Nothing like a near death experience to make you feel badass

Every other week I drive 5 hours to Ottawa because I like not being home and I like getting laid even more. Naturally I see some weird shit on the roads now and then, but nothing quite like this

So it's maybe 6 PM and I'm on the highway, going around 120 (75 mph), the other lane is going maybe 110, when some jackass in a silver BMW decides FUCK THAT SHIT I MUST GO FASTER, and starts riding my ass so hard I wish he'd consider lubricant (couldn't even see the front of his hood in my rear-view). Me being a jackass who doesn't like people trying to bully me on the road, I flip my cruise control off and coast down to the limit (100/60mph), the guy next to me sees this and does the same.

Eventually I get sick of trolling, and traffic in front of me is clearing up (and the guy has changed lanes to tailgate the guy next to me) so I get back to speed and generally bugger off. A minute later, captain douchebag is back, and decides, despite the fact there's actually no one beside me now, he's gotta get around the only way he can - on the shoulder. The problem is, he's a moron who doesn't know how to drive, so as he tries to get back on the highway he launches himself on to the OPPOSITE shoulder, then spins the fuck out right in the middle of the highway while cars are baring down on him. I barely manage to sneak onto the shoulder as his hood enters my lane, barely avoiding a messy collision at 120 km/h.

Scared the shit out of me, but I felt pretty cool manoeuvring around him

Focus: Ever do something that simultaneously scared the shit out of you but made you feel really badass?
Alt Focus: Ever troll anyone a bit too successfully?

 

After an accident caused me to lose a few months of work, and limited my ability to you know, survive, I moved in with my mom for a few months. She offered to drive me to the train so I could get to the hospital for a checkup. Instead of dropping me off at the platform for the train, she drops me off at some weird pedestrian junction, and the gate has already come down. She looks at me and tells me to run, duck under the gate, then sprint the quarter mile to the platform. Being concussed and pretty desperate to get all the hospital stuff over with, I do so. I'm also carrying like 3 giant bags, one with medical files, one with stuff I was bringing to the city for my boyfriend, and my purse, because women are stupid.

Apparently, a concussion can cause a sharp decrease in logic and motor functions, because I manage to duck under the first gate, the strap of my bag containing all the bullshit medical files caught on my leg somehow, and I faceplant. On to the exposed train tracks. As the train is coming. My right knee gets the worst of it, it scraped against something and an entire flap of skin the size of my palm is scraped off and hanging in the wind. I'm still tangled up, pissed that I'm bleeding and dizzy, when I hear the fucking train.

Holy shit, I'm on the train tracks, tangled and bloody, and the train is coming.

I literally don't have enough time to untangle my legs, so I fucking army crawl. I use my elbows and fucking drag my body through the gravel (why is there so much gravel on the damn tracks?!), over the last track, and when I'm off the tracks, roll under the other gate. I made it by a good 15 second margin, but then I have to sprint a fucking quarter mile to catch the train that almost ran me over, bloody flap of skin and all.

...Wait, was this story supposed to be about being badass? I actually just feel kind of stupid. I do have an interesting scar on my knee though.

 

This happened when I was in the field two months ago.

The po-po and I ride up to one of the Rollin' 60s Crips on my caseload. Homeboy sees me and the police coming and bolts into his house, locking the door behind him.

Cue me and an anti-gang agent pounding on the door, with two other armed officers in the backyard to ward off someone attempting to escape out the back.

The kid flies down the stairs and looks right at me through the glass pane around the door. I scream "Open the fucking door" and realize I cannot see his hands. The son of a bitch could very easily be holding a gun that I couldn't see. Suddenly "Open the door" becomes me bellowing "Let me see your hands" while I click open my holster and feel the adrenaline completely surge through my veins.

Lucky for him, he sees me do this and opens the door a crack. Boy is grabbed, hand pulled behind his back, all the while he's screaming "GET THE FUCK OFF ME, I DIDN'T DO SHIT, FUCK Y'ALL"...and so forth. All the while he's flipping his shit, his brother's baby mama and stepdad are screaming at us, while various neighbors are now coming outside to see what the commotion is all about.

