Everyone has an interesting story that can reveal some of the scariest moments of their lives. In this Mustang Musings, we asked students to tell us about their near death experiences, and see how their lives have been affected since.

“I almost set a house on fire cooking popcorn. I’m not lying.” – Freshman Wade Gillian

“I went to the beach when I was five with my brother, who had a boogie board, and I had little floaties. We went really far out and I slipped through my floaties and almost drowned. But my mom saved me. So now I have a huge fear of drowning and the beach.” – Senior Adrian Sirio

“I was in the Borrego desert when I was six years old. My older brothers and I were climbing up a mountainous rock. My brother, Will, knocked a chunk of rock while climbing and it rolled down and hit me in the head. I started tumbling down. It was scary because I blacked out and couldn’t remember what happened.” – Junior Nate Stewart

“A long time ago, my younger sister Abby decided that the second she got home from our babysitter, she would eat a watermelon. My mom said, ‘Okay, I’ll cut up the watermelon after I change out of my work clothes.’ But of course Abby couldn’t wait those five minutes that it would take for our mom to change. So she takes the biggest cutting board and sets it down. She sets the giant watermelon down, grabs the biggest knife, sticks it in and yanks the knife back. The knife slips out of the watermelon, and I swear it almost cut her right up the arm. She would have bled out. Then the knife fell down and nearly chopped off my toes. Thankfully the knife didn’t harm either of us, and she learned her lesson about being patient.” – Junior Emma Washburn

“I was with my friends in fifth grade, and they were pushing me in a shopping cart, and a Corvette whizzed around the corner and didn’t stop fast enough, and it knocked the shopping cart over, but luckily I didn’t die… I just scraped my elbow.” – Freshman Sam Cook

“I was almost hit by a car once…or twice. Back when I lived in Virginia, me and my friends were messing around in the street, dodging the cars on our bikes and skateboards and what not. One time, I couldn’t get out of the way quick enough, so I had to jump off of my skateboard just in time. So the skateboard rolls into the street, the car comes flying past. The car misses me by a couple inches or maybe a foot. My skateboard however isn’t so lucky, and it just gets smashed.” – Freshman Brayden Feinberg

“Well, I was running along the Encinitas Golf Course, along Quail Gardens. I was listening to music and not really paying attention to anything. I was making a turn that opened up to the busy street, which is where I usually take my earphones out. I was completely stupid and didn’t take them out. Then I ran in to the street. I looked up and saw a car zooming right towards me. I jumped back and saw it pass three feet from my toes.” – Sophomore Kyra Benowitz

“I was swimming, splashing around and stuff, when a big current came and hit me. I wasn’t expecting it, and I lost my balance. My head was kind of bobbing above the water so I yelled out for my dad, but he wasn’t really paying attention because he was talking to my uncle like two miles away. I was under the water, and I was really scared because I couldn’t get out of the water. I was six, so I couldn’t swim that well. Plus my lungs were starting to burn, and I got even more afraid, and I froze up. Eventually my dad came back and noticed I was in trouble, so he scooped me up and we left the river.” – Freshmen Magdely Benitez

“We were using the GPS in the car, and the GPS completely got our address wrong and when my mom tried to turn the wheel we almost ran right into someone’s house.” – Freshman Lily Nguyen

“I went into Costco and I had a sample of orange chicken at one of the little stands, and it was too hot, and I swallowed it whole, so I started choking, and the lady who was doing the samples had to do the Heimlich on me.” – Junior Christine Giovannoni

“I almost hit someone’s car once and I felt like I was going to die, because I was going kind of fast – like 60 miles per hour fast — and I suddenly hit the brakes. It was kind of scary but I gave the person a thumbs-up to show that I was safe.” – Senior Suvin Rajapakse.

“I got in a car accident because the guy in the other car got a seizure. I saw him having a seizure in the other car and he was like shaking madly and he was like foaming at the mouth. He hit off our car and rolled into the bushes and we had to go over and like save him.” – Senior Eric Henline

“When I was 10 years old, my backyard had a trampoline. One day people came over and there ended up being 10 teenagers on the trampoline, including me, when they decided to bounce all at once. They started the count down, then all jumped, when two of the teenager’s knees gave out so they fell, but they fell on me, which caused me to fall off the trampoline, which was four feet in the air, onto the ground.  When I fell, I landed on my neck; this caused me to be immobile for about 15 minutes.  My parents then took me to the doctor and they said I was ok but I had to wear a neck brace for one week, but I also had to stay inside my house for two weeks.” – Freshman Madison Blake

“Last year, every Friday my grandma would drive me to my volleyball practice. When one day we were almost to the place, and my grandma saw something in the road, so she decided to swerve out of the way of the object, but she swerved into the path heading straight for a brick wall. At the last minute, she swerved back onto the road, safely around the brick wall.” – Freshman Jordan Myrick.

“We were scuba diving in Mexico and there was this barracuda that ended up following us and it would like want to ‘try you.’ I mean it would try to bite you so we had to leave and swim super fast to shore.”  –Freshman Kristyn Stewart

“One time when I was about six or seven, I was in my pool and we had an inner tube, and I was sitting in the inner tube and my body kind of like folded in half and I went down the inner tube and then I stopped breathing and so my sister jumped in the pool and pushed me out and I was safe.” – Freshman Phoebe Henshilwood

“I’m deathly afraid of birds and every time I see one I think I’m going to die. So this one time I was in Costco eating outside, like eating food, and then this bird was coming close to my feet and then I started crying, like uncontrollably, and it kept coming closer and so we had to go inside and eat by the televisions.” – Freshman Destiny Gish