Have you ever walked into a situation you weren't sure you were going to walk out of?

A Ride in the Country

Part One:

I would have died as a child but for the existence of antibiotics. I had a serious case of "bronchial pneumonia" when I was eight or nine years old. I didn't feel bad myself but my parents were very worried. I was trying to cheer them up. But that's not what I wanted to write about.

I don't live there now but I grew up in New Brunswick, one of Canada's so-called "Atlantic Provinces". Everyone has heard of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland but New Brunswick doesn't seem to have the same international profile as those other well known places.

At the time of this story I had just graduated from a high school in a small town. The town is located in a picturesque part of the province, on the Kennebecasis River. I was seventeen years old at the time and was ready to go off to university. Some of my school friends and I had decided to go on an excursion to a provincial park for a day. The park was about forty or so miles from our town.

We took two cars. A friend of mine was in one car with his girlfriend and a couple of other people and I was in my father's new Ford Galaxie (1967) with the daughter of one of the teachers at our school, the sister of my friend's girlfriend and another friend, four of us. Four recently graduated high school kids, out for a fun time as a kind of "farewell to school days".

I need to set the story up with a little background about life in the sort of town this was, in the 1960s. High school seniors did a lot of roaming around at night in that town, in cars. The car was an important adjunct to teenage life. We tore around the back country roads, many of them gravel roads with the car radio blaring the music of the period, our windows down, the wind in our hair.

We had long talks about politics and pop culture, our favorite bands and musicians. Sometimes we went to the bootlegger, although that was a rarity because my friends were "nice kids" who weren't really into drinking underage or getting into serious sexual shananigans with local girls. We went to the Drive In movie theatre. We went to the dirt track car racing. We didn't race our own cars so much as just tear around like demons in them, through the back roads and sometimes on the main highway.

My Dad's car was powerful for the time and one of my favorite tricks on the highway was to pull out to the passing lane and see how many cars I could pass in one go before I had to duck back into line. My record was TEN. (Yes I know this is insane and I deserved a good butt walloping for doing it. If my father had known about it, I never would have seen the car keys again.)

A few of the guys were crazy drivers, and I was one of them. I had very little regard for the rules of the road or signs and how I failed to lose points or get into trouble with the police, I don't know. I had our car up to 113 mph. one time and that doesn't sound like much by today's standards but all I can say is that on a gentle curve of the highway I could feel it lifting off the suspension. Nuff said.

The road we were taking to our destination was a secondary highway, not a modern autoroute. It was twisty and turny and hilly up and hilly down and paved poorly with many asphalt patches and filled in potholes. It was one lane each way. There were passing opportunities in the form of stretches of road with dotted lines but they were few. It was a country road really but at one time, before the completion of the Trans Canada Highway, it had been the main road in the area. Most of the traffic on it was local but one of the exceptions to that rule were large trailer trucks loaded with logs destined for the paper industry. Sometimes these were double trailers. Driving in the area, it was not uncommon to get stuck behind one of them, which was something I liked to avoid.

They were annoying because on upgrades they slowed down considerably, laboring through the gear changes, and then on downgrades they would increase in speed, really pushing the speed limit on steep declines.

The road we were on was built into the side of a hill. Geologically, it is a fault line that extends for miles along the river. There was a sharp fall off on the right or lower side of the road where there were sloping fields of hay down to the river. A car that went off the road at high speed would probably be airborne for forty or fifty feet before it plowed into the earth.

We were motoring happily along, chatting and laughing, very relaxed, looking forward to getting to the park for our picnic lunch and a lazy afternoon of wandering around. The other car, driven by my classmate, had fallen behind us, mainly because I was a little lead footed, and because the other driver, a friend of mine, had a lot more common sense and responsibility than I had. I remember being pleased that the girl in the front seat beside me, the teacher's daughter, was pleasantly surprised by our pace. She didn't say anything but I knew from her facial expression that driving with me was a different experience from driving with her father, a fresh experience and not unpleasant. There was more to the world than dear old Daddy and his careful, cautious ways. She was happy.

