car moments spring to mind for pure luck

• once on a torn up muddy road i lost control and came a couple feet from going down a gully
  
• once on ice i lost control and could have taken the other vehicle out in a bad crash
  but i just slowly slid into a gentle ditch and after i caught my breath i just drove back out.
  
• once on a summer road trip with friends and not paying attention i came within feet of colliding with a deer

Muse2NOPharaoh said:

sitting there with you that night!!!!

one day i was walking down the street and i found six twenty dollar bills scattered along the sidewalk. i thought it was a joke or that it was some sly promotional thing or something, but no. it was six twenty dollar bills. it was back when i was living in NYC so i was always broke, so it was a MAJOR godsend...though i forget what i did with it - i'm sure i just waddled myself to the closest wrecka stow and spent it all within an hour.

Imago said:

http://www.couchsurfing.com

I can think of all kinds of things that I'm grateful for, but not much of it strikes me as dumb luck. No money on the sidewalk or anything.

I mean, I guess my luckiest moment was being born into a wonderful, loving, supportive family, and in a wealthy country where I will hopefully never have to worry about starving to death. That's luck. Ask most of the planet.

The many times I have avoided death

2004: Exposed to poison gas during a engine room fire. Thankfully, the filter on my firefighting mask got rid of most of the dirty air. Still felt like shit after

2005: A car accident in which I walked away with no injuries (can't say the same for the cab driver and the fellow in the other car

2005: Overcoming My series of mysterious sicknesses that came following my return from Iraq and the stress that came after. I came within 4 hours of death due to throat infection (imagine taking one breath, then holding it for 30 seconds because it hurts to breathe), my jaw locked, and I temporary lost hearing in my left ear. And on top of all that I had a temp of 105 for three days. It is amazing what you think when you are fading in and out. Cherry Blossoms and Clouds...
[Edited 2/22/07 19:08pm]

emm said:

You sound just like my mom; what you mean by "lucky" is what most other people would call "not unlucky". Or you're both really really really poor drivers.

You could label it as a "glass half full"-mentality in a way I suppose, but sometimes my mom makes me laugh when she tries to bring up something positive. Once she told me about when grandma broke her hip and had to use a crutch. Then she said "lucky that she didn't need two crutches!" and I said "mom, of course it's good that she didn't have to use two crutches but that's just the lesser of two evils, the whole thing that she has to use a crutch at all is not positive".

I wouldn't complain if she normally had an even balance of positive and negative, but since she often revels in negativity (not because she likes it, but because she automatically takes on other people's pain), it becomes almost like a joke when she makes an effort to be positive, you know what I mean? I have no idea if you're usually like that too, I just found it interesting that you sounded like her.

I once tried out online dating and she actually turnt out to be quite good-looking in real life. Phewf.

I had a dodgy client I had written off, but in the end he paid up in full!

retina said:

i am not.!!!! i will admit to lapses in judgement but who hasn't? the muddy road thing was totally not my fault... they had torn the highway up for construction and then we had a wet summer. it was insane. all the side roads were getting impassable too.
now take that back

emm said:

Sure, whatever you say.

I totally lucked into this new job.

I used to work in an off licence and was held up (with a gun) kept them talking till the Police arrive (15 minutes later) That 15 minutes was the longest ever!

returning to life after flatlining 3 times within the 1st 10 minutes of my son's life

yeah I know you said no children's births and the such

Luck or Divine Intervention?


New years eve 1997/98

This was a really low time for me, also a lonely time. I was 19 years old and had nothing better to do on New Years Eve than spend it alone driving around aimlessly in my brothers (borrowed) car.

I filled the tank and just drove, the weather was really bad. It had been snowing that day and it had stuck to the ground. in fact it had pretty much snowed continually all that day. The main roads were ok due to gritting and heavy vechile use. However, the side roads - the roads that had little use that day were covered with ice and snow

After driving around for hours and hearing the new year brought in by the cheers radiating from house parties and bars i decided to take the side roads.

I got onto one long stretch of snow covered sideroad. Flanked by homes, residents cars were parked along the road. As i was driving - and i remember this entire incident lucidly - i thought to myself "i know its snowing and there is ice on the floor, put your foot on the accelerator". So thats what i did.

I recall getting to around 40mph and then just feeling my steering wheel go light. i had lost control, i was skidding on the ice. My car turned 90 degrees and i coninued to slide in this manner for a while at high speed. Because of my cars position i now had to look to my hard right out of my side window to look down the road on which i was travelling. I was heading towards a brand new car which was parked by the road side.

