding and thin carpet..

He was gray faced, not breathing..blue lips.. the whole ball of wax.. It was the very day we had moved, so we did not even have a phone hooked up..

I "breathed" in him, shook him (got a no-no from the doc later, but I was having an out-of-body experience from seeing my baby, looking very dead)..

Ran every red light in town, and by the time we got to the hospital, he was breathing well and semi conscious..

He ended up valedictorian..summa cum laude.. etc.. but it scared the hell out of me.. and he took his chances with the spiders til we could get a regular bed for him .. (We put his mattress on the floor and put a gate across the door.. (He was only 10 months)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. Me: severe dehydratation, age one

Folks said I very nearly died. Coming from a mountain town in Spain, they had little experience in raising a child in the oven that is Rio.

[SoCalDem]

2. I have always wanted to see Brasil..Lucky you.. to live there

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. I know this is a serious topic, but

I just had to crack up at your "Flashing Jesus". :yourock:

[SoCalDem]

14. I have the santa version too..:)

I just love those things :):)

[Bertha Venation]

18. Blasphemer. Jesus didn't have parts.

He was pure.

[TrogL]

22. Jesus was a man

Men have parts, even if they don't use them for anything besides micturation.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

25. Thanks...

Now I've gotta look up micturation. ;-)

Funny...Encarta says there's no thesaurus result for micturate; but the dictionary says "to urinate". Why isn't "urinate" a thesaurus result? Or "pee"? Or "Wizz"? Or "recycle nitrogen"?

[Bertha Venation]

34. perhaps my comment was a bit too dry...

I was kidding.

[spinbaby]

3. Just last week

Our 21-year-old son took up drunk driving, hit a culvert, took the bottom off the car's engine, and lost bits of the transmission in a ditch. He doesn't even remember doing it. He's no longer drinking or driving. As far as I'm concerned, he ain't never going to drive again.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

15. I'm glad he's ok...

...and nobody else was hurt. Hopefully it wasn't the only car you have?

[liberalhistorian]

32. I could show him a picture of a good friend

I lost to a drunk driver, and a couple other pictures of women killed by drunk drivers; one was killed four days before Christmas and two days before she and her fiance were supposed to pick up her engagement ring, and the other was killed while driving home after visiting her newborn son (he'd been kept in the hospital for a week due to jaundice), she had three other young children as well. THAT might stop him from driving drunk again, I know it's stopped many others.

Although youth tend to think nothing will ever happen to them no matter what they do, I remember thinking the same thing at that age.

And I'm very, very, VERY glad your son came out okay, sorry, I should have said that first thing!!! That had to be a helluva thing to go through as a parent.

[Loonman]

4. Me: you can never tell how deep river mud is

"gee, I can walk right through that."

Up to almost my neck. I tried to float on my back like they tell you to, and managed to grab some saplings and pull myself out.

[Rabbit of Caerbannog]

5. fooling around on a commercial

construction site - at night. Fell into an open pit dug for footings. Fell ten feet and landed on a narrow shelf face down in thick mud. A foot to the left and I would have missed the shelf and been impaled on steel rebar. D'oh! Still gives me the willies thinking about it...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Walking down the sidewalk in Portland

heard a tremendous ringing, reverberating, metallic crash on the sidewalk behind me.

A truck had crashed into a light pole on the corner, knocking it over. If I'd been walking just a bit slower, I could have been under it.

:scared:

[DrWeird]

7. Near landscaping decapitation.

Had to clear cattails out of a drainage ditch. Me and two others attached ten inch table saw blades to the heads of our weed whackers. Cut through the cattails like butter. Almost cut through my neck like butter when I slipped down a bank, tripped in the mud, and missed the other guys blade by a few bowel loosening inches.

[RebelOne]

8. For short time I was doing sky-diving.

On one jump, I was headed toward some very tall pine trees. I could not get the toggles to control the chute. If I had come down into those trees, I would have been killed or very seriously injured. But at the last minute I was able to gain control of the chute and landed right at the very edge of the trees.

[trof]

9. Kinda complicated, but...

I was installing a new boat-lift motor bolted to a rafter in the boathouse. I lowered my pontoon boat into the water to use as a working platform. Tied the boat off (an old piece of rope) and put a 10' extension ladder from the deck up to the rafter.

