I can't say I had quite the dramatic experience growing up that you had. However, I can say our paths are somewhat similar. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania and moved to Seattle in the early 90's. Which in this part of the country was toward the end of the "Grunge" era. I was all into Pearl Jam at the time and had my mind blown by that performance with Neil Young. Honestly, it still melts my face to watch that performance.
I also had a skinny girlfriend back then (does having sex with a girl for three months count as a girlfriend?) who would physically abuse me....I found out later that she was a meth addict. Hey, I was in my early 20's and was pretty wet behind the ears.
Either way, that Super Bowl fucking sucked. Fuck Neil O'Donnell.
I had so, so many of your cultural touchstones, we must have passed each other in the night a dozen times decades ago.
Near-death experiences...
My father once came into the room, drunk, saw my mother crying, and started beating me. Hard. I knew it was different than usual when I curled up on the kitchen floor and it didn't stop- gestures of submission usually did it. A few minutes in, I felt my bladder and bowels go. It was an out-of-body experience and I wondered if I was paralyzed because there was no sensation behind it. I became aware I was losing consciousness- I was only actually out for a few seconds- but having never had fully lost consciousness for any reason before, I thought for certain I was about to die, or at least never wake up.
My nerdy friend Ken and I went trick or treating in middle school and had a gun pointed at us because a guy demanded he hand over his Friday the 13th costume hockey mask. His friends grabbed us and threw us against a car and starting taking everything we had on us. My friend Ken got scared enough to start crying and just began pleading "help me help me help me" to me from the other side of the car, so I turned around and shoved my boob into the guy's gun and repeated "shoot me shoot me shoot me" until they left.
In high school, I had enough one day and decided to commit hara-kiri because I thought it was a beautiful notion. After taking an hour of slowly shoving a thin knife into my abdomen like stepping into cold water, I sat there thinking about following through when my friend called and started leaving me a message on my translucent purple plastic phone. I heard one of my parents coming towards my room to see why I didn't answer and got up, with the knife under my shirt, and answered the phone to tell my friend that yes, I would be in school tomorrow and she could pay me back the money she owed me. It felt monumentally stupid at that point so I snuck into the bathroom, pulled the blade the rest of the way out, and butterfly-bandaged it. Years later when I pierced my navel, the scar was covered up and eventually more or less vanished.
In Japan, I suddenly started having what I thought was a heart attack. My face and left side went numb, my heart was pounding, and I couldn't stay on my feet without getting dizzy. After rehearsing my explanation on Google Translate, I called 110 and succinctly explained what was happening. By the time the paramedics showed up, I was having these little blackouts and tunnel vision, which was a new experience for me. On the ambulance ride, they frankly kept telling me they were worried about my heartbeat, and one tried to calm me down by joking about his daughter being my student and a pain in the ass.
I got hooked into some monitor at like 3am, and after a half hour in the hospital, everything just calmed down and stopped suddenly. I was exhausted and my chest hurt like I had been kicked, but I was fine. One of the doctors spoke perfect English and talked through all the scans with me. They said they had absolutely no idea what happened. I've never experienced anything like it or since.
I did basically no drugs, in comparison to your experience. I had a good number of friends die to heroin and knew friends in school with addict parents who were such a train wreck that I was scared completely straightedge until I was in the club scene long enough to at least appreciate alcohol.
I was so depressed and messed up and was anorexic going into early adulthood; that there was a general consensus I would probably not get past 25, which I guess was a cliche of the 90s for some people.
I think about death a lot. Not suicide, never again, but I think about it often. I'm usually frozen at this perfect equidistance between existential horror and defiant laughter at it.
I did not spend a single moment of the last 3 years worried I was going to die. I felt weirdly more immune to it than I would the rest of the time because I was so oddly disgusted by the degree of hysterical fear around me that I almost overcompensated to a point of anger-fueled bravery.