A Ride in the Country

Part Two:

We rolled along, up hill, down hill, twisting to the left, twisting to the right, following the jumble of grades and conditions of the pavement and we rolled briskly, enjoying the ride until we came up behind a great big tandem rig loaded with logs, black smoke rising from its exhaust stack as it shifted gears. I didn't want to be stuck behind this guy and on a regular autoroute getting past him would be no problem. On this road one would really have to thread the needle. Like the young jackass I was, I started to look for my opportunity.

When it came, it was on a level stretch of road. It was not a long stretch and there was not a lot of distant visibility because the road was always dipping and turning ahead. I pulled out beside the big rig and went for it. I thought he might slow down a little to let me by but when I was beside him near the middle of the rig, and remember this was a long rig, so I couldn't easily duck back behind him if something appeared from around a curve ahead, he actually gave it the gas, as if he were racing me.

I gave it more gas and started to overtake him. By this time our two speeding vehicles were off the straight stretch of road and were starting to go down a steep decline. His speed increased sharply. I knew I was in trouble now. He sounded his horn, but I didn't bother with that. The situation was very serious. I could see, at the very bottom of the declining grade there was a turn to the left in the form of an immediate upward grade. Right at this turn, the road formed a sort of small rectangular platform, tilting up at me. I floored the accelerator and aimed for that platform. The car shot forward, passing in front of the cab of the big rig and landing on the platform like a cat. I could feel the suspension sink toward the pavement as we landed and then we shot away to the left like a rabbit.

I had calculated that the only way I could make the turn at the bottom of the grade was to use that upward tilting bit of pavement like a trampoline to catapult the weight of my car into the change of direction. The gamble worked. We made the turn. There was no crash but it was very quiet in the car for a few miles until we all relaxed again. I think I was in a state of shock. The girl next to me was doing some mental revisions of her situation. Everyone was subdued for some time afterward, until we got to the park. The rest of the outing passed without incident and we all got home safely.

It took me years to realize the full implications of that little episode. My father died four years later and I no longer had access to a car. I let my driver's licence lapse shortly after that and have never driven since. Every so often I take time to appreciate how fortunate I am not to have killed or injured someone that day. When I think about some of the things I did in those days behind the wheel of a car, I cringe, even to this day.

I was never so close to death or serious injury as I was on that day. I have had other difficulties, some with dangerous people, while working as a security guard, but nothing like that. I was involved as a passenger in a traffic accident in France but it was not as hair raising as that ride along a beautiful river valley.

My first marriage.

originally posted by: Soapusmaximus
a reply to: NorEaster

You are very brave, I am sorry for what you have been through and are going through.

I only hope you may find solace in the fact that even when we die, tis surely not the end - so says human experience.

I have a appointment for a possib, e brain tumor that runs in family - not many get it but I been getting weird headaches etc.

I am scared, but only of the pain of death in that manner - an opiate overdose (of which I have some experience) and you don't realise you are gone until you come back!

A good friend of mine just got news this morning that they found a suspicious 2 inch (5 cm) mass on his Adrenal Gland, and he's sh*tting himself today over it. Cancer is the scary one. My pain was recovery pain which isn't so terrible, but the pain from cancer...man, that's a nightmare, because it's pain that's coming from something that's eating you alive.

I believe that we're each engaged in a 2nd stage of physical gestation as material Homo Sapiens. That each instant our own brains are creating each one of us as the human beings we'll be when this corporeal life is completed. Our thoughts, reactions, responses, emotions, likes, dislikes, all of it, are "burst sets" of conscious information that become components of our emerging selves that each survive the death of the brain that "generated" those burst sets.

