Out of the ordinary events in your life.

Y

Yongy

New Member
Location
UK
I was born on the Channel Island of Guernsey in 1950. My life has been far from dull, it is incredible that at 68 I have so far survived to tell the tale. My autobiography is a work in progress entitled, 'My Guardian Angel is on Prozac'. ​
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Here are a few of the main events during my childhood.

At the age of two I nearly drowned when I fell into a fishpond. I was nearly runover by a bolting horse and cart!

I suffered several unpleasant electric shocks before the age of ten. The Germans who occupied our home during WW2 left the electrics in a woeful condition.

I twice fell out of a tree I was forbidden to climb.

When I was eight I managed to get knocked over by the small truck I was driving. ​
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My father owned a horticultural business, growing tomatoes and flowers. He used to saw up asbestos sheets for use in the glasshouses. My younger sisters and I loved to play with the asbestos dust throwing it into the air. I even liked the taste of it, which was like cheap muesli! It is a miracle none of use have asbestosis.

Kicking a live grenade around when I was ten was not the most sensible thing to do, although admittedly I didn't know what it was. I had the worst thrashing of my life for that bit of stupidity, it is a wonder I survived. ​
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I could have drowned when I went fishing off one of the rocks and didn't notice the tide coming in. I was surrounded by water, it was a 4ft jump to safety. I was contemplating how to do it, when a man appeared from seemingly nowhere, picked me up and jumped across the gap with me. He then disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. I cycled home as fast as I could, not of course mentioning the incident to my parents, as another thrashing would have ensued. I have never wished to go fishing again.

I was on my uncles' boat when I was about twelve, I nearly fell into the briny when it lurched over as I was on the catwalk. My father grabbed me just in time. The current is very swift there and I probably would have been swept away.


During my adult life I have had a number of dangerous encounters.

I was nearly totalled by a herd of stampeding cows in a meadow.

When climbing up Offers Dyke in Wales the hard way, in just shorts and T shirt, I slipped when practically at the top, fortunately I righted myself, the 30ft fall might not have done me any good! As it was I was very badly scratched.

Against my better judgement I allowed my late elderly mother to drive me to the local garden centre, she managed to take out two cars and end up at right angles to a fence, when she was parking it!

I have had several falls, due to my own stupidity in the last three years, the latest on Nov 5th resulting in my badly fractured arm. ​
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Those are some of there low lights, there are many more.

I am sure other posters have tales to tell too.​
 

I believe your guardian angel helped you out. Whether you believe it or not, they are there, I am convinced.

I've not had the experiences you have, but I've had three episodes where I should have been taken out of here, but wasn't.

The last one was 2 years ago, I've already posted about that one and it was my bicycle wreck and I spend a day and a half in the ER with a severe concussion, after missing a concrete buffer by a foot (while unconscious - so the EMT folks said).
 
By our age, I suspect we've all had quite a few.

In retrospect, my LLTS (least likely to survive) was falling through the ice in the middle of a remote frozen river in the dead of winter around age 12. To this day I have no idea how I got out. The Lord must have had a reason . . .
 
exwisehe said:
I believe your guardian angel helped you out. Whether you believe it or not, they are there, I am convinced.

I've not had the experiences you have, but I've had three episodes where I should have been taken out of here, but wasn't.

The last one was 2 years ago, I've already posted about that one and it was my bicycle wreck and I spend a day and a half in the ER with a severe concussion, after missing a concrete buffer by a foot (while unconscious - so the EMT folks said).
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I don't really believe in guardian angels or anything like that.
 
Gotta say, Yongy, I might be the odd one, but that sounds like pretty normal, day to day stuff that occurs from time to time.

Those happenings do cause one to be thankful, but that wanes until the next event.

I’d list a few close calls, but they’re so absurd, it’d be incriminating as to whether or not I had any brains in my head at all.
And their validity would also be questionable.

