I'm late to the party... But here it goes: I have 3 "gold worthy" events in my life, hope someone cares to read as I've never written about these before and the post might go long:

1 - When I was a teenager, my family owned a small retail computer shop situated on a main street near a shopping center. (Lots of traffic ). Once evening my mom, step dad and I were in the shop building several PCs that were due to go out the next day. My dad (real dad) had stopped in to say hello.

Just as he was showing up, I look up to greet him and behind him, out on the street I remember seeing in what seemed to be slow motion.. a man flying through the air in a rag doll cart-wheel type motion. The sound of tires screeching didn't even enter my mind as I saw that was taking place.

The man landed and skidded down the roadway some. I remember telling my mother "Get towels and call 911". ( Towels seemed important to me? I dont know ).

We all ran outside and found a car had ran a red light and hit a man crossing the road. We ran to the downed man, he had an obvious bone protrusion through his leg, and he was bleeding badly from his face/head.

We used the towels to cover his leg and tried to stop some bleeding down there. But I saw a pool of blood at his head, I put a towel down but was affraid to put pressure as the back/top of his head didn't really seem to have any firmness to it. I remember waiting for what seemed like an eternity for the ambulance to arrive. It was the middle of summer, had to be 25+ degrees out (celcius!) and I was COLD waiting for the ambulance.

Finally they came, took over.. and the guy was taken to the hospital. A few weeks later, this elderly lady came into the store and told us of her husband that had been struck by a car. She thanked us for our help and kindness. Unfortunately her husband had died 3 days later in hospital. I will always remember this scene in my minds eye for the rest of my life.

2 - Again, when I was young.. and the partying type..maybe 15 years ago now. I had been out at a club with friends, came home around 2am. At the time I was living with my parents in a high rise apartment on the 24 floor. We had an end unit and my bedroom was on a corner of the building so I had huge windows that looked out over two sides of the city. I sat at my computer for a while.. likely played some counterstrike or day of defeat or something like that.. Then I heard what sounded to me like a scream that faded in and out very quickly... I thought to myself.. WTH was that? it sounded like someone... falling?... I looked out my windows, saw nothing.. couldn't really see the gound around the base of the building though. So I sat for a few minutes thinking.. man, did I just head someone fall past my window? or am I just not thinking clearly after the earlier festivities of the evening.

So after a few minutes, I convince myself this was in fact someone falling past my window. It was the middle of winter.. and I went down the elevator and proceeded to walk around the building (through largely unploughed/unwalked through snow @ 3ft or so deep. ) After walking around for maybe 20 minutes.. I found nothing and decided to admit I was crazy. I went to sleep and told my parents what I had thought and done the night before. They laughed at my and said some off handed comment about your brain on drugs.

Well, later that day I guess the building owner had been in the elevator and my mom had asked casually if anything odd happened last night. It turns out, someone DID fall from their balcony and the police were investigating.

I was able to give them a time that it had happened but not much more than that. I never did find out anything more about it.

and #3 - My friends like to say I am the only person they know that truly knows what it feels like to have the world about to end. Here's why.. When I was maybe 13 years old, I had been out with friends for the afternoon and came home for dinner. After dinner, I played some video games or something in my room and then some time later I came out to the living room to find my parents watching a news broadcast. The newsbroadcast was talking about a meteor that was headed by earth.. So I watched a minute or two thinking.. cool a meteor I wonder if we'll see it come by. I left for a bit, then came back out to ask how the meteor was doing.. Now the news was saying that it was going to actually make impact with the earth within 2 hours and they were not sure where yet or what might happen. So it peaked my interest a little more now.. but still I just had some conversations with my mom and step dad about it and they were acting very nervous and concerned.
Never the less, I left for a few more minutes but returned shortly to sit down and now watch what was unfolding. My step dad gave me an update on events.. apparently it was so big it was potentially big enough to hurt a large part of the country. Scientists were going to try and find a way to prevent it. The news broadcasters had experts on , talking about it.. with animated impact scenarios etc..
Then it happened... They announced that there was nothing that could be done about it.. and that it would hit the eastern seaboard within 45 minutes and should be visibile in the sky in the next few minutes.

So now I'm on my balcony, looking for this meteor coming to kill us all. I go to grab our phone to call my friends.. but my step dad keeps saying noo nooo don't do that why upset them.

It was not long before the News broadcast was showing rader updates in real time with this meteor getting closer.. then all of a sudden another meteor showed up.. then 3.. then 5.. then 1000000000000 of them.. I broke down in tears knowing my death was imminent.

Then I heard my step dad start to laugh and my mom saying " I think we took it too far! stop laughing ".

Yup I was fooled by one of those war of the worlds rip off shows around halloween.

I'm really not a stupid person.. it was a perfect alignment of events, state of mine, youthful imagination all coming together with a somewhat twisted sense of humor coming from my parents.

I laugh a lot about it now. It is true though, I honestly know what it feels like to think the world is ending in a matter of minutes without a hint of doubt.

Ok those are my three stories. Truthful in all, unless you just can't believe the internets.