I can't be afraid of death, or of anything. Information has no half-life rate of decay (unlike information storage mediums) so what can ever cause me harm? Nothing. The body and brain will die, and when it does, this 2nd stage of physical gestation will be complete, and I will finally be whole and permanently viable. Basically, I'll be born into the realm of human beings at that time. Until then, I'll simply try not to cripple my own ongoing development with fear or hatred or the embrace of strident, righteous ignorance.

a reply to: NorEaster

I believe that we're each engaged in a 2nd stage of physical gestation as material Homo Sapiens. That each instant our own brains are creating each one of us as the human beings we'll be when this corporeal life is completed. Our thoughts, reactions, responses, emotions, likes, dislikes, all of it, are "burst sets" of conscious information that become components of our emerging selves that each survive the death of the brain that "generated" those burst sets.

My rational, sceptical brain refutes these ideas as whimsy and wishful thinking - a nonsense. Where's the evidence? There's none.

In quieter moments, scepticism falls asleep and intuitive thoughts appear. Where you say 'burst sets,' I've often thought that everyone's dying moments should be peaceful so they take nothing forward and leave nothing behind. Death should be swift and cause as little anxiety as possible. It's a contentious concept as it invites deeper thoughts about what sentience means and how far it extends beyond our own singular species.

Good post

a reply to: NorEaster

Wow. That would put a perspective on life wouldn't it?

Much like my cancer scare a few years back...

YOur's much scarier.

Absolutely and more than one time. I live in Detroit. lol

Some years ago I had moved out of my parents’ house, and decided I was going to live large, and live alone. I moved into a studio apartment above a commercial building. Dearborn/Detroit border. It was really a cool place.

Beautiful hardwood floors, 5 bedrooms, 14 foot ceilings, basically a young man’s dream bachelor pad. I had purchase the property cheap and renovated it to my liking. The reason it was cheap was the area was a bit sketchy, but was still viable for real estate investments.

There was a separate entrance/door to my stairwell from the main street. I decided to install a motion detector lighting system, in the stairwell one directly at the bottom landing, and the second directly at the top, so I wouldn't ever have to search for light switches in the dark. There was 2nd doorway with leaded glass, at the top of the stairs, which led into my main living area where I had my sofas and TV.

One summer night I was relaxing in the living area watching TV, windows opened with a gentle Michigan summer breeze to cool the place down. It was about 2am, so there was no road traffic outside, and it was quiet for sure.
My 2nd door entrance to my apartment was closed and secured.

As I sat watching my movie, I noticed one of my motion lights had come on. The first thought that popped into my head was “Did I leave the main door open, or closed? F##k!”

Anyhow the light stayed on for about 60 seconds and then turned off, so I thought well maybe just a glitch. ( A brief sigh of relief )

As I returned to watching my movie a few minutes later the light came back on, and I heard fairly loud footsteps coming up the stairwell. Hearing footsteps was really easy, because solid oak steps surrounded by wet plaster walls sound echoed like you wouldn't believe.

My adrenaline went into overdrive, and my heart was pounding out of my chest.

I leaped from my coach, sprinted to my bedroom and immediately grab my Remington 870 with the 18 inch barrel. Whoever it was heard me running because my apartment had all oak floors, so they knew someone was home now.

I cautiously came back to my living area and approached my 2nd floor doorway, peered through the glass and saw no one. I slowly opened my door and left the safety chain on. Unfortunately the stairwell was an L-Shape, so it had a landing about halfway, and then continued on down to the main landing/doorway. I could only see part of the way down. My thoughts were racing at this point.

The lights were still on and I knew that someone or more than one was there. Even though I was on high alert I had to make sure it wasn't my family members, or friends, so I yelled down the stairwell.

Me: “Who’s there?” about a 20 second delay then…….I get a response

Them: A loud deep voice “I need help my car broke down outside”

Me: quickly glance out front window Facing Street, No car. “ F##K “ I thought, then I proceeded to open my apartment door, and then rack the first round of 000 buck shot into chamber, making damn sure they heard it.

Them: (Sounds of two maybe three people running/ tripping over themselves trying to get down remainder of the steps, main door flies open) I waited to round the corner, but saw only the opened door.

Me: Immediately call police, they show up within minutes, take report and tell me there have been a number of burglaries in the area while people were sleeping.

