Post #117502 by freddiefreelance on Fri, Oct 1, 2004 12:30 PM

Let's see, how close to death do you need? I fell 30 feet out of a tree when I was a kid, luckily I landed in a bush & only ended up covered in bruises. In my teens I was hit by cars twice while riding my bike, luckily not ending up underneath, so I was only covered in road rash. In my 20s I crashed a scooter on a busy street & ended up head-first on the ground in front of an oncoming car, luckily the old lady driving it was able to stop, but she stopped about 2 feet in front of my face.

I've had LA-area police draw weapons on me 3 times: a Glendale cop drew his gun on me during a traffic stop (He stopped me in front of a batting cage & was confused by all the people walking around with baseball bats); a Pasadena cop handcuffed me, threw me to the ground, put a shotgun to my head & said "Please move, I want to kill you;" and a Hollywood cop pointed his gun at a suspect, through a group of my friends & myself. Also a Pasadena cop shot my dog in front of me for barking at the police officers invading my home.

Before I learned to control my temper I put my fist through a plate-glass window, severing veins, arteries, muscles & tendons and a nerve branch. My friend George King acted as a human tourniquet & squeezed my arm with his bare hands to stop the bleeding 'til they got me to the hospital.

I've seen a man decapitated by a used car lot sign in a one-car accident (he lost control, crossed traffic & hit the sign, one side snapped off and went through his windshield); seen a friend-of-a-friend lose control of his motorcyle and hit his head on a telephone pole which removed his helmet along with the top of his skull; and seen a friend hit by a car & dragged underneath for 3 blocks before they could stop the old man who was driving, my friend stopped screaming somewhere on the second block.

Plus: slipping but not falling while rock climbing on cliffs on the Maine coast as a kid; various adventures & close calls on 2 wheels in my teens & 20s, often involving the ingestion of various drugs & alcohol, occasionally involving fleeing from the police; having drivers try to force me to ride into parked cars while riding my bike in my 20s; multiple beatings & ambushes as a teen, occasionally involving weapons; having a friend wave a shotgun around, telling him not to point it my way, he responds "But it's not loaded, see," and he blows a hole through the ceiling; multiple close calls involving large fireworks, dynamite, black powder, gasoline, airplane fuel, fuel-grade alcohol, fertilizer, &/or various other gelling agents; jumping off of the old train trestles into the Kill van Kull on Staten Island; getting caught in undertows & strong currents several times in both the Atlantic & Pacific, one time being knocked down, dragged down & across the rocky bottom before I could surface and head to shore with my right elbow looking like chopped meat; and almost hitting a student driver semi while practicing my 4-wheel drifts in my old Isuzu Impulse on the way to work in San Diego.