It’s hard to know what seemingly small decision may have huge impacts on your life.
Here, people reveal their most mind blowing ‘that could have been me’ moment.
1. Went to Taco Bell with Mom and friend. They both got a drink and I said I would just share with them, even though my mom would buy me one no problem. Next guy in line got a drink. He won a 40,000 Land Rover off the cup contest.
CrunkaScrooge
2. My uncle, who is an electrician, was working on the top floors of the World Trade Center. He is someone who will never call in sick, but on 9/11 my grandma convinced him he should stay home because he had a bad cold.
Good job grandma.
HotTubToilet
3. Once in first grade, I let a kid cut me in line and he got the lucky tray. The ice cream he won should have been mine.
watch_your_language
4. Years ago I stood not ten feet from a friend and actually watched him get hit by lightning.
Yeah, that could have been me.
He lived but barely. 3 days life support then 2 weeks in a head trauma unit. His brain swelled causing damage. He ended up making a full recovery.
SlightlyStable
5. I was at a stop light in the left lane about to turn onto the highway. Nickelback came on the radio so I looked down to change the station to something less like nails on a chalkboard. I missed the light change to green. The guy next to me didn’t. He drove forward and was immediately t-boned by a truck running a red light on the access road going 70.
Nickelback saved my life.
dark_knight92
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6. My SO had gotten into a car accident in winter of 2010.
He was going to pick me up from work. Just as I was clocking out, I was asked to work overtime. Which I accepted. When he arrived I told him I would be done at closing, then he headed home.
A few blocks from our house he tried to swerve around a car that was parked illegally in an intersection. Hit a patch of ice and lost control.
Amazingly the drivers side was unaffected by the crash. However, the passenger side, MY side, had a rod impaled through it from the front windshield.
The angle and impact would have killed me had I been in that seat.
To this day it still freaks me out.
That could have been me.
TMosbyArchit3ct
7. When I was 16 I was at a beach in Santa Cruz with my family and 10 year old little brother. My little brother started playing with two little girls who were collecting sea shells and stacking them on a giant log near the water line. My brother walked away to find more sea shells. A few seconds later a huge wave rolled in and lifted up the log (we found out later that it weighed around 1,000 lbs) .
When the tide receded, the long landed on top of one of the little girls chest and face and crushed her and pinned the second girl down by her arm. My parents aided in the rescue efforts but the little girl whose face was crushed died the next day in the hospital. That could have been my little brother. Beaches still terrify me.
8. Not me personally but my grandfather.
He was in the navy in World War II and sent a letter to his wife (my grandma) saying his ship was leaving Pearl Harbor. The letter was dated December 6, 1941, a day before the naval base was attacked by the Japanese.
kev1017
9. Back in 2012, I was leaving a gas station on my way to school and let a truck go ahead of me. He was in front of me at a stop light and when it was our turn to cross the intersection, an SUV ran the red light going about 45. The truck was totalled and the guy was knocked out and bleeding from his head.
I drive a small car and it scared me to think that if he had it that bad, I could have been a million times worse. He’s actually still fighting the jerk that ran the light because he swears he didn’t run the light, but I testified for the driver of the truck and it looks like they are just now settling the lawsuit.
pandamayhem
10. In 2011, the beginning of my junior year in high school I had surgery to fix a hole I tore in my shoulder muscle. I had it the Monday before the national championship air races (on a Saturday) in Reno, Nevada and I live decently close. We go every year and had tickets to the box seats. Parents decided I couldn’t go because my meds were too powerful (double dose of Percocet plus a pill to make me not throw it all up) and I was in a brace and if I got bumped I could have really fucked myself up. So I stayed home (story continued on the same page…).
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That night on the news we discovered that one of the racers had lost control and crashed into the box seats killing I don’t know how many people. If I would have gone there’s no way a doped up teenager with one working arm would have survived.
azucardaddy
11. Five of my ex girlfriends are currently pregnant or have already had children by the very next guy they dated after me.