Two weeks later they found someone with their throat cut about 2 blocks away.

Needless to say I moved out a few weeks later.

On a positive note I did make a profit on the building.

Oh I've had a few... Mostly my doing.

When I was around 17 I was out on a 2-lane highway in my truck (I still have it but not my daily driver anymore, an '85 Chevy 4x4 pickup) and I decided everyone was going too slow and I went to pass. Two cars and an 18 wheeler is what I was trying to pass... Everyone else was doing about 50mph, and I had gotten up to about 70mph and was beside the 18 wheeler cruising along when a dump truck crested the hill ahead of me. Better get out of here I thought, so I hit the gas and the engine started spitting and sputtering, pretty sure the vacuum secondaries were gummed up. I was losing speed, the dump truck was getting closer and closer to giving my poor old truck a facelift. So I grabbed the gear shifter (it's an automatic), slammed it down into second gear and pushed the pedal to the floor. The secondaries popped open, the engine roared to life, and I cut back into my lane far too close for comfort to the bumpers of each truck.

There was another time when I was around 22 and this one wasn't my doing at all. I was at a friend's house drinking and carrying on and she lived in a not-so-good part of town. We saw four guys walking down the street as we were outside smoking and a car pulled up past them. A guy in the back seat opened the door and started yelling at one of the guys walking, calling him names etc... The guy walking pulled out a gun and fired 3 rounds at the car and the car sped off. Then for some reason the guy turned to us (I guess because we saw him do it) and started to walk in our direction, and his buddies followed. My friends looked at each other in horror and ran behind the house, well I had a different idea. I ran to my truck and pulled out a 12 gauge shotgun, cocked it with one hand and braced it on the bed of the truck, pointing it at the guy's head with my finger on the trigger. They took off running the other direction as soon as they realized I wasn't playing. My friends were saying I was crazy etc but I didn't care, I'd do it again. After the fact my friends tried to say the gun was probably fake. Was it? I don't know, but I didn't care to find out and mine certainly wasn't.

Maybe a year or so after that I was involved in some questionable things. I can't go into detail because of T&C but an acquaintance of mine had asked me to go to her house and meet her brother for something, he was younger and dumber than me apparently. I had a snubbie .38 special that I kept around and I had it in my jacket pocket at this point. The brother took me back to his room and said he had something to show me. I didn't know this guy, had briefly met him one other time. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a black pistol and started to swing it toward me as he pulled the slide. Time slowed down for me... I already had my hands in my pockets and I just gripped my revolver, pulled the hammer back and aimed it at him through the pocket. Just before he had his weapon fully pointed at me, he dropped the slide and when I heard it I realized it was plastic. The idiot had taken an airsoft gun and painted over the orange tip, and I was about to put a hollowpoint in him. I slowly released the hammer as he laughed about it. I lectured him on how that was a stupid thing to do, but never told him that I had a gun.

Another one that stands out was about a year and a half ago I was 24-25 and working at a club about an hour away from my house which meant leaving around 3am and getting home around 4. There was a backroad near the club that avoided a lot of city areas and met the interstate that the manager and I would take a lot of nights and then go our separate ways, it was curvy and kind of fun. I was following the manager and we were both speeding, doing 60+ in a 45 zone (if not a 35 zone, I don't remember) and I was probably 200 feet behind him. We came into a curve to the left with an intersecting road on the right with a car sitting there. I guess the guy didn't see me and he pulled out to turn left (my direction) right in front of me and I was going to nail him right in the side of his car. Rather than that I acted on my screwy impulse and jerked the wheel to the right towards the road he came from, then jerked back to the left while giving the brakes a hefty tap to take pressure off the rear end. I slid my car sideways around this guy's rear bumper, overcorrected and fishtailed back onto the main road almost putting it into the ditch then regained control, downshifted, and kept on hauling it. The guy who had pulled out stopped in the road like he was processing what just happened, but I didn't slow down.