Like getting one's head run over by a tractor, the same one the idiot was driving
Thank gawd for manure
Tire marks on the side of one's face are hard to explain

The thing that troubles my mind is the close calls of which one is not totally aware,
like a round whizzing past one’s ear.
I think about that from time to time.
Then sit back and sip something expensive.
Savoring the beverage and the acute cognizance of still breathing in this life.
 
My life has been pretty ordinary but no matter how ordinary your life is you don't live 71 years without having a few experiences that are a bit out of the norm.


I'll start off at least with the one that I consider to be number one on my list.

Back when I was still working we had a secretary for a while whose life was one continuous drama after another mostly because she was one of those people that keeps making poor choices, especially in regard to the men she got involved with. So she had a couple of kids and a deadbeat ex who managed to skip out on most of his child support payments so she was living in a crappy rental trailer out in the sticks. And her ex started to get really creepy and was stalking her. One day she came in and said that someone had cut her telephone wires and she suspected her ex and she mentioned that she was going to get a gun. Here's where I made my mistake. I had a nickel plated .38 revolver that I didn't like very much because the nickel plating had started to peel off so I offered to sell it to her at a steep discount and she took me up on it. I made it all official like by filling out two copies of a firearms transfer form which we both signed and each kept a copy of because if she shot her ex I didn't want it to blow back on me. That's all you have to do in Florida to make it all legal. They don't call it "The Gunshine State" for nothing. Of course she didn't have any money so I took something like a $20 down payment and told her she could pay me the rest whenever she could. Of course that turned out to be never because she was always broke and going to "Pay Day Advance" just about every two weeks. Did I mention she made bad choices?

Fast forward about a year or so later and she had moved on the another job in the same office building but a different section and I had forgotten, or at least put the gun thing out of my mind. It was 2004 and that was the year that central Florida got hit by 3 Hurricanes. Amy, that was her name, had taken up with a new dude who worked on and off at unskilled construction jobs and have moved in with her and the kids in the trailer. Another bad choice for her. And during Charlie, that was the first storm that hit, the trailer she was renting got taken out when a tree fell on it. So she and the kids and the new dude had to move in with some relatives of hers in another trailer. So I think the situation was that there were nine people living in a single wide trailer. And it was during the third storm that hit us, Frances, and her new guy, I forget his name, got overwhelmed with the situation and took the .38 that I had sold/given Amy and shot himself with it.

And of course he botched by shooting himself in the chest instead of the head, so he didn't die right away. He lived long enough for the doctors at the ER to run up a huge medical bill trying to save him. Then he died.

So it wasn't something that happened to me directly. But it felt pretty eerie to know that someone had used a gun that I once owned to kill themselves.

Last I heard about Amy she had a new dude in her life and apparently she had improved greatly in her choice of men. The guy's name was Randy and he was probably the most eligible bachelor at the place I worked at. He was good looking guy. The women at work had nicknamed him "The Ken Doll". He had his professional Engineers license, was making good money, was a really nice guy, and seemed to have his act together. Why he got with "Train wreck Amy" I don't know. She was cute, and funny, so there's that. I hope it worked out for both of them.
 
I guess this is as good a place as any for this story.

Back in the late 1980s I was working at a state govt job where one of my duties was to attend quarterly meetings with my boss for a committee composed of about 15 dept heads and directors from different organizations. One of the dept heads was a woman I'll call Pat Smith.

Fast forward...I left that job, moved on, and a few months later I was home laying on the couch recuperating from injuries received in an accident. I was watching the Phil Donahue show. The topic was people having secret clandestine relationships. Phil had his mic in his hand and went to a very attractive woman in the audience who blurted "I was in such a relationship with another woman who stepped all over my heart, and her name is Pat Smith and she's Director of xxxx dept in Ohio". whoa, CUT! :wtf: Guess this was before the 5 sec delay, and I don't know why but Pat Smith was outed by her lesbian ex-lover. Phil Donahue looked like he was gonna have a cow. :eek:mg1: About a year or so later I saw a couple former co-workers downtown and we/they talked about the Phil Donahue TV show "outing"...of course, they'd heard about it.
 