I do not generally feel fragile. I feel powerless, small, and insignificant, but I have proven hard to kill and possessed of a strong desire to live, despite myself. I am frequently not happy about being alive, but I always recognize it as something that will pass, sooner or later.
I would not agree we are living in the best time to be alive, at all. Certainly not the worst in the great sweep of history, but not the best. I will take it over the alternative.
Gosh Guttermouth. I so appreciate your sharing. I know you've said before you've mostly come to terms with much of your past, but every time I hear some of your stories, my heart absolutely breaks for that girl, especially the beatings. I feel rage against those humans who did that to you. I can't imagine how alone you felt in your own home, fearing the people who were supposed to be keeping you safe. Thank you for being so open, and I'm truly glad you're continuing to make your voice heard, and that you're still here TO make your voice heard.
Sympathetic and sorry you went through that shit, though I like the output on this side of it all. Very glad you and BHerr made it through. I can identify with a lot of the thoughts, if not many of the incidents. I have no one else to blame for my bad behaviors. Looking back, I think putting together my very own shotgun from parts (dad left it disassembled in his footlocker before he died) at 7 y/o made a bigger difference than one might have thought. Had choices. Wasn't powerless. Chose not to kill anybody, myself included, despite many temptations. 58 yrs later, so far, so good. My favorite RHCP show. Gotta love seeing Kedis upstaged by pure FUNK.
i nearly died today, worst rain ive even driven in, vision down to about 30 feet but still hauling at 70mph, aquaplaned for a bit, youre never more alive!
i did have an out of body experience when i was 9, so ive not been scared of death since. it was just my discovery of being asthmatic, waiting for the doctor to arrive and floating away looking down at the doc and my mother as they tended to me, no emotion just the thought oh thats me. ive since cured the asthma, pity it took me 31 years to figure it out, even bigger pity doctors dont know its mostly curable
I was curious too. I was a HEAVY asthmatic as a kid and into my early adult years, but as I cleaned up my diet, over the past ten years, at one point I realized I haven't used an inhaler in longer than I can remember. It used to be an every day thing. I've been in the hospital numerous times for breathing treatments. Good call Ray! I guess I inadvertantly followed your therapy.
i went on a strict diet for 4 months, zero sugar/carbs, high omega 3, vitamin d/K2. mostly meat, eggs and wild fish. i have since avoided grains and its not come back, havnt even owned an inhaler in 6 years
Not quite as entertaining as yours, but an overdose when I was about 17, woke up in hospital with my parents staring at me.......
Car crash in my 20's, where I headbutted a lorry on the motorway and have a dent in my skull where they rebuilt my eye socket.
After Gulf war 1 in Iraq, we strolled into an area with loads of golf balls....... AKA AP mines.
Married to a fun loving psycho who tried to hire somebody to kill me, got into a fight with some aggressive arsehole and they also tried to hire someone to kill us both.
Recently got thrown off the top of a ladder by a core drill knocking me out when the clutch jammed and breaking my front teeth.
My comment would be way too long. But I thank God that I'm still alive after my 20's. Eeeeks! One of my scariest memories was buying crack off the street by myself in a really bad area of the city I lived in at the time. The next thing I knew I had a car full of armed people I didn't know parked at a 7-11 and the seats were all being ripped out of my car (literally) because someone thought they dropped a rock. (If anyone has ever done crack, once you have smoked it all up, anything white you see anywhere looks like crack... it's a HORRIBLE drug). Not to mention the huge hit I took that night that made me think I was going to die. That incident, along with numerous others definitely makes me grateful to God that I have been able to still live a healthy, long, productive and joyful life.
If we really want to, no matter how bad we think we have it, if we look across the street we can often find someone much worse off than we are.
I only did crack twice, by accident. That was enough.
It's amazing how those moments can spiral into something like an out of body experience, watching the chaos unfold around you helplessly, especially when you have other people and a lot of drugs. I've told my kids point blank I'm no so much worried about the drugs (except things like heroin, opioids, meth - the REAL bad stuff), it's more where the drugs take you and who they take you there with.