KingYohlo
12. The band “The Presidents of the United States of America” once opened for my dad’s band in the 90’s. A record label rep was at that show and signed the Presidents the next day. Needless to say my dad has not let it go.
edhialdyn
13. In 1996, me and my family were standing a few feet from where the bomb went off in centennial park. Luckily my brother was not feeling well so we had to leave early. We were driving through the streets of Atlanta and saw police and rescue vehicles flying down the street, we turn on the radio and hear about the bombing then get home and see if was right where we were…
atlien88
14. I was in Afghanistan during a deployment. I was injured and they had to call a medivac to get me out. I had always been in the lead vehicle with my Team Chief, but after I was injured our team was one person light so they switched him out of the lead vehicle and gave the position to a full team.
That team hit an IED less than 24 hours later, killing the driver (would have been me) and the TC (would have been him). I never complained about my injuries again.
Gingerwarrior
15. In 2004, a 1 ton car bomb exploded in front of the Australian embassy in Jakarta at 10:30 A.M. I was working at a language school on the other side of the road, and every morning I did a u-turn at the embassy at that exact time (story continued on the next page…).
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The previous night, I had been very tired and was too lazy to fill up on gas, which meant I was 10 minutes late. When the bomb detonated, I was about half a kilometer away – my car rocked, debris rained down on my windscreen, and I thought it was an earthquake.
Laziness save my life.
Stone-D
16. I was invited to a concert in a small venue to see Great White. I had just started a job and was in training so declined. The show was at the Station Night club in RI. A fire broke out and many if the people died.
filly062178
17. Oh this was a while back, I was at my local library for the unveiling of the new captain underpants book. They had activities there for the kids and I found myself thrust into a circle of kids sitting down. We were supposed to pass around this diaper until the music stopped. Whoever had the diaper last would have to open the diaper.
So the diaper went around and as soon as I had it in my hands, the music stopped. I didn’t want to open it fearing whatever was inside so I quickly handed it to some curly haired kid next to me. He opened it and inside was a whoopie cushion. I gave up possibly the coolest thing my elementary self could possibly have come in contact with.
It haunts me in vivid memory to this day. It could have been me.
Shaboops
18. I was third in the line to the BBQ and the two persons in front of me got the two last pieces of hamburger bread before opening a new one (I got the first piece of that bag). At the end of the night the two both suffered from a severe case of diarrhea. Apparently the bread was old.
IT COULD’VE BEEN ME.
avtec
19. Baghdad, Iraq. The stall of the bathroom trailer that I normally used during my two mile walk from my hooch to my work area got hit by a 105mm rocket. I left late and the rocket beat me to the toilet. Talk about blowing up the bathroom.
Mr_Monster
20. I used to work in landscaping for a museum and estate with extensive grounds and many beautiful gardens. One morning, I was clearing off the paths by the museum prior to opening with a leaf blower as usual. In addition to the loud noise of the leaf blower, had my ear plugs in and had protective earmuffs on top of that, so I couldn’t hear much if anything. I had pretty much finished up and started to head back to my vehicle when I noticed I missed a pile so I turned around and started to walk over to it when I heard a LOUD crack (story continued on the next page…).
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Within seconds, a ~90ft beech crashed across the path where I had been standing moments earlier. Possibly in shock, my only thought was, “well crap, I guess I’m going to have to clean that up today too” and I went about clearing up the pile of leaves I had noticed a minute earlier. After that, I started heading back, stepping over the homicidal beech when I ran into a coworker. She was freaking out and pointing at the tree, but I couldn’t hear a word she said so I only responded, “yeah, isn’t that crazy? Ya think they would’ve told me they were taking down trees today!” At that point she ripped off my headgear and screamed, “what the hell! We thought you were dead!”
We had contractors working not that far from where I was and they apparently got on the radio when the tree went down, panicking that “the little girl with the leaf blower” just got smushed by a tree. I didn’t have a radio that day so no one had a clue whether I was still alive up until that point. On the bright side, our arborists were the ones stuck cleaning up that mess, not me. And that was only the first of many times I cheated death at that job.
