In the summer of 1999, I was on a boat on Lake Michigan. The boat was about 35 feet long or so. It was a charter fishing boat called the Marine Machine. I do not fish.

I was sitting on the covered bow with friends on that sunny day. I needed to use the restroom. The restroom (i.e., the "head") was below deck. One had to shimmy along the six inch "gangway" to get to the back deck and the "head".

It was the end of the day, around 6:30pm. The boat was cruising back to shore at full speed. I was shimmying along the gangway and I reached for a handle. I missed the handle. I lost my balance. I fell into Lake Michigan.

No one saw me fall into Lake Michigan. As the boat pulled away, I yelled, but nobody heard me yell. I was twelve miles from shore. I had no life preserver. I was wearing a pair of nylon shorts. They were not helpful.

I floated in Lake Michigan. I swam, I drank a little water and I prepared to die. I knew that I was going to die.

Earlier in the day, I struck up a conversation with First Mate Tony about rock and roll music. First Mate Tony was the first mate on this boat, the Marine Machine. First Mate Tony really loved Pearl Jam, and, although pity is bad manners, he was a nice kid with a bad job, so I hadn't had the heart to tell him that maybe Pearl Jam wasn't such a good band. First Mate Tony therefore assumed that I liked Pearl Jam, and he came looking for me on the front bow sunning area. He wanted to ask what Pearl Jam record I wanted to hear.

When First Mate Tony could not find me, he looked for me in the back of the boat. Folks quickly figured out that I was not on the boat. I was swimming in Lake Michigan, and I knew that I was going to die. There were two or three other boats in our fishing party. They were not close to me. These boats joined the search, as did the Coast Guard and the Chicago Fire and Police Departments.

The Coast Guard found me with a search plane, which I did not see, although I was looking for it. A Coast Guard boat fished me out of Lake Michigan. My nylon shorts had not been helpful, so I was naked at that point. They didn't care. They wrapped me in a wool blanket. A young Coast Guard man whose face I will never forget offered a Kool menthol cigarette to me, which I smoked gladly. He looked like Ray Liotta with more angelic features.

The Coast Guard took me to my friends. I thanked the Coast Guard, and I transferred onto my original boat, this Marine Machine. I went home, and I called my mother.

I met some friends later that night, and we had a few beers.

I still hate Pearl Jam.

Porco Dio! These are one hell of a story Bradley R. Weissenberger. These are maybe the big Kahuna near death story. So glad they find the naked Bradley R. Weissenberger at last.

So glad. To die alone and naked in the big water, she would be so sad. I am almost to cry.

I never will to take for granted the Bradley R. Weissenberger who almost was took from us by a trip to the "head." So glad.

Hey, good job, the Brad!

But tell me, this Brad, who in the fucka gonna beat that story, eh?

Nobody!

You a come too fast, now everybody gonna look bad!

gcbv wrote:Hey, good job, the Brad! But tell me, this Brad, who in the fucka gonna beat that story, eh? Nobody! You a come too fast, now everybody gonna look bad!

Given my working hypothesis that people are fucked up and stupid, I suspect that there are many far more entertaining near death stories.

For that matter, maybe you have some entertaining permanent injury, death or crime stories. Feel free to share them! For example, my high school friend Ben beat a guy to death with a rock outside a bar in Cedar Rapids IA. Ben then took the guy's money, which was bloodstained, and spent it buying rounds of drinks for people in the bar.

See? People are fucked up and stupid, and you can prove it with your stories.

Bradley R. Weissenberger wrote:People are fucked up and stupid.

My ears are ringing.

Last winter the guy that does a lot of the artwork for our band hosted an art show at SIU. The following day my bandmates and a few other friends went for a hike in "The Little Grand Canyon." It was basically a steep frozen creek in a huge ravine as far as topography is concerned, though it was a very treacherous journey down. Anyway, upon reaching our destination at the bottom of the canyon, the drummer in my band, Matt, decides to play rock-climber. He ascended about 25 feet up a steep sandstone wall before I noticed that he was about 10 degrees past vertical, and directly over my head. I side stepped about one second before he came plummeting down onto the rocks. He broke his leg, but he was truly lucky he got his feet underneath him or it would've been much worse. We had to carry him back up, about two miles uphill, dragging him up the frozen creek using a big stick, then took turns with four man shifts to carry him up the trails.