In the ensuing scuffle, after he screamed at me "I don't know who the fuck you are, you never identified yourself, you could be rolling up in a drive-by" (my answer: three people with police vests on and a redheaded female wearing a vest that clearly states Corrections on the back and GDC on the front are going to get OUT OF THEIR CAR AND SHOOT YOU, genius? Wouldn't make it a drive-by then, would it?") he manages to calm himself down. He was considerably calmed after I said "Part of your conditions of probation are that I am to visit you at your home. So, here I am." Apparently he thought we were rolling up to arrest him, which now has my spidey senses tingling that he's up to no good. I can't prove anything, even after searching his room, so we leave the residence soon after.

After we drove away, the adrenaline started to bleed out and I realized that, with lesser impulse control, the world would've been with one less gangbanger. I guess it wasn't a near death experience per se, but the very idea that he could've come downstairs brandishing a gun and blown me into the next world was very sobering.

Still, afterward, I thought it was kind of badass that I didn't scurry away and was ready to throw down in a gunfight.

 

Alt-Focus: The summer after my senior year, I hung out with a friend of mine, Roush, and we usually got super bored. We weren't getting laid, we weren't cool enough to be partying a ton, so we just tried to prank our friends, went to Dairy Queen, or other equally lame endeavors. Well mid way through the summer, we talked back and forth a bit with a pair of girls (K and J) we knew from school. They were 1-2 years younger, kind of wild, and super cute in that sort of away from the norm kind of way. One day, they are talking to us, likely via AIM or some shit, besides random phone calls, and imply that they are looking to hang out, namely drink and "see where it leads." Well my friend's parents aren't home and happen to have a fully stocked liquor cabinet. We fill a Nalgene up with vodka and drive off to hopefully get buzzed and blown. Before leaving, my ever skeptical friend questioned their motives as I glared but basically got them to say that would pay him for the booze if we didn't have fun.

Well we get there, and they come outside to meet us. K is extremely handsy and flirty to me while J is coy towards Roush. After successfully avoiding Roush's makeout attempts and taking multiple shots, J says "Ok, me and K are going to go now!" and K jumps off my lap and they skip into the house with the alcohol. Roush looks at me and shows me 2 singles that J pressed into his hand and flatly mutters "fuck this..." Well we get back to Roush's house and figure out a grand idea. We proceed to call the girls and frantically explain a mistake. We tell them that we took the vodka from Roush's older brother who had laced it with acid, and accidentally gave them that one. Naturally the cockteases start freaking out as we cover the phone and laugh our asses off. After convincing K that J was specifically at risk as she had taken multiple straight shots, they were almost in hysterics asking for "a cure." We then convince them that a shot or two of vinegar should counteract the effects. The last thing we heard before they hung up was J puking all over the kitchen after taking down the vinegar and her parents angrily coming into the kitchen to find out why she was dry heaving at 1 AM.

Hilarious at the time, but a completely successful and douchey troll move in retrospect.

 

Both of my true near-death experiences ended with me on a spinal board, and those things are literally impossible to look badass on, even when you're crawling out of the examination room with it still attached to your back because they won't fucking tell you how your baby daughter was after the accident.

But there's this: one of the late-90's concerts a while back here in town involved some big-name Canadian bands including Our Lady Peace, Tea Party, and I Mother Earth. The concert was at a horse racetrack, with the stage in the centre and the gravel area where the horses run as one gigantic mosh pit area. I was haviung my typical good ol' time building up a respectable contusion collection during I Mother Earth when I jostled some guy and he took it personally. I gave the "sorry" wave at him, but he scowled, lowered his head, and all of the sudden he punched me in the torso just below my ribcage. It was an odd place to throw a punch, but it hurt an awful lot for a pulled punch, and that's when I looked down to see a pocket knife sticking in me, just above my stomach.

