A Few Brushes With Death

Just a few:

I don't remember how old I was but I couldn't have been older than six.
We were swimming in a motel pool that was on the same block as our house in Woodward, Oklahoma.
My mother worked at a Bell Gas Station next door to it. There was a brand new McDonalds at the end of the street. Suburbs to the back. It was all oh so very honky.

Wait...I've already lied: I was "swimming" but I couldn't swim. I just played around in the water. I don't recall having a fear of deep water but I stayed away from it- not being able to swim and all.
My mother couldn't swim. My father couldn't either. (Still can't, as far as I know.) However, this was the day that my mother decided that I should learn.
She took me out to the deep end and and let me go- and down I went. I recall letting all of the air out of my body, falling to the bottom, and I took in a large amount of water just as someone grabbed me to pull me out. I remember inhaling and coughing underwater. I remember the halt to bodily functions as I filled with water.

I was laid out on the concrete as I hacked, coughed, and spit up the burning, chlorinated water. I laid there for a very long time, face up, taking all the air that the world would lend me.
After that I was deathly afraid of deep water.
(I do recall getting back into the shallow end of the pool.)

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I was seventeen and on day three of no sleep.

I was moving into my first home outside of...well, home. I was moving into a trailer house that was owned by the company that I worked for.
I was a flag truck driver; that's the guy that drives the truck with flashing lights and flags that warns you that a wide load is coming down the road. (Yeah, THAT asshole.)
It was pretty stressful. A flag truck driver has to radio in any obstructions, change positions from front to back when coming up and/or going down hills...and on and on.
Plus, I was still fairly new to driving.

I borrowed the flag truck to move. In the excitement of it all, and on top of working every day through the move, I hadn't slept.
I was finishing up around 10pm with my final load.

I dozed off, crossed the lane of oncoming lane, descended the embankment, and smashed head-on into a concrete barrier that moved the front axle to somewhere near the transmission. The impact also sent my face into the steering wheel, then to the dash, before ending with a final pop against the windshield. I should add that I wasn't wearing my safety belt.

Needless to say, the rest remains a bit of a blur.
I remember stumbling around in the night, bleeding like a stuck pig from a split in my head.
A minivan stopped and I was asked if I needed help. I began to shout a line of obscenities- something like "I wrecked the motherfucker. I fucking wrecked the motherfucking company truck."
They talked me into their vehicle for a ride back into town. They were a nice family with two nice children who had to share a bench seat with me: a bloody, gory, insane looking motherfucker who was likely panting, wheezing, and introducing them to that particularly colorful adjective that I kept yelling all through the night.

They dropped me off at my boss' house and I can't imagine what he saw when he opened the door. He thought that I had been beaten up by a gang.
I told him that I ditched the truck. I doubt that I was collected enough to give much of the story but I was still under the delusional assumption that the truck was just in a ditch- not TOTALED.
He went with a tow-truck and brought it back. It was completely trashed.

I felt terrible. It's a guilt I still feel to this day. My boss was my ex-brother-in-law, someone I liked and respected very much. It was a small business and I knew that I had really fucked it up.
However, it WAS a pivotal incident that led to me leaving Oklahoma. Bittersweet.

(Years later I went to visit and discovered that his own little brother had totaled TWO vehicles after I left. This alleviated a bit of guilt- but not much.)

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Lucky Pineapple was practicing in a small basement in Clarksville, Indiana. We had endured heavy rains for most of that evening but, as usual, were in our own little world(s) and not thinking about flooding.

It started with a few veins of water shooting across the floor. We moved things that were moisture sensitive but the water just kept coming. Eventually it became apparent that we were going to have to move everything out of the basement.

The house was built with it's back to a large embankment that went down into a small creek. The rear wall of the the basement was exposed.
Now, a more observant bunch would have been alarmed by the rising level of water that was indicated by the beads of water soaking through the mortar. However, we had a lot on our little minds and didn't take much notice.
My brother and I made the decision that we were going to go ahead and just move out. The only reason we stayed in that place was because we could play music without complaints. So, we began to load up everything to move completely during the night.

I was wading around in knee-high water and gathering whatever I could. I pretty much just got tired of doing it so I decided that what was lost was lost.
I walked up the steps, soaking wet. I got to the top and stopped to talk to Heather which was interrupted by an apocalyptic BOOM, followed by a hot wind that blew me onto the kitchen floor. I was knocked flat and remember seeing nothing but the curtains being blown in a fury above me.
I screamed for everybody to get out of the house as I was fairly certain that something was destroying the place: lightning, terrorists, Zeus...powers beyond our control. A very quick and foggy thought computed that I was going to have the house cave-in on me and that would be that. Good night.

Well, it was still standing after the crashing and booming stopped. I was still alive and the house was still standing. I looked around and saw that the waist-high water was at the top of the stairs.
The exposed wall had given away as the rain water built up against it. It basically exploded, launching cinderblocks to the other side of the basement and allowing a tidal wave of floodwater into the basement.
If I had waited one more minute I would have been in the middle of it, surely dead in an instant.

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A somewhat light case.........

Yesterday's winds were really giving Old Louisville a good what-for when I thought to myself "I wish I had my camera with me."
I was in the car, on the phone with my father, describing all of the carnage. I was watching wooden signs being blown into pieces, roof shingles flying around, and most importantly: telephone poles swaying in the wind.

The pole directly in front of me began to break towards me. I had parked the car farther up, nearer to this particular pole for whatever stupid goddamn reason. (Meaning that I would have been just fine in my normal parking place.)
I yelled a few "OH SHIT"'s into the phone at my poor father, started the car and kicked it into reverse in a hurry. As it fell it revealed that I was enjoying a little more clearance between me and the length of the pole- more than I initially thought, anyways.
That didn't matter much when it hit the ground with the transformer exploding in a fit of blue fire and sparks and the power lines whipping around like a crazed octopus. The whole mess bounced a few times as the tension of the power lines were being stressed and then relieved as other poles fell. It was an awesome display of fire, electricity, and chaos.
It could have also been a display of how the human bladder can relieve itself under particularly stressful or frightening situations. But I held it together.

I did spend yesterday evening a little shell-shocked though.