Large outlet center on interstate 40 in North Carolina between two metropolitan areas needed a Spanish translator. I applied and interviewed, having spent significant time working IT jobs in South America. They asked if I spoke Mexican. I said no, I am working proficient in Spanish. They said sorry, they were looking for someone who spoke Mexican.

Realistically, I’d say my worst in recent memory was nearly getting smoked by a red light runner at some stroad intersection. Only thing that saved me was my own incompetence; I believe I was dicking around on my phone waiting for my turn at the light, and that hesitation delayed me just enough to not get wrecked.

The one I’m more likely to tell people in a casual conversation is nearly accepting a job as a professional Salesforce consultant.

I’ve left two companies before they went under.

Avail Vapor, was the most memorable.

A company that bet everything on vaping being this bougie, upscale thing similar to hookahs and built 100 stores across America(I helped).

Then it all came crashing down once people were just cool with just going to little tobacco shops like they always did, and Avail had 100 stores full of outdated hardware no one wanted.

Yep, down it went.

Russian military draft.

Weekend of Sept 8-9 2001, went to a house party in long island NY with some friends from our then-town in upstate NY. Friends mom, our ride, ended up on a crack binge and the party house started getting, uhh sketchy. So four of us got out of there on foot walking down train tracks, pooled funds for a train to at least get back to NYC try to hop our train back up north somehow.

This was middle of the night Sunday the 9th, and we headed to the old liberty park after my friend in area didn’t answer his door. Slept in the park one block from WTC and had my brother upstate wire us money for the train, which we took after WALKING from wall street to grand central (no money). We got back upstate Sept 10, and the following morning 9/11 happened. My friend and I were the type to have been helping people get out of the buildings, he is a firefighter now, one of the others is a nurse.

I love the Americans in this thread answering the question literally

was almost beaten to death by 20 people, it was some gang fude, one of my friends punched some gang member in the face, because he bullied him some time ago

I didn’t dodge the bullet, but give it that day, the moment I shot the first gang member, the others ran away (this was in europe and I was the only one armed)

12 ga, not sure if slug or shot.

Gun was held to my head for 20-30 mins during some gang stupidity involving a family member not wanting to leave a party I was supposed to pick them up from. I left, came back and the place was crawling with police and EMS. The same gun, held by the same guy was used to shoot another person in the face.

I ended up having to give statements, got subpoenaed, and myself, family, and friends being threatened by same gang for a number of years.

The biggest?

That time we dodged a Scud ballistic missile. I don’t mean we saw one get intercepted or had one land nearby and just watched. We actively dodged it.

So there we were in Iraq in 2003. We’re outside Al Najaf and the battle for the city is raging. There are artillery rounds going both ways, planes dropping ordnance, and thousands of civilians leaving the city on foot. Mostly we ignored them because we had a job to do. But one guy turns around suddenly and starts walking back into the city. Several of us noticed him and started asking the others around us, “is he?.. Is he pacing? Did he turn around just to the side of our position?”

The consensus quickly formed that, yup, he was walking in a way to count his steps and get a distance measurement. Our leaders called up the chain and a plan quickly formed. If it was nothing then there wouldn’t be an interruption to the battle anyways. The second the sun was down we moved out to a new position in complete light discipline. Nobody was allowed any light but what they could get through a night vision device. Not even the IR flashlights and markers.

In our new position everything was normal until around 0300 when a huge explosion went off right in our previous fighting position. They had indeed launched a SCUD based on one man pacing a distance measurement, and they were accurate. If we hadn’t moved that night then I wouldn’t be here.

So we dodged a Scud Missile.

A narcissistic girlfriend. I don’t know at that time. Was a hard cut from me at some point, got partly ugly and left scars.

I was watching some amature tree removal people rig a pulley system to a tree that partially fell over from about 50 yards away with a few other people. They hooked it up to a pickup truck and drove forward at full power. The pulley snapped and landed behind me on an incline a fraction of a second later. I felt the wind from it go over my head and sort of visually noticed it go by in the same way someone would notice a cannonball go clear across a field in an instant. It was most certainly going fast enough and weighed enough to completely demolish my skull and everything inside. Very surreal, we opted to leave them to their work after that.

Almost went to college for art, decided last minute to do engineering instead. Still ended up getting heavily involved in art later in life because I had the financial freedom from tech to do so

That time I said no to Arthur Anderson when they were recruiting me hard - offering to fly VPs to me the next day (Sat) to convince me not to start a new job on Monday.

having kids. If I had established myself a bit earlier financially it might have happened before I saw the signs of where things were going.