Some people can say that they have never had a near death experience. I am not sure what exactly defines such an occurrence, but It probably has to be something that comes in direct conflict with your body. For example, surviving a car crash that nearly kills you, leaving you recuperating in the hospital for quite some time would probably qualify. What about having a gun pointed at your head? This has happened to me, but I don’t really think of it in the context of a near death experience, just something that really quite sucked at the time. Had I been shot and nearly fatally “killed” I would probably be singing a different tune. Actually, I’m not singing at all right now, but you get the gist of my suggestion.
My question here is if you have to be actually injured in order to have a near death experience. What if you were on an airplane that was about to crash because the pilot had become incapacitated? Just at the last moment you were saved because Ted, the novice pilot in seat 13D stumbled to the front and landed the thing, saving everyone. Would this be a near death experience? The Microshaft flight simulator just saved the day. Again!
Let me digress for a minute from my point (debatable that it even exists). What is with the term near miss anyway (thinking of wayward planes…)? In order to miss, things don’t collide. So nearly missing would be colliding, but just barely (probably still significant at 30,000 feet though…). If two planes don’t collide, but come close to each other, everyone terms it a “near” miss. What kind of crazy language to we have anyway?
Back to our irregularly scheduled programming….
There was this “event” that happened to me many years ago. I will not bore you with the exact date and time. I was in south Langley in my car, driving around, aimlessly, as I customarily did before I had to worry about such things as rent, and actually paying for my own “food”. I decided to stop at Aldergrove “*Lake”, but had to park on the road quite some distance away (it was busy). I was walking and realized I had locked my keys in my car, went back and got them (I have spares stashed about my body because, well, this happed a lot, and still does). After I was on my way again, a flatbed truck rounded the corner, and a negligently secured toilet flung (flushed?) itself from the truck bed, landing about 5 feet in front of me, and smashing into a billion pieces (as these things tend to do…). Needless to say, I was startled. You can’t say that nothing good ever came of locking my keys in the car.
Maybe you have never seen your life flash before your eyes, never felt really close to death, felt the cold sweat fight its way to the surface of your skin, or seem past life experiences flash before your eyes like so many vacation slides. So I am guessing that you have never been an unwilling participant in a “near miss” with a airborne toilet. Still, would this be properly categorized as a near death experience? I wasn’t physically hurt, but one can imagine the carnage and mutilation that could come at the “hands” of a airborne toilet. A toilet (and it wasn’t one of those new “low flow” ones) weighs, well I don’t know how much a toilet weighs… but one can imagine it isn’t something you would want to land upon you when it is commanding a high velocity.
I have, among other things, been told that I think too much. Maybe they are right. I don’t think so, but an argument could be made that I think about the wrong things.
* Ah yes, the asterisk. Aldergrove “Lake” is a bit of a misnomer as well. Its actually a cement lined hole in the ground that is filled with water in order to have young children and silly adults swim in it and obtain bacterial infections. One year they drained the thing and found an entire cow in the bottom. Apparently, cows cant swim. Bummer.