Like if I found out my son was smoking pot or dropping acid, we'd talk, we'd talk about what the drugs actually do, but we'd talk more about the situations they would put him in, the characters he'd be around, and how it exponentially increases your danger.
Glad you're still here Rob. I'm going to listen to that podcast you put out on your stack.
No doubt! My argument for decriminalization (I'm not a fan of "legalization" because the state still has it's fingers in that whole thing) has always been because of exactly what you said. I love how "cannabis" is always a "gateway drug". I vehemently disagree with that statement. The only reason I ever even experimented with other things was because the black market dealer was out of cannabis and said, "but I have (fill in the blank) if you'd like to try it." I would have never met the shady (and often violent) characters I'd end up being in contact with if me and my pals could have either grown our own recreational cannabis or been able to go to our local dispensary. The situations that prohibition puts people in are often worse than the drugs themselves. That being said, there really are some terrible terrible terrible drugs out there and I agree that having a discussion about them and educating people about them is the key. I often use tobacco as an example... granted, the state is involved in it quite a bit with taxation etc, but when the truth came out that smoking literally kills you people stopped. Not everyone (and that's never going to happen with *anything*) but a majority decided that inhaling chemical laden tobacco smoke probably isn't a good idea. :)
Was in a rollover in a VW Baja bug in AZ when I was 18. My friend flew out after a couple rolls (she was driving). I ended up in backseat and had to crawl through broken back window over the engine to get out. Rolled 5 times. The roof was a foot above where I sat. Lucky I didn't have seatbelt on. Not a scratch on me.
Rolled again in F350 in the mountains. Driver and other passenger had to be cut out. I crawled out with no injuries. I do have bad arthritis in my neck now. Wild times
heh, we must be about the same age; wasn't a huge fan of the song when it was everywhere all the time, but your post made this song pop in to my head -
As for harrowing experiences, New Year's 1992 stands out.
Note: late 1980s, early 1990s I was wasted so while I'm certain about events actually happening and quite sure how they happened (witnesses, reports, friends being there, scars and so on) I have trouble placing a specific event in a specific year. So let's just call it 1992, +/- 2 years.
Me and my girlfriend-at-the-time and her cousin was up on a small plaza overlooking Stockholm from the its southside, on top of a cliff where you can see most of the inner city. So were at least 500 others. Now, that little plaza is walled off on its south side, and the north side is a solid 90+ yard drop onto asphalt, boats and the ice in Riddarfjärden (riddar(e) means knight). Also, in the wall on the plaza's south side is a cast iron gate, wide enough for one linebacker to pass through at a time, sans shoulderguards.
All good, people are jolly despite the cold.
And then a bunch of [lots of slurs about their non-skiing ancestry] thugs starts firing off fireworks into the crowd. Heavy duty roman candle-style fireworks, and the [expletives] are aiming them into the crowd at face height, cackling and dancing with delight when the crowd starts panicking.
500 people trying to squeeze out that gate all at once. My girlfriend's cousin and me made for the corner between the wall and a house it was built up to, grabbing hold of the drainpipe and keeping my girlfriend innermost in the corner, while throwing elbows at anyone coming to close.
After about forever, enough police arrived with firemen carrying hydraulic cutters for the gate and the pressure eased off.
Next day (read: in the afternoon) looking in the mirror in my bathroom I realise I don't have any hair on the back of my head, it's been torn out. My elbows are a deep purple, and I have two black eyes. Knuckles are caked with blood and open sores and I can't remember throwing a single punch - and to add insult to injury my Killer-style DMs were busted and my Bomber-jacket was ripped.
Found my way here via the Gutter, so props (is that the right term? Thought it meant theatrical materials?) to you both for that.
Amazing story! I love all the details. That sounds incredibly harrowing. What a bunch of asshats people can be sometimes. I'm glad you're here, and I'm glad everything worked out in the end, but yeah, it's amazing to me the difference between how things work out and how they often end in tragedy. It's always good to be able to lick your wounds and move on, and I'm glad you were able to do that.
