"There Is No Doubt In Anyone's Mind That I Would Have Died That Day": People Share Times They Dodged A Major Bullet
No one can see what the future holds, but sometimes a spur-of-the-moment decision can change the course of your life so deeply, you may honestly wonder if you can see the future.
Disney-ABC Domestic Television / Via media.giphy.com
I recently asked the BuzzFeed Community, "When was a time you dodged a major bullet?" Here are a few good ones:
1."My sister and I were messing around at our house one day when I was 12 and she was 15. I was standing on a pillow, and she yanked it out from under me so hard that I flew over and ended up cracking my head on the corner of a table. I was rushed to the hospital for a few simple tests that confusingly became more and more thorough, to the point where I remember my mom going, 'All this is to test for a concussion?' Later, the doctor told us that they had found a tumor in my brain which was small enough now that they had a good chance of successfully removing it, but I had no noticeable symptoms. Who knows how long it would have continued to grow if I hadn't come in. I'm all better now, and to this day, my sister will brag that she saved my life."
—Anonymous, 26, MA
2."A guy who I knew took a job in Kansas City instead of Dallas because he wanted to be with his girlfriend. He was having trouble finding an apartment because he has a German Shepherd, and breed restrictions exist. At the last minute, he found an apartment that let German Shepherds in so he signed without coming to see it. A couple of days before he moved in, his girlfriend cheated on him and they broke up. So, he moved into this apartment in a city that he didn’t want to live in. But he moved in across the hall from me…his now fiancée."
3."I ran four years of high school track, both winter and spring seasons. I always did the long jump because I had a hard time breathing and was told 'You’re just out of shape' or 'It’s just asthma.' Fast-forward to my sophomore year of college, I went on spring break with my friends and when we got back, my friend tested positive for mono. So, I went to get checked out and they ran some blood tests. I was negative for mono but found out that I was extremely anemic. Going on spring break saved my life and I have had to get iron transfusions every five years since then."
4."Seven years ago, I was working as a reception supervisor in a major hotel and already started to wonder what the point of me trying to essentially kiss the bums of a bunch of spoiled tourists was. I was miserable and felt pointless. One day, my ex-roommate invited me to a workshop at her workplace about technology and coding. I had no idea about any of that but didn’t have anything better to do on my days off. In two days, I fell in love with tech. I started coding in my free time, dived into emerging tech, and completed an MBA with honors. Now I’m happily working in financial technology, earn great money, and absolutely love what I do."
5."At the end of 2017, I decided that I wanted to go back to university to become a teacher. My plan was to apply, defer my course start date for a year so I could earn some extra money working retail, then start my two-year course. Well, the university accepted my application but wouldn't let me defer my start date, so I started my master's at the beginning of 2018. I finished my course towards the end of 2019 and was offered a full-time, permanent teaching position at a local school, replacing a teacher who had just retired. Then, the pandemic hit. Not only did I have job security that I wouldn't have had if I was still working retail (all casual employees at the store I was working at were let go), but I also wouldn't have been able to finish my master's degree that year as all practical placements were put on hold. I honestly believe that the universe was looking out for me when the university denied my deferral."
6."I was supposed to meet up with a dude. He ghosted. Out of curiosity and because I was a little miffed, I googled him, and found out he was on the Texas FBI's Most Wanted List for a variety of very scary reasons."
7."When I was 20, I decided last minute not to go out with my best friend, her boyfriend, and my boyfriend who were also best friends. I just didn’t feel like it. I got a call at 2 a.m. that they crashed and the car wrapped around a telephone pole. They told my boyfriend that if he had been sitting on the other side of the car, he’d be dead. That’s where I would’ve been sitting."
8."I had quit my job because I was burned out and depressed. They were offering a severance package to the older workers and I asked for mine and was approved. Not even a month later, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. My quitting came at the right time since it gave me the time to drive my mom to her treatments and surgeries. Had I not asked for the package, I would have had to quit later with no package deal, since the offer was only for a short period. I would have left with some money, but not the same amount as the severance package. I’m still job hunting and my mom has recovered, so it was a blessing and a curse at the same time."
