1. When someone I didn’t know all that well broke out her vacuum right in front of me to clean a carpet that looked pristine. She later turned out to have a psychological disorder involving cleaning things.
2. When a close friend did exactly the same thing not long afterword. I told her she was scaring me. She grinned.
3. When, being the most sober of the bunch, I agreed to drive the car of an acquaintance from one resort to another through the mountains in the middle of the night only to discover there was something wrong with the steering. I counted a full three seconds from when I turned the wheel to when the car actually began to turn. We were late. I drove 60 mph. on 45 mph curves in that condition and lived. I’m still surprised.
4. The last time we hit a deer, no one was injured, save the deer, but we found fur in the trunk. The car was totaled.
5. The last time I bicycled on snow. The bicycle slid out from under me. I ended up sliding a dozen yards, standing hunched over to hold the handle bars while the bicycle lay on the ground between my feet. I was lucky to be able to stay upright, and couldn’t do anything to stop as I got closer and closer to a busy intersection. When I finally came to rest, cars honked at me. I decided I’d used up a lifetime worth of luck and refuse to bicycle anywhere between the first and last snowfall each winter.
6. One day some Bozo on the interstate put a construction light on his roof and chased me like a cop. I refused to pull over. A week later I read in the newspaper that some guy was raping women who drive that section of highway using the Bozo’s technique to get to them.
7. A woman really did mention me by name in her suicide letter. It was only a couple of sentences in a five page letter, but she made it clear I should consider a critique she forced out of me a contribution to her death. I refuse to feel guilty, but I tend to be more cautious about doing critiques now.
8. My husband nearly died of pneumonia. The whole family came down with a cold, so it was days before I realized something was seriously wrong. I came home from work to find him half delirious. He was in the hospital with four kinds of antibiotics in his IV drip and two kinds of inhaler for four days. The doctors told me if we had been even a few hours later the only thing they would have been able to do would be to make him comfortable while he died.
9. I had a period that lasted a month and a half and saturated a napkin in less than an hour during the heaviest flows. Can anyone die by reproductive cycle?
10. Shortly after getting my driver’s license I was crossing the continental divide in a snow storm. I drove too fast because a half dozen people were on my bumper. Just about the time I told my mother I could handle it better than her because I was younger and had better reflexes I hit an ice patch and went into a spin. I spun into the oncoming lane long enough to let everyone behind me past, then back into my own lane just as oncoming traffic arrived. I pulled over and let my mother drive.
11. I rented a studio apartment in a house that was up for sale. One morning, having stumbled to bed only a couple of hours earlier, the real estate lady keyed herself in with several prospective buyers. I was naked. The hide-a-bed was right there in front of the door with me in it. Everyone was mortified. The only warning was a note they had taped to my door the day before which I hadn’t seen when I came home. I moved out at the end of the month.
12. I went on a week-long kayaking trip down the San Juan river. This is actually a two-parter. First I was showing off in front of a bunch of rafters and learned I couldn’t do a roll on the river after all. I had to swim downstream a quarter of a mile and slog though something a bit like mud and a bit like quicksand to reach a place where I could get back in my kayak. All the while the rafters were hooting and jeering. A couple days later we hit a spot where the rapids gave way to whirlpools. The guide said this was one of the most treacherous parts of the river because with so much mud, the depth of the water, and strange currents they couldn’t always rescue people. I dipped my oar too deep, and almost got sucked under.
13. The time my son, who never listens to me, jumped down the staircase from about 7 steps up, hit the newel post which had a sharp edge, and ripped open a wound the size of my palm. At first I thought he’d broken the bone, pushing it all the way out because of the white of his fat and a strange lack of blood. This, and the pneumonia thing, might well have been the worst moment of my life.
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