Thanks returned with interest (trying to translate an idiom here...)!
I could relate to your story above, haing similar experiences with psychedelics and odd-jobs suddenly going from a steady mellow ambling along-pace to something right out of Peckinpah.
Living CAN be winning, if you choose that, but most people would rather choose some kind of living death than being really alive. Glad you're choosing to embrace life, despite all the challenges and complexities.
Amazing stories, in the post and comments. I survived many such scrapes and finally compiled 66 episodes into book form, Brushes with Death (along with a smaller portion of Brushes with Fame). Though you suggest life-changing revelations, I seemed to take them in stride. But I guess the outcome is revealed when my friend asks my predictions about something (e.g., the future of Twitter, LOL), and I realize, "I don't think much about the future; focused more on the present." :)
I had the pleasure of seeing Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and RHCP October 31, 1991, in Toronto. Fantastic show! I never experimented with drugs much, but I did have a friend on way too many shrooms roll out of my car at 40 mph because he was sure we were going to kill him.
Oh man, those were some prime years for those bands, all together! Must have been an amazing show. Pumpkins were just in town, but I didn't go.
I used to take psychedelic like they were candy. I had many "oh shit, I'm losing it" moments and moments where I thought everyone else was just there in a giant twisted prank to kill me, humiliate me, or study me. Of course they weren't, but sometimes those substances truly force you to consider the true edges of sanity and reality. Some people can't take it. I'm thankful I could. It probably has been a big asset to me during COVID, when REALITY REALLY WAS OUT TO KILL ME, EXPERIMENT ON ME, AND STUDY ME! So strange how life actually turns out.
What an awesome post. I'm 52 and remember many of the same things with similar fondness. I had emergency surgery at 34 when my small intestine tied itself in a knot: I had to have 3.5 feet of it removed. A few years later, I went into a fishtail and rolled a Ford Escape, but escaped with no injuries. We're all on borrowed time, but not all of us realize it. Brilliant post!
We (a lot of people) like to fix an image in our mind and hold it there, regardless of how quickly actual reality changes. I think this is so much of a factor in the COVID era. I.e. You're gonna die. 2+ years later, so many are stuck in March 2020, thinking they're still facing impending doom. The Hydra relies on this.
And I laugh at your name every damn time. I said this somewhere else, but it's true. Your combination of words in your name just fucking kills me, every time. 😂😭🤣
I can't say I had quite the dramatic experience growing up that you had. However, I can say our paths are somewhat similar. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania and moved to Seattle in the early 90's. Which in this part of the country was toward the end of the "Grunge" era. I was all into Pearl Jam at the time and had my mind blown by that performance with Neil Young. Honestly, it still melts my face to watch that performance.
I also had a skinny girlfriend back then (does having sex with a girl for three months count as a girlfriend?) who would physically abuse me....I found out later that she was a meth addict. Hey, I was in my early 20's and was pretty wet behind the ears.
Either way, that Super Bowl fucking sucked. Fuck Neil O'Donnell.
Life is easier now and we're spoiled. FACTS!
I LOVE this comment. Neil Fucking O'Donnell. Where in western PA are you from?
Also, fuck Larry Brown. If you know, you know....
Oh, I know. Game of his life.
Got him his only big contact! And then he promptly stunk it up!
Pittsburgh, born and bred! Oakland, to be exact.
Penn Hills right here
Yinzers!!!
Practically neighbors!
You still in the area?
Nope. In Seattle area now.
I had so, so many of your cultural touchstones, we must have passed each other in the night a dozen times decades ago.
Near-death experiences...
My father once came into the room, drunk, saw my mother crying, and started beating me. Hard. I knew it was different than usual when I curled up on the kitchen floor and it didn't stop- gestures of submission usually did it. A few minutes in, I felt my bladder and bowels go. It was an out-of-body experience and I wondered if I was paralyzed because there was no sensation behind it. I became aware I was losing consciousness- I was only actually out for a few seconds- but having never had fully lost consciousness for any reason before, I thought for certain I was about to die, or at least never wake up.
