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Originally Posted by dlishsguy
i started crying, as a 5 year old would..but dad firmly told me that your a man and men dont cry and stop crying. so i stopped.
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Jaysus CHRIST... are you serious? No offense to your dad whatsoever, but... I want to kick men in the balls when they say shit like that to their sons (or daughters!). That is just messed up. You nearly drowned. Your DAD should've been the one crying... maybe that's why he reacted the way he did.
Anyway, moving on to my near-death stories. Yeah, at least twice I know I could've died if my reaction time had been a few seconds slower.
First time was when I was dogsledding in remote Greenland in February. The Inuit guide took us over a frozen bay and I saw the snow/ice underneath us getting dark as we passed over it, meaning that water was seeping up from below rather quickly. I felt like the ice would crack any second. Then we arrived at the target, a massive glacier facing the bay... I walked up to the edge to touch it (looking up, it was a straight wall of ice) and suddenly my foot was going through the ice below and it was soaked. I sprung away to the more solid area and swore profusely, since I had just imagined myself falling bodily into the arctic water and dying the way my father did. There was an hour's sledride through sub-freezing temperatures to get any kind of help (it was a village, days from any kind of modern medicine, with just a resident nurse)... I would have died on the way back. As it was, I nearly thought I'd get frostbite on my foot, but I kept moving my toes as much as I could until we got back. Fuckin' eh, the Inuit know what they are doing. I don't.
Second time was while driving on I-5 over a snowy mountain pass at 3am, friend asleep in the backseat... it was all lanes in one direction, but some idiot had gotten on the freeway going the wrong way, and I was the only one on the road at that time. I was buzzing along, singing to the radio, and all of a sudden there are these headlights in my face... on a 1-way interstate highway!!! I freaked out and swerved in time... that guy nearly killed us all.
There have likely been other times, especially as a kid... I was a real thrill-seeker, always wanting the adrenaline rush and being a daredevil. I preferred to play with the boys. But I did some pretty stupid stuff. I hope my kids are a little less adventurous than I was.