ProfSnugglesworth
21. My uncle sold his apple stock to pay rent and buy Beer like 6 months before it skyrocketed. He said he didn’t have a lot of stock but didn’t make as much as he could have.
rogalski93
22. As a kid, a friend and his parents took me to an Orioles home game against the Oakland A’s. Our section was light so we played around in the seats, running around and such and decided to just sit wherever we wanted to.
Around the second inning a man with his wife and kids show up late and they ask us to move out of their seats. We comply and just scoot down a few seats and continue to watch the game.
A couple innings later, Jose Canseco drills a foul ball right into the man’s chest. He was pretty messed up and required medical attention.
I was sitting in that man’s seat before the family arrived. If they hadn’t come to the game that day, that would have been me.
rykerbomb
23. Not me but a woman I babysat for was in Louisiana on the day Hurricane Katrina hit. She was offered two flight options. One left early but had 10 minute lay over so she’d be running to her next gate. The other left two hours later and had a 45 minute lay over.
She picked the one that left early and it turned out to be the last plane out of that airport. The rest were cancelled and everyone was stranded. Not sure what happened to them.
PHASERStoFAB
24. I was on the train on my way to my friend’s house and I had to transfer to a different line at a station downtown. I wasn’t paying attention and accidentally skipped my stop, so I got off at the next one and decided to just walk to it because they weren’t that far apart. As I’m getting closer to the train station, I notice there are a bunch of cops and people standing outside. It turns out something happened with one of the trains and the cars started filling up with smoke. A bunch of people had to be taken to the hospital because of it and they temporarily closed the station. It was the train line I was trying to transfer to, and if I hadn’t missed my stop, I probably would have been on that train and could have possibly needed to go to the hospital, which would have been bad because I didn’t have insurance at the time.
-eDgAR-
25. When I was on a long, cross-country trip moving to another state, I was going through Louisiana and it was torrentially raining. I had all my belongings in the world in the bed of my crappy truck, wrapped up nicely in trash bags to protect them and my cab was full of crap as well. Water was on the highway and there were several accidents (I saw a bunch of piled-up burned out car frames on the opposite highway). I felt hungry, so I stopped by McDonalds to get a burger (story continued on the next page…).
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When I finally ate my burger and jumped back in my truck I was driving about 5-10 miles under the speed limit because of how bad the rain was (as was everyone else). Then I see an expensive sports car go whizzing past me going at least 30 miles over the speed limit. I cussed at him under my breath then about 5 minutes later I’m driving over a bridge and see the same car. It had crashed into several other cars and spun out of control into the bridge wall over a river just minutes before and everyone was climbing out of their cars in a daze and I’m not really sure if anyone was hurt. If I hadn’t stopped to get that burger, I’m convinced I would have been in that pile-up and in the crappy truck I was in I probably would have been killed.
[deleted]
26. Was backpacking New Zealand when the earthquake hit Christchurch in 2010, was supposed to take a tour bus from Nelson to Christchurch the day before the quake but missed the bus due to being hung over.
Earlypig
27. When I worked at Sun, lots of people were laid off in the early 2000s.
I was “fortunate” to not be laid off. Of course, a good chunk of these people worked at such companies like “Google” and “VMWare” in the early 2000s. Yeah, a few multi-millionaires later, I realized I wasn’t so fortunate.
Heck, it still happens quite a bit. About 4 years ago, a couple coworkers left for a company with a stupid name. But c’mon, it’s not like a company called “Splunk” could ever be successful?
_munch_reborn
28. My friend’s mom cancelled a double date in California in the 70s because she was sick, the other couple went on the picnic like they planned and both got murdered by the Zodiac killer. Chances are he wouldn’t have attacked all 4 of them since thats a bigger group, but sucks for the other couple.
slurmfactory
29. I saw a duck on the news who narrowly escaped being crushed under a grain elevator. I thought, “Wow, I could have been a duck.”
[deleted]
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