My nerdy friend Ken and I went trick or treating in middle school and had a gun pointed at us because a guy demanded he hand over his Friday the 13th costume hockey mask. His friends grabbed us and threw us against a car and starting taking everything we had on us. My friend Ken got scared enough to start crying and just began pleading "help me help me help me" to me from the other side of the car, so I turned around and shoved my boob into the guy's gun and repeated "shoot me shoot me shoot me" until they left.
In high school, I had enough one day and decided to commit hara-kiri because I thought it was a beautiful notion. After taking an hour of slowly shoving a thin knife into my abdomen like stepping into cold water, I sat there thinking about following through when my friend called and started leaving me a message on my translucent purple plastic phone. I heard one of my parents coming towards my room to see why I didn't answer and got up, with the knife under my shirt, and answered the phone to tell my friend that yes, I would be in school tomorrow and she could pay me back the money she owed me. It felt monumentally stupid at that point so I snuck into the bathroom, pulled the blade the rest of the way out, and butterfly-bandaged it. Years later when I pierced my navel, the scar was covered up and eventually more or less vanished.
In Japan, I suddenly started having what I thought was a heart attack. My face and left side went numb, my heart was pounding, and I couldn't stay on my feet without getting dizzy. After rehearsing my explanation on Google Translate, I called 110 and succinctly explained what was happening. By the time the paramedics showed up, I was having these little blackouts and tunnel vision, which was a new experience for me. On the ambulance ride, they frankly kept telling me they were worried about my heartbeat, and one tried to calm me down by joking about his daughter being my student and a pain in the ass.
I got hooked into some monitor at like 3am, and after a half hour in the hospital, everything just calmed down and stopped suddenly. I was exhausted and my chest hurt like I had been kicked, but I was fine. One of the doctors spoke perfect English and talked through all the scans with me. They said they had absolutely no idea what happened. I've never experienced anything like it or since.
I did basically no drugs, in comparison to your experience. I had a good number of friends die to heroin and knew friends in school with addict parents who were such a train wreck that I was scared completely straightedge until I was in the club scene long enough to at least appreciate alcohol.
I was so depressed and messed up and was anorexic going into early adulthood; that there was a general consensus I would probably not get past 25, which I guess was a cliche of the 90s for some people.
I think about death a lot. Not suicide, never again, but I think about it often. I'm usually frozen at this perfect equidistance between existential horror and defiant laughter at it.
I did not spend a single moment of the last 3 years worried I was going to die. I felt weirdly more immune to it than I would the rest of the time because I was so oddly disgusted by the degree of hysterical fear around me that I almost overcompensated to a point of anger-fueled bravery.
I do not generally feel fragile. I feel powerless, small, and insignificant, but I have proven hard to kill and possessed of a strong desire to live, despite myself. I am frequently not happy about being alive, but I always recognize it as something that will pass, sooner or later.
I would not agree we are living in the best time to be alive, at all. Certainly not the worst in the great sweep of history, but not the best. I will take it over the alternative.
Gosh Guttermouth. I so appreciate your sharing. I know you've said before you've mostly come to terms with much of your past, but every time I hear some of your stories, my heart absolutely breaks for that girl, especially the beatings. I feel rage against those humans who did that to you. I can't imagine how alone you felt in your own home, fearing the people who were supposed to be keeping you safe. Thank you for being so open, and I'm truly glad you're continuing to make your voice heard, and that you're still here TO make your voice heard.