I'm working away, when the top end of the ladder starts to slide down vertically on the rafter. I grab the rafter and stop the slide. I look, and the old rope had parted. I'm no longer tied to the dock inside the boathouse, and Newton's Law of equal and opposite reactions has taken over. My weight on the ladder is forcing the boat out of the boathouse and away from the dock. Only by holding on to the rafter, relieving the ladder of my weight, can I stop the slide. I realize that if I let go of the rafter, I won't have time to descend the ladder before it is no longer supported at the upper end by the rafter. I will crash 10' to the deck of the boat, ON TOP of the aluminum ladder. I see only broken fingers and knees. This does NOT seem to be a good thing to do.
I am STUCK.

I start hollering for HELP! at the top of my voice. Miz t. is home, but the house is 200' away, it's summer (air conditioning on), and all the doors and windows are closed. No one on this whole bay can hear me.

I finally realize that the only one who can get me out of this is me. I grabbed the rafter as far to the right of the ladder as I could reach and swung out on it. This put me almost directly over the relatively flat helm console. It was about 2' below my feet. I took a DEEP breath and let go, landing on the console. I didn't fall off. I very slowly climbed down to the deck. I secured the boat and sat down for a few minutes. As soon as my legs quit shaking I walked up to the house and poured myself a stiff shot of Scotch.
whew

[SoCalDem]

10. Oooh, I must see the video..

damn.. no video??? :(

[trof]

23. Wish I did have one.

It would be a hoot...now.

[TrogL]

11. Damn near chopped her fingers off

The back screen door's window was up. It's held in place by two latches on springs. I have a hell of a time getting them open. When my daughter was about 1 1/2, she ran up to the door to see something and touched the screen. The window came crashing down on her fingers.

Wierdly enough, nothing was broken or cut. I think she lost her fingernails, which grew back properly.

[TrogL]

12. Damn near chopped MY fingers off

I was playing with a knife, whittling some wood (in the den, no idea why I was allowed to make such a mess) and the knife slipped and went into my thumb a good inch. 6 stitches and it was fine.

I was getting some music out of an organ bench with a lift-up seat with a little slidey thing that would keep the seat open. The slidey thing slipped and the seat came crashing down, trapping my 2nd finger between the seat the slidey thing, cutting my finger to the bone. 6 stitches and it was fine.

[travisleit01]

16. A friend who is like my older sister has a story...

She was in Target with her then-one-year-old son, and it was in the middle of the day, not very crowded. They were in the back of the store, and there were not many people around. Suddenly this man, about 60, came up to her and said "Excuse me ma'am, I'm a weirdo, and I'm insecure, can I borrow your child for a minute?"

She freaked out and left the store right away, not really even being conscious of what happened. I told her she should have called the police/told a manager, but hindsight 20-20. Now we are extra careful when we have my nephew out in public anywhere. If she had turned her head for 1 sec., who knows what might have happened!?

[radwriter0555]

21. Hey, at least he asked?

Think of how it would have gone had he not asked...


and just taken.

[travisleit01]

27. Child molestation is child molestation. Period. n/t

[GoddessOfGuinness]

17. Almost drowned...

Having learned to swim in the Atlantic surf on the coast of Florida, I was overly-confident when I visited Virginia Beach, and the "rough surf" flags were up. The lifeguards were there, and they weren't prohibiting swimmers; so I went in. As the water covered my hips, I realized that the elastic waistband of my bathingsuit bottom had deteriorated; and though I had a long tunic top, it was not enough to cover a bare hiney.

So I stood there in this rough surf trying to tie the waistband of the panty into enough of a knot to make it safely back to shore and put my jeans on. That was when I realized how strong the undertow was...That was when the first wave smashed into me hard enough to leave red marks on my shoulders.

I hastened my endeavors, but the next wave undid them and pulled me under the water completely. When I was back on my feet, I realized I was even farther from shore. Frantically, I fumbled with tying the damn knot, and once again I was knocked underneath; only this time my head hit the sand underneath hard and I saw stars.

"To hell with this...I don't care who sees my butt as long as I can save it!" I thought aloud, and struggled back to shore.

As luck would have it, the bathing suit panty was wet enough to cling to my silly ass until I could get my pants on.

It was as if someone decided that day that I needed to learn a lesson about respect for the forces of Nature. Did I ever!

[Bertha Venation]

19. stillborn

I was stillborn.... does that count? Had a congenital heart defect, was born blue, not breathing, nothing. They brought me back after 37 minutes (if my mother is to be believed--seems like an awfully long time to me, but she's gone so I can't ask). Four open heart surgeries before age 2; first infant in California (again, if my mother is to be believed) to have open heart surgery.