I have a pretty good boat story as well, though it holds no comparison to Bradley's. A few of my friends and I were out on a tiny fishing boat. Its less than 20'. We were heading north on the Des Plaines. I was three sheets to the wind, and sitting on the bow in a loosely attached swivel chair. A large yacht was approaching, and rather than turning starboard, which would've kept the boat in the water, Chris (the boat's owner) decides it would be funny give me a good jarring. The problem was that this yacht was about 50' long! As I felt myself tipping almost straight backward, I decided that riding it out would basically assure me a spot underneath our own boat, which was not where I was hoping to end up that day. So I abandoned my Corona, and made a low dive toward the back half of our vessel and Whooomp!...the boat dropped right out from underneath me. I fell approximately 6' down, before I was met by the port half of the split windshield right in my ribcage. The boat was on its way back up, which gave the impact that much more momentum. I landed on the step in between the passenger and driver seats. We hit another swell from the yacht's wake. This time I flipped another ninety degrees and landed on my head. I was pretty dazed but still conscious, there was blood all over from where I hit my ribs. Three broken ribs and a concussion. Fucked up and stupid in both stories. Still, not dead!!

(but very sore for weeks after the latter.)

a split second from certain death when my friend was driving our van on the way to play a show in Iowa City. While passing a semi-truck, another popped up right in front of us over a blind hill, I thought that was it, then I was still alive and back in our lane with a surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins and the doppler effect of the oncoming semi's horn fading into the distance.

1969 Los Angeles, Bobby Beausoleil stops at a traffic light with his red truck. He sees me waiting to cross the road in my also red t-shirt, it is very hot and I have longish hair. He asks me if I am a boy or a girl. I answer, he drives away.

Phew.

I was six years old and walking home from kindegarten when I noticed some pills in one of those foil blister packs lying in the snow along the sidewalk. I picked them up, and without giving them a second thought, ate four of them.

When I got home I told my mom that I'd found some pills and ate them. She rightly went into panic mode, calling the poison control center, screaming that I was going to kill myself, and making me march back out in the cold to retrieve the packaging.

I returned home with the discarded pack, convinced I was going to die. I handed her the materials and went straight to my room sobbing; wanting nothing more than to undo it all, sure that I'd really fucked up now.

It took her about five minutes with the blister pack and the folks at poison control to determine I'd taken a harmless amount of some kind of antacid. I was going to live.

This of course didn't stop me from taking pills, but it did make me think twice about telling mom.

So only 10 (and a half) people out of 640 goddamned registered users have had a “near death” experience? Even if in retrospect it wasn’t “near death” at all it’s still fun to read about. Just make something up for christ's sake...this shoulda been the longest running thread ever.

I see 4 registered users down there who haven't shared a death defying experience with us! Now's your chance buddy.

Um, I'm a pussy so I don't really have anything that interesting. Here's my big car accident story, though:

My dad and I are driving down to Washington DC to visit colleges (this happened pretty recently, I'm still pretty young) and we manage to get most of the way there, and we're driving down this expressway at eight o' clock at night or so, and it's pretty dark. A car behind us is going pretty fast and cuts across three lanes behind us - the road is mostly empty- but he loses control and hits the divider and rebounds pretty much right where we are. Fortunately, my dad speeds up just in time so that he just narrowly misses us. The car then hits a van or an SUV or something that takes flight and does three rolls in the air before crashing into the ground. My dad and I drive away.

Then, we stop off at a gas station, a little rattled and lost, so we ask for directions. We get some directions and gas and head off. Not 10 minutes later we see, behind us, a car coming up with sparks flying everywhere, we have never seen so many sparks. I thought for a moment it was one of those "Fast and the Furious" things like the neon lights, just a special effect to impress the other people who spend way too much money on their cars,but it turns out that this car was pretty much riding on its rim, going about 60 mph with no sign of slowing down. My dad moves out of the way, and ahead of us we see a red stoplight. We say to ourselves, there's no way that this crazy mammjamma will be able to stop in time, and sure enough, he hits two cars going through the intersection before slamming into a lightpole. My dad and I thought maybe he was running from the cops or something and we drove away.

I'm not sure of what happened to the drivers in either case. I hope the people in the van were alright.