Nine Lives...meow!

Hmmm, let's see...

18 years old, Phoenix Arizona.

I was driving a 69 Camaro Z28 convertible (god I loved that car). I had worked all summer to afford a brand new set of Cragar rims for my car and was driving down Black Canyon freeway at about 4 in the morning. Lets just say I was enjoying testing out the new rims, top down and a little over 100 mph as I approached an underpass...

The left front tire blew out and like an idiot I fought the skid in the wrong direction... suddenly with a sickening crunch I watched as the nose of the car suddenly dropped and on instinct i dove to the floorboard as the car began flipping end over end (no seatbelt). When I woke up I was lying there staring at my car surrounded by paramedics and police. The fire department had my car cut into pieces with the jaws of life, which they needed to pry the transmisson out of my chest where it had ripped through the floorboard, pinning me under the dash... and quite likely saving me from being thrown flying. The car was sitting 90 feet off the freeway on the onramp, upside down.... I walked away with bruised ribs.

(Cragar bought me a new car when it was determined it was their high performance rim that buckled, sending the car flipping.)

26 years old, Baton Rouge Louisiana.

Had a two hour drive from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to get to work at a construction site building a new processing plant onto Stuaffer Chemical plant. I was carpooling with another foreman and we started hitting rain about 40 minutes out from the job. Being as it was payday and knowing we would be rained out... we started planning getting to the job, grabbing our checks and hightailing it home to go fishing before the storm reached New Orleans (Bass hit great right ahead of a storm front). We pulled into the gravel parking lot, rolled all the windows up tight and headed the quarter mile walk to the brass shack where we could pick up our checks.

About halfway there we heard what sounded like a freight train coming in behind us and watched a tornado set down about 500 yards away. I dove for the ditch on the side of the road while my buddy dove to the otherside. I can remember, as I was in mid dive seeing the ditch full of water sucked dry as I landed in the mud and feeling my feet lifting back into the air and the tornado was past us and ripping through the parking lot. Not a single peice of glass was left in anyones cars as the pressure blew out everyone of them. We never did get to go fishing.

30 years old, Lake Charles Louisiana.
Working a turnaround to bring a new electric plant online for its first firing, My job was to erect scaffolds to allow workers access to out of the reach locations... One such was at the top of the steel structure some 165 feet off the ground. The scaffold I was building was roughly another thirty feet tall and I was wlking around the top frame, stabbing new 10' legs, all while walking on a 2" wide pipe when my foot slipped.

I threw the 10' leg one way and I went the other, down the middle of the scaffold I had just been building. my fingers slapped one of the crossbars as i flipped and i was able to get enough forward pull to throw my arm over the diagonal. I felt the impact as I hit the next crossbar as my shoulder ripped out of it's socket but I was able to grip my safety harness long enough to keep me in place and throw the lanyard over the bar and lock it before passing out. Which left me dangling fro the bottom of the scaffold, 165 feet in the air  with nothing between me and the ground bu the rope safety belt.

32 years old, Longville Louisiana

Was member of Volunteer fire department, and once again, about 4 am we got a Page about a mini van that had just flipped on the highway about 3 miles from the house.As the wife ran to her car and took off in a spray of dust, heading to get the rescue truck I was into my Ford Ranger, lights flashing and jamming gears even as i was grabbing for the radio. I headed straight to the wreck on hearing the paramedic team was already getting the rescue truck rolling and got their in less than 3 minutes... Adreneline does bizarre things to a person.

I was first on scene... and it was bad. the whole front of the upside down van was on fire and I could see 3 or 4 people struggling inside. I was able to pull the driver and a passenger in the front out of the side windows, and had broke out the rear glass and was trying to free the two teenagers pinned in the back seat. I got one cut free of her seatbelt and literally lifted her out and shoved her out the glass behind me even as the front seat was a ball of fire... i was still trying to cut the second kid loose, a boy about 16 when My feet were grabbed and I was pulled out. the fireball as the backseat erupted gave me third degree burns up to both elbows and melted the visor on my helmet... The visor is rated to 1200 degrees Fahrenheit.
We were unable to save the boy.

I think that means I have six left.

Jimbeaux gets 10!  He rocks, thus the extra one.

medtrans

        It had rained all day, just hovering around freezing so the rain that fell WAS rain UNTIL, nightfall.  Then every overpass in the county was a sheet of ice. 

    I was cruizing along in a little S-10 with rear wheel drive,heading to my friends house, hit a over pass at about 55 and started to slide. Went stright into oncoming traffic, yet just missed every car somehow,  swirled allll the way around to the opposite side of the road, hit the ditch sideways and rolled my truck down a steep embankment.  Landed upside down, wheels still turning on my truck till I took my foot off the gas.  Jumped out...and felt the pain in my ribs. OUCH. Broken ribs hurt.
        I was lucky that night, with only broken ribs. A young Mom lost her life in another part of town due to the weather.
        I know I used up one of my 9 lives that night. Maybe even two.
I do believe in Gaurdian Angels, and I know I gave mine grey hair that night.

                                                                        PMM2008

ya pam..i am with you.  i always say i must have a guardian angel or two with me,

and i could most definately write a book, so i won't even start, but i would say i have one maybe 1 1/2 lives left tops myself.

meow