[MissMarple]

20. We're glad you made it !

You must be one tough cookie. :D

[Braden]

24. I was born with the cord around my neck

my arms were purple from the blood pooled in them. the doctors thought I might have to have my arms amputated, if I lived.

well that was 1970....

[Kellanved]

26. Me : one

We were hiking in the Valle verzasca (remember James Bond: Goldeneye? That's the Valley with the damn) in Switzerland when I stepped on a piece of grass with no solid ground beneath it. If my aunt hadn't grabbed my wrist, then it would have been a 100 meter fall for me...

[Nay]

28. Two stories.

When my bother and I were teenagers, he was working underneath his big muscle car one day. the wheels were off the front and he had the front propped up on concrete blocks (a big no-no). Mom and I tried to tell him that was dangerous, etc., etc., and he wouldn't listen. He worked under the engine all morning. Mom called him in for lunch, and three seconds after he got out from under the car,the blocks crumbled to dust and sent the whole engine crashing onto the concrete carport. He was so terrified by his near-death experience that he forgot lunch and went to the auto store for the correct equipment.

When my son was 6, he wasn't allowed to ride his bike into the street, for obvious reasons. I had left him under the care of a neighbor who had children the same age and took myself off to the grocery store. As I drove up after shopping, the first thing I saw as I drove up to the house was my son, flying down a hill on his bike straight into the path of a car on a cross street. As the person said above, I also had an "out of body" experience watching my son's last moments (or so I thought). May the goddess bless the woman driver, though -- she saw him in time and was able to brake and stop about 2 feet away. That was the only time I ever spanked my son.

[proud patriot]

29. My son was 4 when he broke his arm falling out of a tree

:-(

[put out]

30. My son.

Walked up and spit a mouth full of pennies onto a surface. Tipped over in a too full bathtub 5 or 6 inches, while I was a few feet away watching him play (that's the story) but really reading a magazine. I didn't see the top of his head and when I scrambled, he was looking at me through 2 inches of water, eyes wide open. That one never happened again.

My own, climbed up into a tree-top tree house built by tall, testosterone driven young men. The boards driven were shaky at best. The steps pounded into the tree were very far apart and got farther apart further up the tree (I think they ran out of motivation). We had a good time, then it became dark. The tree house was lit by a gun range. Then, the gun range closed. Then, we all said, polite euphemism, "OH DEAR". Climbing down was horrifying, dark, three stories high (and so was I) and knowing that if I fell, people would scramble to keep themselves out of trouble.

Swimming in the Buffalo River. Water very fast, but the river was deep and wide and deceptive on surface calmness. I stepped off a river bank where everyone was taking a break from the canoes and having lunch and a beer and all that, and I though I would wade in and pee. I was swept upstream off the bank and ended up swimming for all I was worth to try to reach the bank. I caught some roots to hang onto. Finally a compatriot said "Are you OK" and I was only 10 feet or so from where they were standing. If I had been pulled out, it would have been a big fight.

My edit, pulled by the water into the main current, it would have been a much bigger fight. I respect water.

[Flaxbee]

31. Jumped up and down, vigoroursly, on the edge of the Grand

Canyon. I was 11, at the GC for the first time with my sister (who was 21) & I kept wandering near the edge (no railing in many sections, or easy to climb over) and jumped up and down on the edge of the cliff. Vigorously jumped up and down and up and down and up... If any part of the edge had given away, yours truly would have plummeted down down down down into the canyon. What the hell is WRONG with kids?? I was such a shy quiet little thing, tempting fate on my first vacation with my sister!

Tip of my middle finger got cut off in a door when I was 2; my sister (same one as above) had to pick the tip up, put it in the baggie of salt water my dad had prepared, and off we went to the hospital. I'd lost the section from my nail up, but it was sewn back on and now looks just a little different (a little shorter than the same finger on the other hand & the nail's shaped a little differently).

When I was 9, my mom and I were going thru an intersection when some guy who'd just won a trip to Europe barreled through his red light and broadsided the car about where the hood meets the windshield, our car spun and flipped and we had to be pulled out but were both fine, though if we'd been going just a little bit faster I'd have been creamed in the passenger seat. My mom cracked the windshield with her head, though, and -- idiot, she's a nurse and should have known better -- absolutely refused to go to the hospital; she suffered from headaches for years afterward, though 25 years later, she seems fine.