Gaaaaaay.
https://imgur.com/t/gayyy/kJPaOPp
Sympathetic and sorry you went through that shit, though I like the output on this side of it all. Very glad you and BHerr made it through. I can identify with a lot of the thoughts, if not many of the incidents. I have no one else to blame for my bad behaviors. Looking back, I think putting together my very own shotgun from parts (dad left it disassembled in his footlocker before he died) at 7 y/o made a bigger difference than one might have thought. Had choices. Wasn't powerless. Chose not to kill anybody, myself included, despite many temptations. 58 yrs later, so far, so good. My favorite RHCP show. Gotta love seeing Kedis upstaged by pure FUNK.
https://youtu.be/WYU7kZlArx4
For those not familiar with The Meters, another sample: https://youtu.be/MXI5Nuz6OHg
The FUNKY FUNKY Meters...love me some Meters. Thanks for the reminder. These guys are so good.
Glad you were able to control the urges. Makes me think of another song by Ween, covered heavily by Phish - Roses Are Free
"Resist all the urges that make you want to go out and kill."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp0oCFL6w4o
I want to come over and hang out, pet the pigs, cows, dogs. You are a certified character. Agree with the living now part. 💞💞⏳
Well, I only have dog, cat and chicken, haha. Don't know if you were talking to Guttermouth, but regardless, come visit!
i nearly died today, worst rain ive even driven in, vision down to about 30 feet but still hauling at 70mph, aquaplaned for a bit, youre never more alive!
i did have an out of body experience when i was 9, so ive not been scared of death since. it was just my discovery of being asthmatic, waiting for the doctor to arrive and floating away looking down at the doc and my mother as they tended to me, no emotion just the thought oh thats me. ive since cured the asthma, pity it took me 31 years to figure it out, even bigger pity doctors dont know its mostly curable
How did you cure it?
I was curious too. I was a HEAVY asthmatic as a kid and into my early adult years, but as I cleaned up my diet, over the past ten years, at one point I realized I haven't used an inhaler in longer than I can remember. It used to be an every day thing. I've been in the hospital numerous times for breathing treatments. Good call Ray! I guess I inadvertantly followed your therapy.
i went on a strict diet for 4 months, zero sugar/carbs, high omega 3, vitamin d/K2. mostly meat, eggs and wild fish. i have since avoided grains and its not come back, havnt even owned an inhaler in 6 years
Let's just say that once you've expected to be dead, and weren't, you're not likely to fear the possibility of death ever again.
Facing death does take a lot of the fear and mystery out of it.
No reason to fear death, but that "oh shit!" moment right before, yeah, that I fear.
For those of us who got past the fully-expected right before--strange sense of calm, really.
Dude! I miss the 90's💞..I keep thinking it was 20 years ago lol
But, it WAS 20 years ago, right? RIGHT?
Totally!!
Not quite as entertaining as yours, but an overdose when I was about 17, woke up in hospital with my parents staring at me.......
Car crash in my 20's, where I headbutted a lorry on the motorway and have a dent in my skull where they rebuilt my eye socket.
After Gulf war 1 in Iraq, we strolled into an area with loads of golf balls....... AKA AP mines.
Married to a fun loving psycho who tried to hire somebody to kill me, got into a fight with some aggressive arsehole and they also tried to hire someone to kill us both.
Recently got thrown off the top of a ladder by a core drill knocking me out when the clutch jammed and breaking my front teeth.
Normal stuff really.
Bro...
Holy shit
What doesn't kill you...
Makes you stranger.
My comment would be way too long. But I thank God that I'm still alive after my 20's. Eeeeks! One of my scariest memories was buying crack off the street by myself in a really bad area of the city I lived in at the time. The next thing I knew I had a car full of armed people I didn't know parked at a 7-11 and the seats were all being ripped out of my car (literally) because someone thought they dropped a rock. (If anyone has ever done crack, once you have smoked it all up, anything white you see anywhere looks like crack... it's a HORRIBLE drug). Not to mention the huge hit I took that night that made me think I was going to die. That incident, along with numerous others definitely makes me grateful to God that I have been able to still live a healthy, long, productive and joyful life.
If we really want to, no matter how bad we think we have it, if we look across the street we can often find someone much worse off than we are.
