near misses

[Stoday]

When I was a school kid I'd come across electric fences in the fields. I thought I'd make one, so I got some flex, one wire to a fence, the other in the lawn.
Fortunatly I didn't touch it - I had a look at the meter and saw it was spinning fast. So I decided to end the fence experiment. I then found that worms had moved onto the surface of the lawn for about 6 feet around the earthed wire.

 

[AdamW]

Today: was using my router.

I went to swap the bearing on a bit I had already loaded in the collet...

I forgot to unplug the router first, and whilst fiddling around managed to press the power button. My finger was less than an inch from the bit at the time.

Didn't sink in just how lucky I was until a couple of hours later when I thought what a mess it would have made of my finger.

 

[andy]

When I was a school kid I'd come across electric fences in the fields. I thought I'd make one, so I got some flex, one wire to a fence, the other in the lawn.
Fortunatly I didn't touch it - I had a look at the meter and saw it was spinning fast. So I decided to end the fence experiment. I then found that worms had moved onto the surface of the lawn for about 6 feet around the earthed wire.

did you connect live to earth?

 

[dg123]

Years ago felling trees we were doing a job where the trees were next to a public road, this meant we had to use a winch to direct the fall of those trees which would have naturally fell toward the road. I was winching one of these tree while my mate was cutting through the stump.

As he made the final part of the cut the base of the tree kicked up towards him and took off his hard hat! It missed his face by just an inch or two!!

 

[David P]

Not sure if these count as near misses, but none of them have affected me that I know of yet.
As a kid I used to like to taste things, one of my favourites was to pick the fibres from the decayed asbestos roof of the shed and chew them. then a while later my sister got a job as a radiographer in a dental hospital, she'd bring home the little sheets of lead that the xray film was packed in and... you guessed it free chewing gum. about the same time my chemistry set had a recipe for sherbert in it that involved tartaric acid, I got hooked and ended up spending my pocket money at the chemists rather than the sweet shop, must have eaten pounds of the stuff. I also remember playing in the shed making clouds by blowing into the tin of ddt until i discovered that spirit of salts poured over old chrome taps made real clouds (that also worked like teargas).

then as I got older, and my dad used to take me into work (aero engines) I found that the ultrasonic cleaning tank worked so much better at getting the grease off my hands - only found out later that it works by boiling the liquid using sound and would have been doing the same to my blood.
all in all I think its a wonder that I've survived this far. funny thing is i cant seem to take the threat of smoking seriously.

edited this to add: also found out that while my mother was pregnant with me she was prescribed something for heartburn. she decided not to take it, and like most tablets in our house it stayed in the medicine cupboard for years - then one day something hit the news that made her go and check and sure enough it was thalidomide.

perhaps I do beleive in charmed lives