[geniph]

33. I had so many as a kid

that I used to consider myself an accident "pro," not just accident prone. A few of 'em - well, there's the time I darted out from between two cars and across the street, and got sent sailing HIGH and WIDE by the car that hit me. My brothers, who saw the whole thing, said I looked like Superman flying through the air. Woke up in the hospital, and aside from a concussion, I was fine.

Riding my bike downhill toward Shilshole, I was riding as fast as I could possibly get the one-speed bike going - probably about 25 or 30. I was barefoot and in shorts, no helmet of course (I don't even think bike helmets existed in those days). My chain fell off. Now, for those who don't remember that type of bike, when the chain came off you had no brakes. I was heading toward one of three choices; I could either ride across an extremely busy street against the light and be flattened by a semi, I could ride off the end of the cliff and down onto jagged rocks and tree stumps about 70 feet down, or I could turn up a side street. I chose the last option, and immediately wiped out on the gravel. I was picking gravel out of my knees for years. Still have the scars.

In my 20s, I went to Hawaii. I've always been a very strong swimmer, and I grew up swimming in salt water. However, the salt water I was used to was the protected inland water of Puget Sound. I went bodysurfing, had myself a great time, and then realized I was getting farther and farther from shore...and I was very tired. I was not at all sure I was going to make it in before I was dragged out to sea, but I just kept putting one arm in front of the other and kicking. Luckily, I'm very buoyant, otherwise, I'd never have made it. I was thoroughly exhausted when I finally dragged my ass onto shore. Hawaii got me twice more before I learned my lesson, too - once dumping me so hard on my head while playing in the surf that I did not know which way was up (and was very lucky not to break my neck), and once sneaking up on me on a steep beach and knocking me right on my ass with a rogue wave. Um, hello, a STEEP beach means UNDERTOW...I got to my feet tout-suite when I realized I was going out to sea again. After that I was more respectful of high tide lines and didn't turn my back on the sea again.

Oh, and the time I got lost in the Wallowas hiking in the backcountry alone...the time I got stranded on a sea-stack by incoming tide...the rest are too embarrassing to admit to.

[Atman]

35. I was found at the bottom of a swimming pool

when I was three.

Brain dddddddddamage appears to have bbeeen mininininjinmal.

[camero]

36. A few

At 4, was riding in the hatch of my mom's VW bus. I leaned against the door and flew out into the road. Landed about 20 feet from a parked car who was beeping the horn at my mom because she didn't see me go and was driving away. (I went out as she started to go). When she stopped I got up and ran back to the car but a cop saw it too and he carried me across the street and patched me up.

At 5, Got hit by a car while crossing the street while walking to school. The grill hit my head and knocked me to the sidewalk. My mom took me back home, put a band-aid on my head and I went to school.

At 6, my mom had a rollover accident in the VW bus and I got knocked unconscious when I hit my head on the steering wheel as the bus rolled. The guy who hit us pulled me out.

At 10 got hit by another car while crossing the street on my bike. Flew 50 feet and landed sliding on my ass. Lots of ointment that day.

At 12, was racing my brother and mom across the parking lot of a movie theater when I tripped and hit my head on one of those cement stoppers in front of the car. Blood everywhere. A cop carried me into the movie theater until the ambulance came. 9 stitches later, we went back and I got to see Star Wars for free all the way until closing time. Free popcorn and soda too. The funny part about this one was that i played soccer that week in gym and my teacher kept asking me if I had to sit out and I told him I didn't have a doc's note and I wanted to play. I got to play.

At 13 wrecked on my bike going down a hill at 40 mph. Ran the 1/4 mile left to the house. 5 stitches on that one. More blood.

The doctor seemed to be on call.

[Melsky]

37. Almost hit by a bus

My first trip to England, I was jetlagged, and I looked the wrong way before crossing the street. The bus driver swerved and honked. Yikes!

[HEyHEY]

38. I got lost in a mall in LA

My parents found me four hours later talking to a window maniquen.

I could have easily been kidnapped in that town.

What else.... :think: ... oh! I once plug in an extension cord with the end cut of about four inches past the plug...I still don't know how I managed to not get shocked.

[camero]

39. That reminds me..

don't put bobby pins in an electrical outlet. Found out the hard way...lol :)

[bleedingheart]

40. tweezers are the best for electrical outlets

shorts the breaker...learned that as a kids...never hurt myself..but mom was making mash potatoes and wondered by the mixer and lights turned off...