I only did crack twice, by accident. That was enough.
It's amazing how those moments can spiral into something like an out of body experience, watching the chaos unfold around you helplessly, especially when you have other people and a lot of drugs. I've told my kids point blank I'm no so much worried about the drugs (except things like heroin, opioids, meth - the REAL bad stuff), it's more where the drugs take you and who they take you there with.
Like if I found out my son was smoking pot or dropping acid, we'd talk, we'd talk about what the drugs actually do, but we'd talk more about the situations they would put him in, the characters he'd be around, and how it exponentially increases your danger.
Glad you're still here Rob. I'm going to listen to that podcast you put out on your stack.
No doubt! My argument for decriminalization (I'm not a fan of "legalization" because the state still has it's fingers in that whole thing) has always been because of exactly what you said. I love how "cannabis" is always a "gateway drug". I vehemently disagree with that statement. The only reason I ever even experimented with other things was because the black market dealer was out of cannabis and said, "but I have (fill in the blank) if you'd like to try it." I would have never met the shady (and often violent) characters I'd end up being in contact with if me and my pals could have either grown our own recreational cannabis or been able to go to our local dispensary. The situations that prohibition puts people in are often worse than the drugs themselves. That being said, there really are some terrible terrible terrible drugs out there and I agree that having a discussion about them and educating people about them is the key. I often use tobacco as an example... granted, the state is involved in it quite a bit with taxation etc, but when the truth came out that smoking literally kills you people stopped. Not everyone (and that's never going to happen with *anything*) but a majority decided that inhaling chemical laden tobacco smoke probably isn't a good idea. :)
Great article! Even though we are doom and gloomy here, it's important to remember we live in the best time ever to be alive!
We win the lottery every day. However, the lottery is more and more rigged.
Was in a rollover in a VW Baja bug in AZ when I was 18. My friend flew out after a couple rolls (she was driving). I ended up in backseat and had to crawl through broken back window over the engine to get out. Rolled 5 times. The roof was a foot above where I sat. Lucky I didn't have seatbelt on. Not a scratch on me.
Those are amazing moments. Like what the actual hell. And some people die choking on a drink of water or something.
Rolled again in F350 in the mountains. Driver and other passenger had to be cut out. I crawled out with no injuries. I do have bad arthritis in my neck now. Wild times
You crazy girl. Glad you're still with us.
Me too....sort of lol
heh, we must be about the same age; wasn't a huge fan of the song when it was everywhere all the time, but your post made this song pop in to my head -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MznHdJReoeo
Yeah, there is no other place I'd rather be....
Also, You Have Died of Dysentery
One of the best one hit wonders to come out of the early 90s. I also could have gone with this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMV-fenGP1g
And yes, I would have died of dysentery, lol. Or bit by rattlesnake.
good call; and gee whiz I had forgotten about the GD rattlesnakes...
They'll getcha!
As for harrowing experiences, New Year's 1992 stands out.
Note: late 1980s, early 1990s I was wasted so while I'm certain about events actually happening and quite sure how they happened (witnesses, reports, friends being there, scars and so on) I have trouble placing a specific event in a specific year. So let's just call it 1992, +/- 2 years.
Me and my girlfriend-at-the-time and her cousin was up on a small plaza overlooking Stockholm from the its southside, on top of a cliff where you can see most of the inner city. So were at least 500 others. Now, that little plaza is walled off on its south side, and the north side is a solid 90+ yard drop onto asphalt, boats and the ice in Riddarfjärden (riddar(e) means knight). Also, in the wall on the plaza's south side is a cast iron gate, wide enough for one linebacker to pass through at a time, sans shoulderguards.
All good, people are jolly despite the cold.
And then a bunch of [lots of slurs about their non-skiing ancestry] thugs starts firing off fireworks into the crowd. Heavy duty roman candle-style fireworks, and the [expletives] are aiming them into the crowd at face height, cackling and dancing with delight when the crowd starts panicking.
