Shortly after getting my driver’s license, I stupidly merged onto a road with a 40 mph speed limit without looking left.
A car was coming right towards my driver’s side door. The driver of the other car made their brakes squeal (this was before ABS). Right before they would have hit me and probably killed me (this was before airbags), they released their brakes, swerved around me, and kept going.
It was some really impressive driving, and it likely saved my life.The biggest?
That time we dodged a Scud ballistic missile. I don’t mean we saw one get intercepted or had one land nearby and just watched. We actively dodged it.
So there we were in Iraq in 2003. We’re outside Al Najaf and the battle for the city is raging. There are artillery rounds going both ways, planes dropping ordnance, and thousands of civilians leaving the city on foot. Mostly we ignored them because we had a job to do. But one guy turns around suddenly and starts walking back into the city. Several of us noticed him and started asking the others around us, “is he?.. Is he pacing? Did he turn around just to the side of our position?”
The consensus quickly formed that, yup, he was walking in a way to count his steps and get a distance measurement. Our leaders called up the chain and a plan quickly formed. If it was nothing then there wouldn’t be an interruption to the battle anyways. The second the sun was down we moved out to a new position in complete light discipline. Nobody was allowed any light but what they could get through a night vision device. Not even the IR flashlights and markers.
In our new position everything was normal until around 0300 when a huge explosion went off right in our previous fighting position. They had indeed launched a SCUD based on one man pacing a distance measurement, and they were accurate. If we hadn’t moved that night then I wouldn’t be here.
So we dodged a Scud Missile.
Holy shit dude.
I’m a fan of your war stories. The amount of shit you’ve survived must put you on par with chuck norris or something.
It was definitely a year that contained a decade, but I’m far from being the one to see the most stuff. And I certainly wasn’t a lone wolf. Well except for that one time… Lol I jest, we never did anything alone.
As an EU immigrant, left the UK after the Leave vote but before Brexit and Covid.
It’s not a bullet but more like a whole lot of bullets.
Mind you, most of it was entirely predictable back then.
Bullet Bill on Mario Kart
Almost went to college for art, decided last minute to do engineering instead. Still ended up getting heavily involved in art later in life because I had the financial freedom from tech to do so
having kids. If I had established myself a bit earlier financially it might have happened before I saw the signs of where things were going.
I get what you’re saying but I love my kid. He’s the best thing to ever happen to me.
I can understand that but its part of the reason im so glad I don’t have one as I would not like to see them dealing with the world today as far as getting an education and a job and seeing a nice future for themselves.
Yeah, I feel this. I’m in a rough spot right now and the world keeps getting tougher. The idea of bringing someone into this suffering seems cruel to me
So back when my career was absolute shit, there was this small tech group within the company. I had been on a few projects for them and they really kept trying to get me to join. I strongly considered it but I noticed a trend of the folks on the team being overworked and underappreciated… And I would have to relocate. I debated for a week and finally decided that my sister was about to have kids and I wanted to be involved. Fast forward like a month or two after I turned them down… Our company canned the entire group. I now have a really good position and am quite happy.
The grass isn’t always greener and all that…
High school girlfriend was a bit intense and told me she wanted me to marry her and that she wanted children. I was 16 at the time. I was terrified by that, because you know, 16, and she got mad at my nervousness. She dumped me a week later and wouldn’t you know it, married less than a year out of high school with now 3 kids.
I went on to get my degree, move far far away, get a much better job and a much better partner. I think back to who I would have been if teenage me had let myself be pressured into that. Small town, working at the gas station or pizza joint, supporting 3 kids…
Maybe 9mm?
Edit: never been in a shooting, but maybe only because i dodged all the bullets?
12 ga, not sure if slug or shot.
Gun was held to my head for 20-30 mins during some gang stupidity involving a family member not wanting to leave a party I was supposed to pick them up from. I left, came back and the place was crawling with police and EMS. The same gun, held by the same guy was used to shoot another person in the face.
I ended up having to give statements, got subpoenaed, and myself, family, and friends being threatened by same gang for a number of years.
I was watching some amature tree removal people rig a pulley system to a tree that partially fell over from about 50 yards away with a few other people. They hooked it up to a pickup truck and drove forward at full power. The pulley snapped and landed behind me on an incline a fraction of a second later. I felt the wind from it go over my head and sort of visually noticed it go by in the same way someone would notice a cannonball go clear across a field in an instant. It was most certainly going fast enough and weighed enough to completely demolish my skull and everything inside. Very surreal, we opted to leave them to their work after that.
Riding a motor scooter through an intersection, I hear a giant crash behind me.
Turn around and I see a Jeep on its side in the lane I had turned from.
If I had been about 2 seconds slower, I wouldn’t be here to tell this story.
Oh yeah, Jeeps do that.
“It’s a Jeep thing; you wouldn’t understand”
was almost beaten to death by 20 people, it was some gang fude, one of my friends punched some gang member in the face, because he bullied him some time ago
I didn’t dodge the bullet, but give it that day, the moment I shot the first gang member, the others ran away (this was in europe and I was the only one armed)
