What is the scariest experience you've ever had?

I went into an enclosure with a seizuring tiger to give her an injection of an anticonvulsant and she came out of the seizure when I was about halfway across the field. She was dysphoric, nobody home, very confused and very frightened, and didn’t recognize me at all. She crouched to attack and I froze. I called to one of my keepers on the outside of the enclosure to move around to the far side of the fence and draw her attention away – as soon as she turned her head, I skedaddled.

I had some other close calls, but that one scared the poo out of me.

The moment I realized that there wasn’t any reason for me to keep doing the one thing I loved.

giving birth.

Hi Snoopy!

If you are a male, you should be super TERRIFIED!

@halfbrain….let me check…

nope. still female!
:)

@peyton: what is it you love to do?

In fifth grade, my mom got cancer. I didn’t realize how much it affected me then, but I can trace back a number of my weird little neuroses to fifth grade. Whenever I think about how my mom could have died, that is the scariest feeling ever.

@kat, I am glad she survived. We all need our moms, don’t we?

@cd: I’ll still need my mom even after I’ve had kids and they’re grown and gone. :)

@kay: I lost mine three years ago

I was in my 20’s and living with a boyfriend in Ohio, and we were robbed. One Sunday afternoon, we were laying in bed watching TV, when we heard a noise at the door. We thought it was out nosey landlord who snooped when he thought we were gone for the day.

My boyfriend got up and walked into the living room to catch ‘the landlord” in the act, when I tall dark man rounded the corner with gun in hand. He fired 3 times, luckily missing with each one.

My boyfriend quickly jumped back into the bedroom, and put the dreser in front of the door. We hid in there for the longest time to make sure the man was gone. When we finally surfaced and called the police, it took them 4 hours to show up!!

The man took my purse from the kitchen table as he left, and it had a gun in it. ( This was not a good neighborhood, and I had it for self protection. Lot of good it did me that day!)

When the cops finally caught the guy, they said he had robbed 19 people all in the same afternoon, and shot some of them. 2 people died.

They wanted us to testify against him, but since I really didn’t see his face, and my ID was in the purse he stole, I declined. I moved to Florida 2 weeks later.

@cd: I’m sorry. I hope she lived a good and fulfilling life.

@kat, she lived a troubled life, but she was mom.

hm…well…
I have latex-fruit syndrome its when you can’t put latex gloves on and eat tomatoes within 24 hours or…something idk i suggest u look it up

but anyways,

I work at a hotel along with my brother. This hotel belongs to my grandparents and my aunt. I usually watch the office and do more stuff like if theres a problem in one of the rooms. Well, it was monday and barely anyone was in the office, so my grandfather was watching the office and I decided to help out my brother in the laundry room and do some laundry. My grandmother gave me a fresh new pair of Yellow latex gloves. I used them to do some laundry. Then, someone from a room had given us tomatoes. Now this guest came to this hotel for two weeks every year because they loved it so much. I had remembered having their tomatoes for years back. So i ate two at lunchtime that day. I go to bed fine.
The next morning, I have itches all over my hands. i wondered what it was. So my aunt took me to a pharmacy and the pharmacist told us that it was rather from latex and/or tomatoes. The next day, it was on my neck! My grandmother, being born in Italy, scolded me and told me NOT TO EAT TOMATOES!. So i didnt that day. That night i couldnt sleep. I sat up in my hotel room (a hotel room not in use because i used it). I watched TV but that didnt help get my mind off the itching. I put a load f that cream the pharmacist gave me but that didnt work. I watched the sun set and everything. I woke up the next morning it was on my legs. All the mark were like tiny, tiny mosquito bites, but some pale pink to blood red. My aunt was scared. She scheduled an appointment for a dermatologist (one who studies the skin), but they werent open until two months!! some luck…anyways…that night i slept on a couch in her room just incase. 2:30am. I wake up to find myself itching my neck and my wrists like CRAZY! I got to look for my ointment stuff. Now i wear contacts, and at night i wear glasses, and I couldnt find them because my aunt put them somewhere. So i just searched the bureau without them. I found some cream and put it on. Then, I felt that the lid wasn’t like the cream i had been using-uh oh!
The next morning i woke up and the ointment (whatever it was) zapped some of the itches away. It worked well. I found out my grandfather was going to give it to me the night before but forgot. I was healed finally. Now, i will never eat tomatoes and put on latex gloves within 24 hours again =P. I remember because it happened to me when i was 4 also.