500 people trying to squeeze out that gate all at once. My girlfriend's cousin and me made for the corner between the wall and a house it was built up to, grabbing hold of the drainpipe and keeping my girlfriend innermost in the corner, while throwing elbows at anyone coming to close.
After about forever, enough police arrived with firemen carrying hydraulic cutters for the gate and the pressure eased off.
Next day (read: in the afternoon) looking in the mirror in my bathroom I realise I don't have any hair on the back of my head, it's been torn out. My elbows are a deep purple, and I have two black eyes. Knuckles are caked with blood and open sores and I can't remember throwing a single punch - and to add insult to injury my Killer-style DMs were busted and my Bomber-jacket was ripped.
Found my way here via the Gutter, so props (is that the right term? Thought it meant theatrical materials?) to you both for that.
Edited because I can't spell for shite somedays.
I get a lot coming from the Gutter 😂
Amazing story! I love all the details. That sounds incredibly harrowing. What a bunch of asshats people can be sometimes. I'm glad you're here, and I'm glad everything worked out in the end, but yeah, it's amazing to me the difference between how things work out and how they often end in tragedy. It's always good to be able to lick your wounds and move on, and I'm glad you were able to do that.
Thanks for the comment!
Thanks returned with interest (trying to translate an idiom here...)!
I could relate to your story above, haing similar experiences with psychedelics and odd-jobs suddenly going from a steady mellow ambling along-pace to something right out of Peckinpah.
Living is winning, yes?
Living CAN be winning, if you choose that, but most people would rather choose some kind of living death than being really alive. Glad you're choosing to embrace life, despite all the challenges and complexities.
Amazing stories, in the post and comments. I survived many such scrapes and finally compiled 66 episodes into book form, Brushes with Death (along with a smaller portion of Brushes with Fame). Though you suggest life-changing revelations, I seemed to take them in stride. But I guess the outcome is revealed when my friend asks my predictions about something (e.g., the future of Twitter, LOL), and I realize, "I don't think much about the future; focused more on the present." :)
Wow, I'd love to read your books! Where can I find them?
Awesome. Links to Amazon and other retailers on my website page here: http://nowickgray.com/book/brushes-with-death-fame/
Thank you for sharing!
I had the pleasure of seeing Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and RHCP October 31, 1991, in Toronto. Fantastic show! I never experimented with drugs much, but I did have a friend on way too many shrooms roll out of my car at 40 mph because he was sure we were going to kill him.
Oh man, those were some prime years for those bands, all together! Must have been an amazing show. Pumpkins were just in town, but I didn't go.
I used to take psychedelic like they were candy. I had many "oh shit, I'm losing it" moments and moments where I thought everyone else was just there in a giant twisted prank to kill me, humiliate me, or study me. Of course they weren't, but sometimes those substances truly force you to consider the true edges of sanity and reality. Some people can't take it. I'm thankful I could. It probably has been a big asset to me during COVID, when REALITY REALLY WAS OUT TO KILL ME, EXPERIMENT ON ME, AND STUDY ME! So strange how life actually turns out.
What an awesome post. I'm 52 and remember many of the same things with similar fondness. I had emergency surgery at 34 when my small intestine tied itself in a knot: I had to have 3.5 feet of it removed. A few years later, I went into a fishtail and rolled a Ford Escape, but escaped with no injuries. We're all on borrowed time, but not all of us realize it. Brilliant post!
Thank you! It's amazing how many "guts" we actually have inside of us. 3.5 feet! Wow. Glad you're with us!
We (a lot of people) like to fix an image in our mind and hold it there, regardless of how quickly actual reality changes. I think this is so much of a factor in the COVID era. I.e. You're gonna die. 2+ years later, so many are stuck in March 2020, thinking they're still facing impending doom. The Hydra relies on this.
And I laugh at your name every damn time. I said this somewhere else, but it's true. Your combination of words in your name just fucking kills me, every time. 😂😭🤣
Really great comment.