9."I was engaged to a woman who I had gone to college with, who seemed totally normal in the three years that we had been living together before I proposed. But after we got engaged, she started to expect me to pay for everything for her, like meals, shopping trips, etc. We'd always split bills for things we shared and had separate finances, but she started telling me that 'this was how it was going to be when we're a married couple' and that because we'd start sharing finances, I should start paying for her now. I had to break up with her for a few different reasons, but at the time, I was still upset that I lost the person who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, especially because she moved so quickly onto someone else and they later became engaged and actually got married."
"Well, a few years later my friend called me up to tell me the truth: It turns out that my ex-fiancée had spent her whole college years racking up a ridiculous amount of debt from a shopping addiction. Once she couldn't pay it off herself, she opened up a few credit cards in her new husband's name and put him into debt as well before he discovered what was going on. Bullet dodged!"
—Anonymous, 56, MI
10."I had been ill for a long time, but it was escalating, so I made a doctor's appointment, even though I had been there before with no results for these symptoms. I had gone on a ski trip the week before and spent a good portion of the time nauseous to the point of being unable to zip my jacket up against my throat or I'd puke. Our first morning back, as we were getting ready to get the dogs, the kennel called to say that one of them was ill. Long story short, we had to put our old boy down that week. I was about to cancel the doctor's appointment because I was so destroyed but then changed my mind solely because it was a nice walk into town and might clear my head. It turns out, that appointment with that particular GP was what led to my celiac diagnosis."
"I'd been ill for nearly 20 years and was slowly wasting away. The GP was covering for someone and wouldn't have been there, had I changed the date of the appointment. No other GP had cared to look deeper. I consider my decision fateful because I wasn't going to go."
11."My husband was my waiter the night that my long-term boyfriend, who I thought I was going to marry, dumped me. After he left me sobbing at the restaurant, my later-husband ended up comping my meal (yes, my ex was so cheap he couldn't even pay for dinner after he DUMPED ME!) and we actually struck up a polite conversation. I ended up returning to the restaurant later with some girlfriends and thanked him for being so kind to me. After returning a few more times, I got up the nerve to ask him out, to which he responded that he'd been waiting to ask me out himself, but didn't want to look like a creep preying on the girl who just got dumped. The dodged bullet is the blessing in disguise of getting dumped, but the extra treat is that it led to me meeting the love of my life!"
—Anonymous, 37, IN
12."My boyfriend and I went to a family party, and we were two of the few people who didn't eat mac and cheese that ended up giving the whole family food poisoning that night. I felt especially lucky because we had plans the next day for a romantic boat ride. What I also didn't know is that my boyfriend also had plans to propose! It's not like we wouldn't have gotten engaged if either one of us had gotten food poisoning and had to stay home, but I am so grateful that it all worked out perfectly, almost like it was meant to happen!"
—Anonymous, 34, GA
13."During my childhood, my older sister used to babysit my best friend, and I would always go with her to my friend's house. There was one day I really didn't want to leave, so my best friend and I walked down the street to another friend's house right before my friend's mom was supposed to come home. This was the only time I remember EVER doing that, as I was so scared of breaking the rules as a kid. We were playing in the yard of my other friend's house and started to notice A LOT of traffic going by, way more than the typical neighborhood traffic. So we walked back to my best friend's house, where the traffic was coming from to see what was going on."
"It turns out my sister was in a really bad wreck, where she was t-boned directly in the passenger seat that I would have been sitting in, had I been in the car. My sister was lucky to survive the wreck, and there is no doubt in anyone's mind that I would have died that day if we hadn't snuck off down the road."
14.And finally, "I dated a guy very seriously for five years in an extremely toxic relationship. We bought a house together, were on the same phone plan and car insurance, and had a joint bank account. I thought that all I wanted was to marry him and have kids and a family together. Anyways, long story short, we ended up breaking up (that was fun separating our very much intertwined lives), and we kept it going on and off after the official moveout and breakup. I ended up moving out of state and we still tried to keep it going long distance. It didn’t work out and he ended up dating a girl who I once hired and proceeded to get her pregnant and proposed to her within five months of dating."
"We all know how that most likely is gonna end, but good for them and wish them the best. Yeah, it stung a little when I found out, but all I could think (and still do) is THANK THE FUCKING LORD THAT WASN’T ME! All of my friends and family were so happy when we broke up and also so relieved that wasn’t me. I definitely do not want kids or to get married right now. Now that I am out of the relationship, I can see how blinded I was when I was in it."
