My family was about to walk into a Target in south Florida when two police cars, driving much faster than was safe for a parking lot, pulled up to the front doors. Their lights were off, but my wife and I made eye contact and turned our kids around.

Generally speaking, officers of the law exceeding the speed limit is always a “avoid this area” signal for me.

Once, when I was exploring my delinquent side, I went to a party that involved a lot of drinking. I didn’t partake but everyone else did.

It happened at a property that detained aggressive dogs. The owners of the property, for whatever reason, weren’t home. That’s why the party happened.

At one point a bunch of us - that is to say, many drunken people and I, the only sober person - went out on the roof and hung out. At one point I stumbled and almost fell from the roof into the pens of the aggressive dogs. The other attendants arrested my fall and thought it was hilarious that I - again, the only sober person - was the only one who (almost) fell, then speculated about what would have happened if I did.

I should have gone home, but didn’t.

My wife and I were on vacation at a beach town in Europe with lots of really cool old things to see. A local said he knew of a cool thing off the beaten path a little. Like idiots we followed him for a little bit until we realized by off the beaten path a little, he meant completely away from everyone. We noped out of that before he got us completely isolated so he and his friends could likely jump us.

It wasn’t an immediate turn heel, and leave moment, but my wife and I had talked about moving out of Texas for a while. Mainly driven by our son with special needs. We had been paying tens of thousands dollars a year for therapy and constantly fighting with his school to get the services he needed. Then last year things went downhill fast. We ended up pulling him out of school because one of the teachers told us they found him in the parking lot laying under a car. Not surprised he would do that, he is opposed with cars and especially exhaust systems, but he was supposed to have a paraprofessional with him all day, so we really wondered how he got away like. Unfortunately, he has communication problems, so he couldn’t tell us. We had already been in talks with a lawyer about bringing a lawsuit to challenge the services they were offering. But his IEP already said he was supposed to have a para with him. When the lawyer told us it would cost $10-15k just to bring a lawsuit to force them to do what they are already legally required to do, we decided that was it. We were leaving Texas.

We ended up in Connecticut and it was the best decision we ever made. There are so many services here for him. He is truly thriving. My wife and I don’t immediately tense up when we see the school calling. I broke into tears during my first meeting with them because it was all about what they could do for him. Versus every meeting ever in Texas where they made us feel like he was a burden on the school.

When I was 16, I took the city bus to school and we had bus tickets that you could buy at the local corner store. The corner store was a 3 block walk from my house, and I was going there one day to buy a sheet of tickets. As I set out walking, a man in a white van slowed down to whistle/shout sexual things, which is sadly something that teen girls experience regularly - that occurrence was just another usual day.

But then, the man started circling the block over and over as a method to follow me. When I hit the Main Street he pulled into a gas station to pause and see which business would go into. And when I entered the convenience store, he parked the white van in front and stood on the front steps smoking and blocking all exit points.

I asked the convenience store clerk if he had a back exit I could run away through. He did not, but the man went to the front steps and yelled at the man and got him to leave. He parked across the street still watching, so I waited in the store until I saw ANY bus coming to the nearby stop and immediately got on. I took that to a crowded shopping mall and passed enough time until I felt that I could get back to what I was planning to do that day.

Life is disgusting for teen girls.

I served a mission for the Mormon church in Russia. One of my companions (the other teenager who is assigned to you as a stranger and must stay within earshot of you at all times for the next few weeks or months) was really enamored with the idea of tracting, or going door to door asking people if they want to talk about Joesph Smith. He had watched too many Mormon missionary movies and was very disappointed to discover the Russian Federation has made tracting illegal. But he really wanted to do it, so we rang a random apartment and claimed to be a postman and snuck into an apartment building to knock doors.

Things started off okay. Russians generally have two doors, a normal wooden door on the inside, and a thick, metal fire door with five deadbolts (three in the wall, and one in the door and ceiling). Mostly, folks would open the inner door, ask what we wanted and then tell us to go away (fair, considering what we were doing was as rude as it was illegal).

But then we got a nibble! A single man invited into his home. The first thing that seemed kinda strange was that he locked and bolted the fire door. This was a little strange — usually people would leave the fire door ajar when they had guests and only lock the inner door — but not enough to really spook me. He led us into the kitchen and made a quick pot of tea and we launched into the first discussion.

The discussions are pretty well rehearsed. The first one, if I recall, has eight parts, and we would give them in sequence — I would do the first part, then say the handover phrase and look significantly at my companion, and he would do the second, then hand it back until either the investigator got bored or we got to the call to action, where we issued some thing we wanted them to do — come to church, pray, read the Book of Mormon, what have you. My companion was starting this round, and was pretty invested in preaching so I don’t think he really noticed as our investigator lit a cigarette, put out the match in a tumbler, filled the tumbler with vodka, and shot the vodka and match together. He made the handoff, though, so at least I could start to figure out a way out of the situation.

Pretty quickly into my segment, the investigator derailed the conversation. Turns out his wife had just given birth to twins, and the prognosis was poor — he was worried they wouldn’t make it. He grasped a kitchen knife and he told me that if god was going to take his newborns from him, he intended to take us from god. I don’t think I ever in my life spoken better Russian, beautiful, flowing, eloquent, explaining it wouldn’t help his suffering and offering prayers and blessings on his children’s behalf. He had this gleam in his eye that really unnerved me, and I really felt I was pleading for my life.