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First place I ever worked was a summer job between high school and college. I was a cashier in a sleazy loan company, and I do mean sleazy. One day I took my break and locked myself in the ladies' room to do some primping as I had a date after work. I was probably in there quite a bit longer than I thought, because when I came out, there had been a robbery and the robber had jumped over the counter and whacked the girl who worked at the next drawer with his gun. My dad made me quit immediately.
 
jujube said:
First place I ever worked was a summer job between high school and college. I was a cashier in a sleazy loan company, and I do mean sleazy. One day I took my break and locked myself in the ladies' room to do some primping as I had a date after work. I was probably in there quite a bit longer than I thought, because when I came out, there had been a robbery and the robber had jumped over the counter and whacked the girl who worked at the next drawer with his gun. My dad made me quit immediately.
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OMG!!! Angels on YOUR side that day fer'shoor
 
jujube said:
First place I ever worked was a summer job between high school and college. I was a cashier in a sleazy loan company, and I do mean sleazy. One day I took my break and locked myself in the ladies' room to do some primping as I had a date after work. I was probably in there quite a bit longer than I thought, because when I came out, there had been a robbery and the robber had jumped over the counter and whacked the girl who worked at the next drawer with his gun. My dad made me quit immediately.
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:eek:mg1: Good thing you were primping a long time!! Yes, the place definitely sounds sleazy.
 
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I can't say I had such exciting out of the ordinary experience as the rest of you have had but for awhile it seemed like every summer in my younger years I always had some type of accident.

One year I rode my bike right into a wire and near beheaded myself, got lost in the woods for a day, got a rusty nail in the bottom of my foot and didn't tell my Mom for days. Slid down an embankment into a clay pit filled with water and almost drown,to slippery to be able to get out. The little boy next door hit me in the head with a golf club and it required 10 staples to close the gash. Once during the winter I was sleigh riding and ended up right under a car that was traveling along the road. I can see that back tire like it was yesterday. All this before I was 13. Things calmed down after that thank goodness.
 
I was working in an all-night convenience store in Central California . . . . many years back. About 1 am a young man came in and started shopping, but when he put his bag of chips on the counter, he jumped around the counter and up into my space and put his arm around my neck, demanding I open the cash register. Of course, I was too freaked out to do that... it took a minute or two to hit the keys right.

Meanwhile I put my other hand into my pocket where I always carried a little white plastic box with a button on it that was supposed to alert the security company if there were any problems.

Well, I finally got the cash drawer open and while he grabbed at the money, I told him a few nice things about how I hoped God would bless him and help him. Then he ran out of the store with about 125 dollars in his hand. He was wearing a football jersey and I noticed the name "Edwards" on his back. Hmmm.. a clue?

So when the police got there I told them about the name, and my boss came and acted all surprised because the security company didn't get alerted though I said I pushed that button twice. Now I wonder if he even had a real contract with a security company, but he acted as if I was a suspect in the robbery because his little white box with a button didn't work!

Anyhow, the culprit was a teenager with the last name of Edwards . . . he spent ten days in juvenile hall - that's all. He said he was drunk that night and his friends dared him to rob the store.

I got fired a few weeks later when the boss accused me of stealing 43 dollars ... the week before I was due for a raise. (I didn't steal it - I don't believe anyone did.)

I guess I learned something from that experience... don't work in 24 hour convenience markets!
 
Okay, you want more ...
At age 7 while on a sled a tree collided with my head.
At age 20 while in California I crashed into a fire engine.
I've been hit twice by vans while I was a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
 
Wow, you poor people really had some bad encounters with what I think of as near death experiences. My mother told me how as a child she almost drowned. She also had scarlet fever.