I have way too many stories involving cars, I think. A few years ago I was working with a construction crew and we drove pretty much anywhere we were requested within 300 miles of where we live. This meant some weird sleep patterns... I remember sometimes I'd go for 3 days straight on a couple hours of sleep. One of these times we were driving out to a place in the mountains every morning and coming back every night, it was about a 3-4 hour drive each way. We were on the way back and on the descent from the mountains on the interstate doing 70+mph through long wide curves and 6 lanes of traffic. It was the middle of the night and I was dead tired as were the 3 others with me who were sleeping in the car. I started to doze off here and there, just when I shut my eyes I'd jolt myself back to reality, except for one time. I don't know how I did it. I must have had my eyes closed for 30-45 seconds during one of the sweeping turns when I felt a vibrating sensation and my subconscious screamed at me "you're driving!!" I popped my eyes open expecting the worst but I was just cruising along still between the lines on the inner lane. I stopped the car on an exit ramp and smoked a cigarette.

Which reminds me of one before because apparently I have patterns to having the crap scared out of me. When I was 18-19 I had an old '77 Kawasaki KZ-750 Twin that I picked up for pretty cheap. It wasn't the prettiest thing and I had nicknamed it "Queen B****" because of the random problems it always had, carburetors being one of them. One day I was out working on it and thought I had made a breakthrough with the tuning so I immediately hit the interstate to see what it would do. Before it wouldn't go above ~85mph before it would lose power. I took it out and made sure no one was really around then rolled on the throttle... 80, 85, 90, 95, 100, I was excited and kept pushing it while looking at the speedo. I remember seeing the needle hit 107 and I slightly steered over in the lane when I got The Wobble. The Tank Slapper. The moment of death waiting to happen... Next thing I know, the handlebars are twisting around in my hands and the back tire is skipping back and forth as I go uncontrollably through 3 different lanes of traffic. I had these images in my head of me hitting the brakes and the bike folding up on me, or hitting the gas and the rear end sliding the rest of the way out. I just pushed forward on the handlebars as hard as I could and held on, and when I got back down to about 90 it all stopped and went back to normal. Apparently the old QB had a bad bushing that I didn't know about. This is where my habit came from -- I pulled off the next exit and smoked a cigarette right there in the grass. What will I do now that I've quit? THAT was probably my scariest moment.

While going to college, I had a job as a bouncer (security) at a topless bar called The View Point Lounge in Portland, Oregon. Had a gun pulled on me, been shot at and the like.

One night I walk into work, late after getting out of class and as soon as I get there, my boss tells me to walk these two Mexican guys outside. Tired, I agree and don't even ask what happened. There's an alcove or double door area when you enter the club. Its about 3 meters x 3 meters between the two sets of doors.

I was tired and these guys were small so I wasn't really on point...Big mistake.

I open the first set of doors and with my hand on the back of #1 (I'll call him #1 and the other #2) begin to calmly walk them out. As soon as the door closed behind us I hear this "click" and both of these little turds go in opposite directions, one to the right the other to the left very quickly.

The "click" was a box opener, basically a razor encased in a sheath of steel used for warehouse work etc. #1 spun like a little ballerina with his box opener at the end of his little hand in an attempt to cut my throat. I remember that instance and probably always will.

I pulled back just in time for it to narrowly miss my throat while #2 began punching me in the face. To be perfectly honest, I didn't feel a thing from him. Nothing. In this kind of situation I've found that I completely blacked out and focused entirely on the blade in little MR #1's stubby little grip. I lunged and with a bit of luck ended up with his blade hand in mine... The whole time #2 is punching me.

I am 6'2" and at the time weighed around 235lbs and was in very good shape neither of these guys was much over 5' nor weighed more than a school girl. We fell to the floor and I snapped two of his fingers getting the blade away from him. After I had it, I realized, through #1's horrible little screams of pain that #2 was punching me on the right side of my face. Alerted to the situation by #1's horrible little screams, 3 other security personnel entered the alcove (the space between the 2 sets of doors)

As they say, it was on like Donkey Kong! I beat the living #e out of #1 as he screamed with pain due to his boken fingers (bent at a very disturbing angle to his stubby little hand)

Before they left with the police these two little turds were brutally beaten and had to be helped into the squad car. I'm not one to advocate violence but when it's called for, it's good to know you have it in you I guess.