Until my companion finished his tea, and the investigator seemed to forget the whole line of questioning in his haste to be a good host. I quickly made some excuse, but apparently my companion had completely tuned out because he launched into the next part of the discussion as if nothing had happened! I cut him off pretty quick and told him we needed to go, now. When we finally got out of the apartment, I sat down on the top step and began to sob, and my companion looked down at me, amazed, and asked what happened — apparently he had no idea we were ever in any danger.

In any event, I’ve never gone door-to-door soliciting ever again.

Dropped my daughter off at a new school friends house for a few hours of play. While having a little me time decided to rub one out. Fell asleep. Woke up from my timer reminding me to get my daughter (I’m a pro).

So i arrive and the mother is already all over me with stories of her divorce and how her ex is the one causing it (and quite a few highly private stories) and my daughter ignores my not so subtle hints that I want to leave now. (Usually thats all good fun). When suddenly their big ass dog starts taking and interest in my private parts and won’t leave me alone. (probably still smelling like jizz.) And their fucking owner doesn’t take the hint to control their fucking dog.

So now I start to sweat and mix in some fear and can’t run and just grab my kid and go nor can I yell for my kid as there are big ass teeth centimeters away from my crotch.

This goes on for close to an hour escalating slowly to the point that I get mad at the kid, the mother and the dog and just start walking out and cursing.

That day my kid learned code for “danger, leave calmly, leave now”. These days they all know a whole hand full of code phrases for: this is no joke, move now.

Getting onto a train in Stuttgart, Southern Germany.
A strong smell of beer and cigarettes hits me.
Everyone in the train carriage in front of me wears blue and white football jerseys.
And everyone behind me wears white and red.

And they’ve already started singing songs at each other.

going into a tunnel with 4 lanes: 1 left and 1 middle and 1 right lane all going toward tunnel, the outside rightmost lane is to go around the bridge (not toward tunnel). I was in the middle lane.

I had a gut feeling or something but the traffic was unusually slow. So i went ahead and drove to the rightmost lane and exited.

After exiting, we are 2kms away but i saw ambulance entering from the opposite lanes. So the 4 lanes on our left should have vehicles moving away from the tunnel. But some serious stuff went down such that ambulance must drive in opposite direction.

It turned out some electric cars malfunctioned and one of the car’s battery combusted due to hot weather.

2am subway station in Vienna. Had been drinking all night, really had to pee. Walked in to the bathroom, saw dude with a spoon and a lighter doing his crack thing and did a sweet 180 Michael Jackson spin on my rear heel and was out the door before it even closed from my opening it.

Had never seen anything like that in real life but didn’t need to look twice.

new casino opened in my small town. took my wife. she wanted to play one slot machine. she lost $20 pretty quick and I begrudgingly pulled another 20. she hit $100 with just $3 more. we cashed out and went home.

In like 2008 I was coming back from an overnight airsoft event in rural Texas at like 3am and had to stop for gas. I pulled into the only gas station in a small town just off the highway and was just about to get out of the truck when a sketchy dude walks out from behind the gas pump and started asking me questions through my window hey man, cool truck, is that yours or your parents, where you coming from? I rolled out of there real fast and found a safer stop up the road.

Keep in mind, I was in military gear at the time because I was young and dumb, but that didn’t stop sketchy McCrackhead from chatting me up.

Hiking along through tree covered mountains. Days from civilization no cell service. Other side of the country from anyone I know. Dead tired end of a 26+ mile day. Come around a corner and get a view of a massive wildfire off in the distance just the entire horizon ablaze. Bushwhacked through the rough route of a long abandoned and overgrown side trail just trying to lose elevation roughly following a small river. This is why I lug a compass for when things go sideways. Had managed to reach the father of the only local hiker joining on this impromptu bail out route via my satellite messenger. The wildfire smoke was like chain smoking light cigarettes. We eventually found a ride out of there with the father on dirt fireroad we reached after another days worth of hiking to reach it.

Nowhere near as high-stakes as some of the others here, but…

When I was 16 or so, I was hanging out with a few friends and one of them pulled out a joint and a bottle of some kind of liquor, and started passing it around. I got a really bad feeling about it and bailed on it.

Found out the next day that after I’d left, they’d gotten pretty drunk and/or high, and had decided it would be a good idea to take one of their mother’s minivan for a drive around their property. They scraped the side of it on something, took off a huge bit of paint, and then decided the best course of action would be to use some spray paint they found in the garage to try and cover it up.

They were all grounded for quite a long time, a fate I managed to avoid by leaving when I did.

In the early 2000s, then-girlfriend and I were at a goth club we went to every weekend. Just had a weird feeling that night and decided to leave early. Someone fatally shot a guy we knew not long after we left. I don’t know if they ever found the shooter or the motive. In years of going there, I saw I think two fights ever and it was university fratboys who came to look at the freaks. All in all, we were quite a peaceful crowd (mosh pit nonwithstanding).