Scariest moment of your life

I'm sorry. But the funniest, best stories are ALWAYS the ones where you nearly get seriously fucked up. It's what makes life worth living, savoring. And maybe it wasn't the story so much as the way he told it. Fucking funny.

 

Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci): Oh, oh, Anthony. He's a big boy, he knows what he said. What did you say? Funny how?
Henry Hill (Ray Liotta): It's...
Tommy DeVito: What?
Henry Hill: Just... ya know, you're, you're funny.
Tommy DeVito: What do ya mean, funny? Let me understand this cause, I don't know maybe it's me, I'm a little fucked up maybe, but I'm funny how? I mean, funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh... I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?
Henry Hill: You know, how you tell a story, what?
Tommy DeVito: No, no, I don't know... you said it. How do I know? You said I'm funny. How the fuck am I funny, what the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me. Tell me what's funny!
Henry Hill: Get the fuck outta here, Tommy!
Tommy DeVito: Ya motherfucker, I almost had him, I almost had him! Ya stutterin' prick ya! Frankie, was he shakin'?

 

May 2003. I was at my mom's condo in preparation, the next day, to take her from a rehab facility to assisted living.

I was awakened in the middle of the night by almost-constant lightning and the roar of the wind.

I padded down the hall into the kitchen and thought to myself, "Man, that wind is really loud."

Just then, the roar got louder.

Decided maybe I needed to slip into the bathroom, which was on an interior wall, as the weathermen often suggest. Just as I shut the door, all the windows on the storm side of the condo blew in.

Scared? Yep.

It really ripped for about five more minutes, then settled down.

I had a loooong night of cleanup ahead of me.

 

Oh, I can laugh at it now, fellas.

The twenty-four Brazilians I've crossed paths with since, not so much.

 

This one time, I was watching pornography in my SUV as I was driving and masturbating and .....

 

Non-automotive division:

When I was in first/second grade, I went with my family to eat/go shopping in the next town over, about 30 minutes away. Right after we order, my younger brother starts having a violent seizure. Somebody (no clue who) drags him out into the parking lot while random strangers attempt CPR until the ambulance can come. Never found out what triggered the incident, and as an added bonus my parents had to file Chapter 13 since they had no health insurance.

Automotive division:

Driving up to parents' house in my then-fiance's car, with her asleep in the passenger seat. Doing around 60 during evening rush hour on the Tennessee River bridge in Chattanooga when I look up and see a car stopped in our lane, about 50 feet ahead. No hazard lights, no brake lights, nothing. I didn't even have time to check my blind spot. I just swerved into the left lane instantaneously, a not unimpressive feat in a 92 Cavalier. Miraculously nobody was beside us.

About a month after we got married, we drove overnight from Alabama to Chicago in a borrowed van for another wedding. She took the first shift while I tried in vain to sleep. Finally started dozing off at the Kentucky state line when she announced that we needed to switch drivers. I remember pumping gas and pulling onto the interstate. After that, I blacked out until jolting awake in Elizabethtown, about 90 miles north.

 

When I was 16, I saw a friend of mine getting into her car in a parking lot. She backed out and stopped to put the car in drive. As she did that, I, in my infinite wisdom, thought that it'd be funny to jump on her hood as a stupid teenager way of drawing attention to myself and saying hi.

Her, in her own teenage infinite wisdom, decided to draw attention to herself by putting the car in drive and taking off through the crowded parking lot of the busy department store with a guy on her hood. I knew, in those 10 seconds I was on the hood, that when she hit her brakes, I would fly off to my death. When she finally did come to a stop sign in the parking lot, she hit the brakes, and i went flying across the busy intersection.

I landed on my feet, running backward, but momentum sent me tumbling to the ground after two steps. Somehow I didn't get run over by any of the other cars when I landed in the intersection, but I did land hard on both my hands, breaking both wrists, and leaving me with a permanent metal plate, screws and six-inch scar on my left wrist. And I looked like a fucking idiot for the next eight weeks, with plaster casts on both arms up to my elbows. But I did have fun making up stories when people asked about how I ended up with casts on both arms -- "Well, my parachute didn't open..."

 

I have a few.

