Near Death Experiences

Ones that I can remember, at least.

January 1995 - Car Crash

I was 5 riding in my sister Lucy’s blue volvo 140 in the middle of a Wisconsin winter storm. Of course not wearing my seatbelt. She was just a teenager, she began to slide and drove off the road. I don’t think it was very severe of a crash, but purely because we were lucky and didn’t collide with anything or any other cars. I remember playing with some power ranger toys at the time that we began to slide, and then finally getting my seatbelt buckled after we crashed.

October 2002 - Frigid Northern Lake

I was 13, in the boundary waters with my friends Andrew and Knut. Andrew and I were fishing in a canoe in the middle of an extremely remote lake, in late october, way up north. A flash storm took us by surprise while we were in the middle of the lake. The rain and wind picked up extremely fast, and a huge gust of wind knocked the canoe over before we were able to make it back to our campsite. The lake was freezing, probably 40 degrees. 20 minutes is probably all it would take to kill us in that water. We were extremely lucky: there was a small tiny island in the middle of the lake, it took us about 3 minutes of swimming to get to the island. Knut’s dad, a Norwegian immigrant serving as the chaperone of the multi-day overnight trip, was naturally really fucking freaked out seeing two other people’s kids who he was supposed to be in charge of go tumbling into the frigid lake. He rescued us from the island and told us to keep it on the downlow when we got back to our parents hahahaha.

October 2010 - Skateboarding Accident

I was 20, riding my skateboard on my way to an 8AM class at Lewis & Clark. I was going down a hill. I remember a bus coming, and using my foot to slide and slow myself down on the board. That’s all I remember. I woke up in the ICU at OHSU in Portland, with my brother Duncan there. I had fractured my skull. It was pretty serious. A girl had seen me fall and hit my head, hard, on the pavement. She had called an ambulance for me. I damaged the hearing in my left ear permanently. I met the girl in the cafeteria a few weeks later, she recognized me. I said thanks. The doctors said I’m lucky to be here, people die from these kinds of accidents all the time. Duncan yelled at a nurse for calling me “skateboard accident kid”.