I frantically wresteled with my steering wheel in an attempt to avoid hitting the car. There was nothing i could do. Upon realising this i gave up hope and then everything around me became very still - a million calm thoughts ran through my mind - i remember thinking things such as how sad my brother would be because ive smashed his car up (shouldnt i have just been screaming ARGHHHHH?). i recall feeling like i had let everybody down. As bizarre as this may sound, during this brief second or two (it felt like time had stood still) i was in such a relaxed state just staring at the car i was about to hit


still looking out of my side window i came within half inches of hitting the car i gently closed my eyes for the impact...

All i felt was this awesome force just push my car, i assumed it was the impact. the car rocked harshly and i opened my eyes to find my car re-allinged parked perfectly on the other side of the road!!!! I didnt crash! how did it happen?! i was litterally inces from hitting the parked car (the car was rocking on all its shoc absorbers though)- before the impact i was close enough to reach the parked car from out of my window if i wanted to.


to describe the force It felt as if something pushed the car to the other side of the road with huge force. to this day i have no idea what it was.

I remeber screamming YESSSSS! and laughing in hysterics by the side of the road lol i had my arms raised like i'd just won a boxing match! YESSSSS! i was on the high of all highs. I remeber getting back into my car and calming down and i just said thank u (to what/who i dont know), it was just simply that "thank u"

i started the car engine and drove home very slowly!

In 2004, towards the end of my second visit to Iraq, a 80mm mortar shell hit in the trailer area where almost all of the Soldiers on Victory Base in Baghdad live out of. My trailer was roughly 75 yards away from where it landed. To put this in some sort of perspective, the whole year that we'd been there, it wasn't uncommon to hear rocket, mortar, and small arms fire all throughout the day and night. After a while, it becomes like living in a violent city...you get used to it, and morbidly enough, you come to learn how to determine how close these things are hitting. Our training dictates that if you hear direct or indirect fire, you hit the ground, but I know that after a while, I wouldn't even get out of bed...except this night, the impact sounded and felt so different that I immediately jumped out of bed, put on all my gear, grabbed my M16, loaded a clip and ran outside. After checking on my troops (we were all ok) we went to where the mortar hit....it completely destroyed a trailer and killed a guy who was, like us, a couple of weeks from leaving Iraq for home....

It was a lucky moment because a few feet the wrong way and me or one of my guys could've bought the farm that night....

I guess one would call this luck. Back when I was 15 yrs old, me and my hubby now were youngsters dating and we had this god awful car wreck. Some bonehead had pieces of iron pipe hung off of a hay wagon, in a blind curve and when we came around the curve the sun was in our line of sight, causing blindness so we didn't see the pipes hanging in the road, and one of the pieces hooked into the cars right front fender, ripped all the metal from the front fender back to the rear off the car and caused it to flip, which in turn threw me out of the vehicle about 100 yards!..

reneGade20 said:

When I was in the fifth grade, I got my ass kicked by a 23 yr. old white piece of trash that was in my class.
After I regained consciousness, I could feel my nose pressing down against something flat & metallic ( my facing was down in the grass, BTW).
Afte I wiped the blood offa it, it revealed itself to be a silver Kennedy half-dollar!

My life has been just one long excruciating downhill, slightly-angled journey since then,
with the org or new episodes of the Family Guy providing the occasional escape/release from the pain which is the result of the pitiful, drawn-out experience that is my existance.


I love you guys.

3 or 4 bike accidents especially the one racing 18 months ago all could have punched my card and a diving accident last year that was pretty close. Every day is an extra in my book so live it to the max!

Getting my coaching job. It was pure luck. I was the only credentialed teacher on the staff and the guy quit 3 weeks before practice. One of the prerequisites for the job was a teaching credential. They did not have time to hire an experienced coach and gave it to me with an interim tag and I went 9 - 1 my first year.

actionthisday said:

can't figure why it always works out that way....even now...there was a story about a Marine who was training his replacement....last trip out on the road before getting the hell out of here within the next day or two....both got hit with sniper fire....KIA....you think that lady luck is with you because you made it all that time with your shit together, and then right at the end....and I definitely don't buy it when the rank tries to pawn it off on lack of focus and concentration...because it seems like the days take longer to pass the closer it gets to the end.....minutes like hours and so on....

I hope that if you're still in, and over here, that you're safe...if you're out, glad you made it out.....

reneGade20 said:

I was in Iraq and Indonesia. My unit was pulled from Basra to help out with tsunami relief in Indonesia. Then when that was done, back to the Northern Arabian Gulf

actionthisday said:

just seems like it never ends, huh? This is my 3rd trip here since this thing jumped off....sitting in the middle of Anbar province this time...and prospects are good (?) that we'll be back here yet again a bit after we get back to home station....

I never had one.

Muse2NOPharaoh said:

been with you on this occasion

Well, if winding up with a face and ass like mine isn't luck, then I don't know what the hell is.

SureThing said:

It's just a shame they are around the wrong way

mdiver said:

Lucky for you, I'm on the other side of the globe.