by the way, sorry for grossing everyone out.

another story that is VERY unfair on my part:

Christmas and i was four. “santa” had given me a BIG present ad i wanted to know what it was!! What was it? it said “TO: ALEX FROM: SANTA HOHOHO” I opened it and it was a brand new keyboard!! i was excited! I played it alot everyday. I was happy wth it. i even let my brother use it. One day, my brother needed it for a concert at school. I let him use it.right after the concert, my mom had to go to some meeting and we went too. This was a big meeting. Then, ½ way through, someone on an intercom announced that someones car had been stolen-it was ours! i looked to see what the damage was and you know what was stolen? my beloved piano! I cried and was angry. I wanted another!

Now this happened in around October. So there in december, was a big box from santa labeled “TO: DAVID AND ALEX FROM: SANTA” (david is my brother). A piano. But i wasnt happy.

Now why wasn’t I happy?

because the 1st piano was mine. and now that it was stolen because of my brother, we get a new one thats now only ½ mine. I was angry because now my brother keeps teasing me about it….life….sigh

I thought you were pulling our legs when you said you had latex friut syndrome but it seems to be a real ailment. I learn something new every day here!

@ scamp

ikr

@90s_kid ok, call me stupid, but what does ikr mean???

I was at a New Years Eve party out at a dock house on a channel that flows into Lake Erie when I was like 18. Of course I was drinking but this is before I formed what I now call my “limits”. I was drinking 151 and Jack Daniels straight out of the bottle. Late in the night I went outside to throw up, I puked, stood up, and blacked out. I woke up what I am assuming was a short time later staring at lights waving up at me through about 13 feet of water. I instantly snapped awake and thankfully I can swim very well. I swam to the edge and realized I couldn’t reach the top of the dock. I found a pipe and stood on it so my head was just above water so I didn’t have to keep treading water. Thats when I thought I was gonna die. Luckily the biggest kid in the party came out and saw me and was able to yank me out of the water! Scariest thing ever! And I could have gotten hypothermia on top of drowning because this was January in Ohio and the water was very cold!

i know right

ah!

My brothers locking all of us in the bathroom and then farting up a storm and not letting me out. You think I am kidding….

There are two incidents that scared me silly…

One was 9/11. Now, I was really young when it happened, probably about seven. Even though I live far away from NY, I live only an hour or so away from Washington D.C., not to mention the fact that my dad worked at the Pentagon for a while, so when my mom came to pick me up (along with countless other parents picking their kids up from school) and tried to explain what had happened, I was confused and scared as hell.

The other time was when my little sister started choking on a hard candy, and for the longest time, everything we tried couldn’t get it to come out. I was so scared/upset that when I tried to call 911, I couldn’t…that scared me half to death. I was also really young when this occurred, but I would probably be scared just as much today as I was then.

@fly aww. Rudolph and Clarice

I’ve had some pretty scary shit happen to me in my life, but nothing compares to being scared for your children:

As flyawayxxballoon described above, my youngest daughter choked on a piece of hard candy when she was 4. “FB” had just learned to call 911, but was frozen with fear. I was on my knees, giving the little one the Heimlich Maneuver to no avail, and ‘knee walked’ us across the kitchen to call 911. 1/2 the candy popped out and she vomited while I was on the phone with 911, squeezing that little girl with all my might, but she still couldn’t breathe. Just before the ambulance arrived, the other half came out and she was ok – Thank God. I on the other hand was a freaking wreck!

When my middle daughter was 8 or so, she gagged on some food, and gave up on eating altogether. Nothing we did would convince her to eat! She got down to 44 1/2 pounds and was about to be hospitalized for a feeding tube before we found something she could/would eat to make her gain weight again: melted vanilla ice cream, with Ensure and chocolate syrup (to cover the awful taste of Ensure!). She ate no solid food whatsoever for about a year. It took lots and lots of therapy and medication before she would eat any solid food at all. It was a very scary time for all of us. I’m happy to report that at age 13, she is doing very well.