One came when I was 12 and my family was on vacation in Gatlinburg. We were downtown looking at all the shops and sightseeing when we get to the Ripley's store. I was the only one that wanted to go through the exhibit (if you can call it that) and my mom and step-dad let me while they kept walking around town. When I got out of the place I went back out into the street to find them, but they were gone. My mom said they would stay around Ripley's where I could find them, but they wandered down the street and I was by myself. I walk down to where I thought my mom said they would be, but no luck finding them. So I run back up to Ripley's, and again, no luck. So I go to an information booth and tell the kind lady that I was lost. 30 or so minutes later, a cop shows up and takes me around town to look for my parents. A few minutes later we see them at Ripley's and I jump out of the car and run to my mom. I had never felt so relieved in my life.

Another involves my mom. One night I was at work and my aunt was trying to get ahold of me. She tried calling my cell phone, but the battery was dead. She finally got in touch with me at the office, and as soon as she came on the line she said "get to the hospital now. it's your mom." I told my boss that I had to get there and I was gone. The hospital is a 10-minute drive from the office, but I made it there in 3 (no red lights).

I get to the hospital and go to the emergency room where I see my aunt bawling her eyes out. She still won't tell me what's wrong, so I go back to where my mom is and I see her lying there attached to a ventilator with doctors and nurses and my step-dad around her. I didn't know what to think, say or do when I saw her in that bed...all I know is I just wanted to beat the living hell out of something.

A few minutes after I got to the hospital the doctors closed the curtains and told me to stay out...my mom had stopped breathing and was basically dead. But somehow, by the grace of God, they brought her back. She wasn't out of the woods though. After about an hour one of the doctors I've grown to love at that hospital came out and told my family that it was a virus that attacked my mom's heart and he didn't know if she would make it through the night. My two little sisters, who were 12 and 9 at the time, were with me and they didn't know how bad mom was until my step-dad told them.

That's when I lost it. I ran to my car and locked the doors, and called everyone I could think of. I called all of our family friends and asked them to come to the hospital and I called the girl I was dating at the time. That's when I broke down. As soon as she came on the phone I started crying. She asked what was wrong and I told her. That's when my uncle Shawn came to my car and settled me down. I called my preacher at the time and the two preachers we had before him. All three of them were at the hospital within 30 minutes. I called my other mom (a long story) and told her what happened and she came too.

By 10 that night we had taken over an entire waiting room and half of a hallway with people. The three preachers, two of which are like fathers to me, had a prayer vigil that lasted almost an hour. Around midnight, the doctor came out and said he had put a stint in my mom's heart and that everything was looking as good as it could. I left the hospital around 2 that morning because I had to take my sisters home and get them to try and sleep.

That night I didn't sleep very well, but my grandpa (who passed away in 1998), came to me in a dream and said everything was going to be fine. He told me he saw my mom in heaven, but God told her it wasn't her time. I woke up at 7 or so that next morning and went back to the hospital, thinking they were going to move my mom to Jewish Hospital in Louisville. But they didn't have to. By the time I got to E'town the doctors said she had improved greatly in the few short hours since her surgery. They put her in ICU and had to put her on a cold blanket because her temperature was through the roof.

By Tuesday afternoon (all this happened on a Thursday), she was kicking her leg around trying to get the blanket off her (she hates being cold). She was out of the hospital two days after that, a week after the virus attacked her heart. If she hadn't been working at Hardin Memorial, she probably would have died. I thank God every day she was at the hospital when it happened, or else she might not be with us now.

 

Six weeks after I got my driver's license, driving late at night on the Jersey Turnpike coming up from Philadelphia. Had spent several hours on the road by this time driving from point a to Philly and back. Not paying attention to my speed, kind of groggy. See the Meadowlands complex to my left. Take my eyes off the road too long. Turn my gaze toward the road and suddenly see a huge backup of traffic at a toll booth. Absolutely jam on the breaks and spin out, screeching to a halt just shy of the traffic. I do remember quickly looking down at the speedometer right as I was hitting the breaks and the needle was at about 85. If I had been gazing out the window another three seconds, I wouldn't be here typing this right now and I probably would have taken out more people with me. I'm guessing this is how a majority of novice-driver deaths not involving alcohol occur.  

 

Watching paramedics try to put an IV in my mom's arm for 30 minutes while she was suffering excruciating pain from post heart-surgery complications, then desperately trying for more than an hour to get a nurse in the ER to give my mom some pain medicine. Nothing scarier than thinking my mom was gonna die right in front of me.

 

I'm living mine right now. I'm jobless and I'm scared as fuck of tomorrow.

 

If being temporarily unemployed is the scariest moment of your life, you're damn lucky.