We found out later from one of the cops that would often be on patrol in that area that both of these turds were wanted for questioning in homicides. While I've no idea what would've happened had I just froze up, I'm fairly certain of what could've. Cheers!

Edited to add; after this incident I did an assessment of the situation...I was working 2 jobs and going to school full time. My job at the View Point paid 7.00 per hr. I quit shortly after hearing about the suspicion of murder from the cop.

Bit off topic but is relevant. I once had blood poisoning though I didn't know it at the time. I had just started a new job and even though I was feeling sick I wanted to stay out the shift so with four hours to go I said wth. Anyway I was walking across the shop floor when I started projectile vomiting inside my respirator and also all over the place I couldnt stop and I was told later that I just dropped to the ground when the guys started ripping off my respirator and heavy work gear as I was suffocating. I came to after about ten minutes and my throat was so constricted that it felt like I was breathing through a pinhole and every time I just finished getting a tiny lungfull of air my throat would lock for a few seconds and I couldnt get any more. So every time I breathed for a half hour waiting for the ambulance it felt like it was my last breath. It is a small thing to say it was truly terrifying and I believed I was dying. But strangely I also felt a sense of urgency to get things in order and checkout time was here as if i'd done it before, a real bastard of a feeling because it was so unexpected and I had no time to prepare for my death and where would I go? Anyway I wrote out my will and a few messages to relevant people and the ambulance arrived when I passed out again. Apparently they stopped as soon as they started to leave and worked on me for half an hour in my companies carpark because I was dying but I didn't know that till later. Antibiotics and hospital fixed me after a week and of course I'm here now but it gave me a taste of something I'm not to keen to repeat at least for a long time if I have any say in it.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: Iwinder
Me to. Very interesting people we have here on ATS.

Please share if you care to?
What are your experiences that made you create this thread?
Regards, Iwinder

I have a few, i'll share one for now...

I was at a party in the "sketchy" part of town with about 150-200 people at a house anyways I was there with my friend D and another girl J standing outside, we heard sirens off in the distance and they continued to get closer, the party was very large and loud at this point. We were slightly drunk all of us and underage at the time so naturally we did what kids do and took of running the first direction we looked. We ran for several blocks at least 5 or 6 and we never did encounter the police however we saw their lights in the neighborhood as they did indeed come to break up the party.

So we are walking as this point feeling safe and as we are walking we go past a really ghetto apartment complex that almost looks like a motel. In one of the windows at this place on the ground floor you could clearly see a figure of a person - or perhaps a child; peaking up over the windowsill and peering out at us with their hands cupped over their eyes. There was a light behind them and curtains so you could clearly see their silhouette.

The figure dips back down under the windowsill and my friend D naturally being a reckless moron, and drunk at the time, he goes up to the window and really quickly peers into it with his hands cupped around his eyes because he thought he was funny. Anyways - he did not touch their window but probably came within a foot or two of it when the figure briefly appeared in the window again and D immediately jumped back.

J and myself were standing probably 15 feet from D and the door to the apartment attached to the window w/ the figure. Suddenly the door opens really fast, the light is on and a shirtless individual in gray basketball shorts wielding a machete starts screaming at us and immediately charges my friend D. He swipes at him with the machete but D was too quick and already in full sprint the opposite direction as were we.

This guy chased us for like 3 blocks and me and J got separated from D and I did not know the neighborhood WHATSOEVER so I was honestly worried of that asshole popping out from any corner and chopping us up lol but we kept walking and came upon my friend D by luck (our phones were dead and we are still buzzed) and we immediately called a cab and went our separate ways. It was so surreal I still sometimes think it was a dream haha but they confirm it happened not to worry!

Anyways, suffice it to say I never hang up with D nor J anymore.