He had concealed the knife in his fist and sucker-stabbed me. At a GRUNGE CONCERT. "Oh, my God!" was all I could say. I was in shock, then I just felt rage. This guy tried to kill me. I fed him my forearm as hard as I could up into his nose and nearly broke my arm but I pulled the jackknife out, but by the time I yanked it free at least half a dozen people realized what had happened and the started HAMMERING this fucking guy from all sides. He dropped from the bombardment of punches, and then the ever-growing goon squad started rain dancing on his entire body with Doc Martens. I actually wanted to stop them at this point because they were turning him into hamburger, but I was still shaken up and I was bleeding a fair amount (right through my new concert shirt, goddamn it) so I cut my way through the crowd, some good samaritin leading the way screaming "CLEAR A PATH, THIS GUY'S BEEN STABBED!!!" Which of course drew an even MORE difficult crowd to get through.

It wasn't a big knife, so it was a completely badass three stitches and since the Ambulance guys were cool I managed to make it out for the next band. I didn't get a lollipop, though.

That wasn't the first (or worst) time I was attacked with a blade, but the most note-worthy story.

 

When I was 16 I had the genius idea of putting my treestand up about 30 feet in an old pine. Now I hunted this spot all season, the last day I was daydreaming in the stand and the next thing I know I am on the ground face down unable to breathe.

Finally got my breath back and noticed that blood was pouring out of my upper throat, just under my chin, and freaked the fuck out. I managed to call my brother on the radio and he came and rode me out of there on the 4 wheeler. I could see inside my neck the cut was so bad. 20 stitches later we are back at the cabin and eating pizza, it feels like I am chewing chunks of grit but it was shity pizza so I said fuck it and continued to eat it.

Took my first drink of anything since I fell out of the stand, big ass gulp of coke and promptly spit it all back out on the floor. I had been chewing up chunks of my back teeth which had just about shattered when I fell and chewing the pizza finished the job. The pain of raw nerve on ice cold coke is something I'll never forget.

I didn't have a safety chain on the stand or obviously a harness for myself, I had caught my neck on a broken pine limb, easily could has bleed out in the woods had it been a little deeper.. Didn't break any bones, just my back molars.

 

Ok I'll bite.

I'd had my first car for about 3 months and had just driven the eight hours home with a mate to see the family and had not ended up going to sleep at all. Drove into town the next morning with my mate and on the way back about 2km away from home ended up going over the side of the road due to we think a burst tire and almost certainly lack of sleep had something to do with it.

The drivers side window was smashed with my head and the car was still on it's roof. I had to crawl out of the back window because the car was comressed enough that the doors wouldn't open and there wasn't a bump scratch or bruise to be seen on my entire body. The cans of alcohol in the boot were for the most part drinkable as well.

Worst part was the car wasn't yet insured so I had no car and a loan to pay off but for the next few years I thought that I was near invinceable and my head could break anything it wanted with no damage to myself.

 

When I was 18 a friend and I got life-guarding jobs at a beach for the summer and had to head out there for a physical tryout at 9 AM. Despite the beach being 3 hours from home, we partied the night before and decided to just stay up, downing some Red Bull and coffee before leaving at 5:30 AM.

We blasted music, drove with the windows down, stuck our heads out the window, slapped ourselves, really did anything to stay up. After trying to be a good wing man for about 2 hours, I finally passed out like a bitch. While in deep sleep I hear this WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP and slowly came to. I looked left and my buddy was passed the fuck out going 85. I looked forward, towards the noise, and realized it's corn stalks smacking the front of the car. Some kind of giant farm machinery was about 50 yards dead ahead.

I screamed like a little girl and jammed the wheel left to hop back on the shitty highway while my friend woke up and punched me in the face for some reason.

We pulled over, I puked everywhere and plugged my blood and vomit filled nose. We waited until our heart-rates got below 200 BPM and drove on towards titties, beaches and the best summer of my life.

 

This is topical, few days ago I wrote about how my brothers, brother in law was in a car wreck:

Check out the news report:

<a class="postlink" href="http://au.gwn7.yahoo.com/w1/video/-/watch/29212270/car-splits-in-two-in-fatal-crash/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://au.gwn7.yahoo.com/w1/video/-/wat ... tal-crash/</a>

He's still in a coma, but looks like he's going to pull through. When the cops turned up he was walking around and was apparently abusive to them. Which is kinda incredible. If your gunna be dumb you gotta be tough.