I don't want to jinx myself, but I never really had those kind of things happen to me. The closest thing was when I worked for a company that sold land as investments. I'm not even going to name the country where the land was. For all I know they're still after me. :p I started realizing that this was also a sleazy company when I got a phone call warning me that one of the owners/managers was a strong arm man from out of New York. And actually he looked like he could be. So after being there for about two weeks, I gave my notice which resulted in nothing less than an interrogation by three of the guys. "Why did I want to leave"? "Look at her, she's avoiding looking at us". etc,. etc.

Obviously, they really sounded like they had something to hide, and that I found out about it. Well, I can be stubborn, too. I actually didn't have any kind of information. Only that phone call. But I wasn't taking any chances. So, they let me leave, but commented that they might come to the Karate Dojo (where I worked nights) and visit me.

What does that sound like to you?
 
Olivia said:
Wow, you poor people really had some bad encounters with what I think of as near death experiences. My mother told me how as a child she almost drowned. She also had scarlet fever.

I don't want to jinx myself, but I never really had those kind of things happen to me. The closest thing was when I worked for a company that sold land as investments. I'm not even going to name the country where the land was. For all I know they're still after me. :p I started realizing that this was also a sleazy company when I got a phone call warning me that one of the owners/managers was a strong arm man from out of New York. And actually he looked like he could be. So after being there for about two weeks, I gave my notice which resulted in nothing less than an interrogation by three of the guys. "Why did I want to leave"? "Look at her, she's avoiding looking at us". etc,. etc.

Obviously, they really sounded like they had something to hide, and that I found out about it. Well, I can be stubborn, too. I actually didn't have any kind of information. Only that phone call. But I wasn't taking any chances. So, they let me leave, but commented that they might come to the Karate Dojo (where I worked nights) and visit me.

What does that sound like to you?
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I don't know Olivia. Yours might be the scariest story so far. Was this in New Jersey?

Did the three guys that interrogated you look like this?

o-JAMES-GANDOLFINI-THE-SOPRANOS-facebook.jpg
 
It was in Hawaii. And they weren't wearing suits (as far as I can remember). But, yes, kind of looking like them. This was in the mid-seventies.

After I left, I forgot about it after a few days. They never showed up. I guess they thought they scared me enough. :playful:

Some of the things they told me was rather aggressive such as look us in the eyes. Maybe they thought they could read my mind that way or scare me more. I never told anyone about this. I was embarrassed and I thought they would find about it.
 
Olivia said:
It was in Hawaii. And they weren't wearing suits (as far as I can remember). But, yes, kind of looking like them. This was in the mid-seventies.

After I left, I forgot about it after a few days. They never showed up. I guess they thought they scared me enough. :playful:

Some of the things they told me was rather aggressive such as look us in the eyes. Maybe they thought they could read my mind that way or scare me more. I never told anyone about this. I was embarrassed and I thought they would find about it.
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I apologize for trying to make a joke about it by posting that picture from "The Sopranos" TV show.

But they did sound like gangsters. And I remembered you once said you lived in New Jersey for a while.

I can understand you being scared.

But since it was over 40 years ago, I don't think you have anything to worry about.
 
No need to apologize. I'm over it. As you said it was over 40 years ago. I only thought of it again because of this thread and posts about stuff that happened at work.

Yes, I don't have anything to worry about now.
 
One Christmas afternoon in the late 1950's, the boy next door shot me in the forehead with his Daisy Red Ryder BB Rifle that Santa had brought him. Yep, he almost shot my eye out.

It was my fault, though; I wanted to shoot it and tried to pull it away from him. His finger was on the trigger and that's all she wrote.

I ran home wailing and my father dug the bb out with a needle and gave me a tetanus shot, which hurt more than the bb did. Poor Bobby got his rifle taken away from him for a month. His mother was livid. He was still giving me a hard time about that in high school.

I still have the "dimple" above my eyebrow.
 

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