[camero]

43. lol

It didn't hurt that much but it gave me a jolt. :)

[bleedingheart]

41. My kids have asthma so their close calls have always been

related to the asthma...

As a kid I was in a car seat, which was rare for the 60's, and I opened the car door...would have flown out of the car if not for the car seat...

[sasquatch]

42. I was in a three day long coma because of a Acute Athsma attack

I was leaving the OSU/Michigan game and the attack hit me like a fucking frieght train. They took me to OSU Medical center where they tried to loosin' it up. They coundn't so they put me into a drug induced coma and actually lost me a few times. I still consider it one of the best thing that ever happened to me though.

[Xithras]

44. Got a few...mine and kids

My Kids:

When my son was two he went running through our living room with a fork in his hand. I'd just spotted him and yelled "Stop!" when he tripped. My heart stopped. The fork hit the ground point first with the narrow metal handle sticking up and his head came down squarely on it...right between the eyes. The handle sliced through the skin and actually embedded itself into the bone (when he lifted his head up, he had a fork sticking out of his face). He still has a small scar from it, but he really got lucky...1/4 inch to the left or right and he'd have lost an eye.

Then there was the time (about a year ago) that he was hit by a car after riding his bike out into the street. He slid up the hood, across the windshield, and then came to a stop on the roof of the car without so much as a bruise. His bike went under the car and was crushed flat.

My daughter nearly had her own runin with fate a recently when she ignored my repeated "don't get near the edge" warnings while we were hiking along a cliff in Yosemite last summer. She slipped and fell of the cliff edge with a nearly 100' drop below us, but by some absolute miracle she did it in a spot where there was a rock ledge only about 4' below. My wife still hasn't forgiven me for that one (she didn't want to hike that trail in the first place...because of the cliff). Personally, I'm not in any hurry to take my daughter anywhere near cliffs again anyway.

Mine:

When I was 13 I was in a rollover car accident in a convertible, not wearing a seatbelt, and witnesses said that I was nearly ejected out of the car. Why wasn't I? Because my SHOE caught a trim piece under the dashboard. I ended up with a sprained ankle and a minor concussion.

Then there was the time I was almost killed at Lowes. I'd gone to buy some fencing material and I was standing an aisle over from where a forklift operator was loading some 2x4's onto the wood rack. He apparently rammed the rack because all of a suddent it tipped part way over and ALL of the wood on top came crashing down around me. By yet another fluke, I'd been standing next to a point in the rack that lay BETWEEN the wood, so the wood landed on three sides of me but didn't strike the spot I'd been standing...a foot in either direction and I'd have been crushed. What's REALLY creepy is realizing that my wife and I had just argued over her refusal to come with me. The spot I was standing in wasn't big enough for two people :scared:

There was also the summer that I worked at my uncles auto shop and forgot to set the lock on the car lift. The lift failed and the car came crashing down less than a minute after I'd walked under it.

But the all time scariest, for me, was probably when I was about 17 and got a summer job doing maintenance work at an old movie theater. Part of my job entailed replacing the lightbulbs in the chandeliers...a process that involved climbing a 2 1/2story ladder, walking along a 12" wide catwalk without handrails that hung above the suspended ceiling ~30 feet above the floor, and then carefully winching the chandeliers down to ground level where they could be cleaned and have their bulbs rotated. I frequently did this job alone.

I was doing this one night after the theater had closed when I slipped. I fell out across the suspended ceiling and by some miracle grabbed a 2" steel pipe (fire sprinklers) that was about 4' from the catwalk. So there I was...my left toes hooked between the planks in the catwalk, my chest across (and my hands firmly gripping) a steel pipe, and my right foot dangling in the air below me. I'd knocked out a bunch of the ceiling panels as I fell, so I clearly saw what was below me...a 30' drop ACROSS several rows of seats. Ouch. To top it off, I was getting wet...the steel pipe had cracked when I hit it and was leaking water.

So what do you do when you're stuck hanging 30 feet above the seatbacks in an empty, soundproof movie theater? You pray...a lot. After about an hour the other guys I worked with began wondering where I was and came looking for me. After finding me, they called 911 and promptly subjected me to the humiliation of being rescued.

The theater was fined untold thousands of dollars for having a minor do such dangerous work, and OSHA came down hard on them for not having safety rails or harnesses when working up there. Me? I quit about 5 minutes after the firefighters got me to the floor.