When flyawayxxballoon (my oldest daughter) was 4, she pulled a huge TV down on top of herself. I was upstairs at the time and heard this loud CRASH. When I flew down the stairs, all I could see was the TV on the floor, no sign of her…but I could hear her crying from the same area and thought she was under the TV. My heart nearly stopped. Thankfully, it only hit her leg! The TV was so big, I couldn’t see her laying on the other side of it. Aside from a little scar she still bears, she was unharmed!

Is it any wonder that motherhood causes grey hair?

My two scariest times:

I almost drowned once, and I was TERRIFIED. I was probably about six or seven. I was at the local pool with a friend and his father, and I suppose no one was watching me, because I went out too far and just bobbed and flailed for a little before sinking under… I somehow made it over to the wall, but I have no idea how. The longer it went on, the more panicked I got, and the harder it became to do anything. I just remember gasping for breath and not really succeeding. I still can’t swim and carefully avoid situations with deep water (although I did go on a cruise… fancy that.)

I also had a really scary episode my senior year of high school. Both of my parents were out of town (my mom commuted to another state on a weekly basis and my dad was on a business trip), and I was virtually self-sufficient (I had a car and a job and a credit card and I could take care of myself). It was the last day before spring break ended and I worked a night shift at my job at a pizzeria. I felt a bit off, but I didn’t really think anything of. I went home and sat down and within a half hour, every part of me hurt and I was curled into a ball because all my muscles were tensing up at once. I was bawling because I was in so much pain, and I kept calling my parents’ phones, but no one was picking up. I tried my boyfriend and best friend as well, but they didn’t pick up either. I managed to make it into bed, where I tried to sleep and kept trying to call my parents, but I was so sick that I could neither sleep nor ingest anything, including water. I was afraid that I had meningitis and that I was going to die. In the morning, I still hadn’t gotten in touch with my parents, but I called my school and cried on the phone with the dean of my class, telling her that I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t come to school (this was a big deal because the school has big penalties for missing the day before or after a long break without a major complication, which was hard to prove because I had no parent or doctor’s note or whatnot… another long story entirely though). Anyway, I finally talked to my mom, but neither of my parents were able to come home for another day and a half, so I just laid in bed (and I cried – a lot). My dad finally came home and took me to the hospital. I was so dehydrated that a vein in my arm burst when they tried to give me an IV, which ended up in my hand. They gave me antibiotics, and I went home and slept for about three days. I later found out that the hospital misdiagnosed me and the antibiotics that I took did nothing for me. My physician told me I probably just got over whatever it was (I still don’t know) in a timeline similar to the taking of the antibiotics. I really did think, for a good period of time, that I was going to die and I wasn’t going to be able to talk to my parents, boyfriend or best friend before I did.

So yeah.

Honorable mentions: getting pulled over by the police in Prague and not knowing how to speak Czech or take care of the ticket (especially because we had no money because the purse that had all the money and the atm card and whatnot had been stolen, also in Prague), almost getting stuck in France because my brother’s passport, wallet, any form of ID, etc, were left in Alsace-Lorraine (although it was recovered, fully intact!), falling asleep at the wheel, and almost getting attacked while at work by a drugged out guy.

3rd. place.
I was playing ouija with some friends and things got out of hand…
runner-up
I was brushing my teeth (u know, up and down) and when I checked in the mirror someone was staring at me, I just froze and I couldn’t move/speak/scream until the person vanished like smoke
winner!
When I made the math of my tuition expenses after I finish college, I wanted to die (literally)

Being jumped in a parking garage; not fun.
Hearing the words, “it’s cancer”; even less fun.

@flameboi: did the ouija incident & teeth brushing incident occur on the same night?

@bythebay
nope, the ouija incident occurred when I was 11 or 10 maybe…
The teeth brushing incident ocurren 4 years ago, I was 21 and I was getting ready to go to work, it was crazy I was 100% paralyzed :s

When a family member tried to overdose on anti psychotics and he almost died.

Getting separated from my group in the rainforest in Puerto Rico.

Seeing sharks a little bit farther out in the ocean when I was swimming off the coast somewhere…can’t remember if it was California or Florida. (I have a phobia of large marine animals with teeth!)

Scariest moment?

That would be when I was awake and of into a really bad fight with my best friend and thought I lost them forever.