Jake Poe: “When I was little I was floating in my pool and I fell through the life jacket. Then my parents noticed I was at the bottom of the pool so my brother had to jump in and save me.”

Marina Reilly: “When I was six years old, my family and I went to Hawaii. I wandered down the beach by myself and then this huge wave knocked me down. I was laying there on my back for about twenty minutes (really far away from all the people) until my parents found me.”

Hunter Randle: “Whit and I almost died on a boat while fishing.” (see story in Whit’s response)

Nicole Milanovic: “Before I knew how to swim, my parents and would go to the pool and I would inch across the side of the pool to the deep end. For some reason, I would let myself go and start to sink, realizing that I couldn’t do anything about it (because I couldn’t swim). Luckily, every time, a stranger just had to stick their arm in and pull me up. This happened about 3 times until my parents told me I had to stop, I’m guessing.”

Gage Winstead: “One time I was in South Carolina and I was buying fireworks. My parents stopped at a gas station and I ran across the street towards the fire works. There was an eighteen wheeler parked on the side of the road. It blocked my view of the road so when I got out onto the road I could see up the road and there was this dodge barreling down the road. The car came so close to me that its front tire yanked my slide (slipper) off.”

Rob Walker: “Me and Gage were at Clay’s house and we were fiddling with pocket knives and acting out what we would do in a knife fight. Then we punched at each other and Gage’s knife sliced into my hand. I had to get 20 stitches and almost passed out. If it had hit a tiny bit higher, then it would have hit a tendon.”

Mia Bostic: “I was in a camp at Virginia Beach. We were on a tour paddle boarding, and while I was paddle boarding, a shark popped up right next to me after I had watched it attack a stingray.”

Lucas Higgins: “I almost drowned when my sailboat turtled. I got stuck in the ropes and blacked out and then a friend of mine cut the ropes off of me”

Susannah Birle: “I was playing soccer in Italy. I broke my arm and my bone came out. They didn’t have air conditioning in the hospital and it was Summer so it was really hot and uncomfortable. They also weren’t treating the spot where my arm was bleeding right away so it was just awful.”

Noah Pyle: “We had this camp called CDSA, in Seattle. And one time during the Summer, this kid wouldn’t leave me alone and I called him a monkey and started making fun of him. Later, we were in the ocean and he dragged me into the deeper water, grabbed my leg, and tried to drown me. He was 2 years older than me.”

Jerold: “When I was in the Philippines I was really close to some train tracks and I almost got hit by the train.”

Marisol Rodriguez: “The intense pain I’m feeling in my body right now.”

Toby Covert: “God is on my side.”

Sam Neale: “I drowned.”

Zack Russell: “I did a front flip on a diving board, over rotated, and hit my head on the diving board. I fell in the pool and bled a lot from my head. I could barely see and the lifeguard didn’t come in and save me so I had to crawl out to my mom. She said she thought it looked like someone had died my hair because it was so red.”

Brendan: “I was swimming across this huge pond in my friend’s yard and they let their dog out. He jumped on my back and almost drowned me. I was twelve years old at the time and the dog was huge, so it was really scary.

Fré Halverson-Taylor: “Whenever I cross the street, because I j-walk a lot and hate waiting for stop signs, a lot of cars get angry because I also wait in the middle of street. So, I could have died multiple times”

Emma MacNabb: “One time I was in a plane and they had to redo the landing.”

Julian Brecht: “One time I had hypothermia while scraping the frost off of my windshield on my car. I got to school and almost passed out.”

Tori Carpenter: “I hit a deer and thought I was going to die, but the deer ended up dying and a tractor trailer hit it after I did.”

Whit Rudder: “We were catching a lot of fish and we drove the boat really fast, late at night. If we had fallen off we probably would have died. We almost had the police called on us because they thought we were going to drown.”