For me, it's a toss-up, between:

1) When I was in a car accident when I was 6. I was sitting in the back seat without a seat belt on (my stepdad "didn't believe in seatbelts"). It was a Chevy Bronco. Mom was in the passenger seat carring my baby sister on her lap. My stepdad was driving. We were going over a low bridge and he started to hydroplane on some standing water, and slammed on the brakes. We swerved left, then right, then left again, then right. I thought maybe my stepdad was just joking around trying to scare us at first. Then the whole world turned upside down. Have you ever been on a roller coaster that goes upside down? It was like that, except very fast. The whole world just spun around us for a while.

We wound up upside down in the creek that ran under the low bridge. My grandparents showed up on the scene, along with an ambulance and some police. They pulled me out and checked me out, and I didn't seem to have any injuries but I got to ride in the ambulance with Mom anyway (turns out I had a deep puncture wound in my left knee that I never felt -- and in fact I've never felt anything on that part of my knee since). I remember distinctly watching Mom's coupons from her coupon folder floating in a trail down the creek.

We were all OK. But it was scary.

The other scariest thing that happened to me was my freshman year of college when I thought I was pregnant. That was really scary. But in a different way.

What about you guys?

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2000

Answers

I've never been in a serious car accident or anything "shockingly" or "suddenly" scary like that....

I guess the scariest time of my life was the spring/summer of '95, when I was having severe asthma problems. I got sick at the end of April, and it took until July to diagnose the problem, by which time my lungs were so infected that I could hardly walk...I got better eventually (well, I still have asthma, but I'm not in and out of the hospital anymore), but that was a seriously scary time.

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2000

It's funny, I'm not the type of person to get all scared. I'm more of a sufferer of anxiety and panic. However, I can recall a time in seventh grade when I was scared. My friend Sarah and I decided we'd like some roasted peanuts for our snack at recess. Having only regular-served-in-the-shell-peanuts, we went to the corner of our school's field and built a fire, fully intending to roast ourselves some peanuts. I'm not sure *HOW* it happened, but the end result was us setting the school's field on fire. I remember being scared at that point.. trying to deny that I had any involvement in said fire, and kinda worried (as any 12 year old might be) that I would be off to prison to serve time for arson. I think that was the scariest time of my life.

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2000

Probably the scariest thing that has ever happened to me was when I was in Florida when I was probably about 9 or 10 years old. I was swimming in the ocean with my brother Ron and my dad was on the shore watching us. Well, at that time, I wasn't able to go underwater without plugging my nose - especially in salt water. Well, that day the current was especially strong and I realized that I wasn't able to swim back in. I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life...my dad was looking farther and farther away and I was being swept farther and farther into the ocean. I honestly don't remember how I managed to get back on shore without drowning - I think I just kept trying to bodysurf my way in on the waves. I remember screaming to my dad to help me and I guess he just couldn't hear me. As soon as I got back in, I had to walk forever to get back to where my dad and brother were and I remember an elderly lady yelled at me saying something like "don't you know there are SHARKS out there?! How could you swim so far out?" I remember being completely hysterical. I now know how to swim without having to plug my nose. :)

-- Anonymous, February 08, 2000