What's the scariest thing you've done?

Currently trying to sell house and negotiate buying a new-build. At our age, DH and I are suffering from such anxiety! Scariest thing I've ever done!

Also, aged 54, through default, as in because of my job, I did a Post Grad Certificate. I was terrified that I'd fail. It was done mainly by distance learning, only 3 X 1 week sessions at Uni, while working full time. Almost brought me to my knees. On the day that I handed in the final paper, after a day's work and being up half the night to complete it, I had such a headache that I had to lie in the car in the Uni car park before I drove the 45 miles home. I was very pleased with myself when the results arrived, though. DH was so fed up of me doing all the work, that he was very 'underwhelmed' by my achievement. That hurt!

Dare I say perhaps he was jealous? Or is that me being cynical? My partner can't bear to praise me, but I take that with a pinch of salt.

A few years ago I went on the Pirate Swing at an adventure playground. It was AWFUL ! I was too embarrassed to put my hand up for it to stop, especially as my DH and a friend were thoroughly enjoying it. I seriously felt as though I was going to die, the sensation was so horrible. Imagine my relief when someone else had had enough and the ride was stopped. PHEW!

W hat a brave lot you all are. I think Greyduster's Malaysian army story is the scariest. I've had the MRI scan which was scary as I hate enclosed spaces and I cough when lying down flat, so trying to breathe and not cough was hard. I was scared when years ago I had a cable car ride which I think was going up to top of Mt Tiede in Tenerife. Every time it hit a junction the car bumped and swayed and everyone screamed. I didn't think I was getting out of it alive.

Gosh, annemac, there are people on this thread that have done things I would run a mile from - including your cable at ride - and they mostly involve heights, which I am terrified of.

Crikey I too seem to have led a very tame life compared to most of you and haven't done anything adventurous in my 62 years although I've travelled transatlantic several times on my own for work which 15 years ago I'd never have believed I could do. Probably the most frightening time was being told I had a form of macular degeneration due to short sight and needed laser eye surgery to stop a raised blood vessel bleeding - my MIL had just lost her sight to age related MD so I was absolutely terrified I was going blind. Luckily I had an amazing consultant who did the procedure the next day and only have a small blind spot below the macular in one eye. I had to have an MRI a couple of years ago and kept my eyes shut the entire time in case I panicked - the noise in the machine was awful and drowned out the music in the headphones!

But, Greyduster, anything involving heights is easy peasy and not at all scary if you like heights, as I do. I enjoy a bit of showing off dancing across the walk of faith in a very tall building. But I'd scream my head off like a complete ninny if a cockroach ran at me, and I once spent 3 hours on a staircase with the front room door shut waiting for rescue when the cat brought a live mouse in

Galloping a racehorse across moorland. It was very fast!

I almost drowned off a beach in Thailand when I got caught by a rip-tide at sunset!! I truly thought my time was up and I was scared out of my wits. (I was saved by the Wonderful Man and a heroic Frenchman who managed to negotiate the rip-tide by swimming for ages, side-on to the beach, with me in tow.)

Other scares all include heights: abseiling, going up in a hot air balloon, climbing a mountain in Norway where the path was narrowed to a foot width due a boulder having fallen onto it and the drop below was terrifying. Another time we took a cable car in the Alps when the top of the mountain was shrouded in mist and we were told to return to the bottom as the car was closing due to it being unsafe! In Slovakia I was permanently scared to death walking in the High Tatra mountains - there were shrines everywhere to visitors who had died. Eventually I refused to go up a mountain ever again and I haven't done so for about six years.

But the scariest time in my life - the sort of scared that keeps you awake at night - was when my newest granddaughter was born at 27 weeks and for months afterwards her hold on life was so tenuous that I was scared I would never get to meet her. Last year I travelled to New Zealand to do just that and it will always be one of the high points in my life.

grannyactivist riptides are the scariest things. You were lucky there was someone present who knew how to escape it by swimming parallel to the shore:
m.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Riptide

I went to Outward Bound with the kids at school a few yea r s ago. I went down a very high, very long zipwire. ( nothing like that in the 50s when I was little.)

Wow, I had to climb a very, very tall tree up a ladder.Then stood on a platform with all the kids cheering and encouraging me......can't let kids down . The instructor couldn't push me , I had to choose to step off myself. HORRIBLE. Like being on a gibbet.

When I plucked up the courage it was so exhilarating and fast. (My TA a man ,quite a bit younger , chickened out.) Could never do it ever again.

Wot. My retirement came very quickly and very unexpectedly at 60. Scared the hell out of me at the time.

Driving on a motorway in Germany with 4 kids and a sleeping husband in the car. I suddenly noticed I couldn`t ungrip my hands from the steering wheel and couldn`t remember which side of the road was the `slow` lane . I have never been so terrified . Hubby woke up and directed me , we managed to pull over and he prized my hands off the wheel , my mouth was so dry I couldn`t speak and apparently I was white as a sheet . Needless to say I never driven abroad again and still get panicky remembering it .

Edit, I hope you've got used to retirement now and enjoy some of it!
F77, that sounds absolutely terrifying; thank goodness you weren't alone. I can just visualise it and it makes me shudder?

f77ms that sounds like my scariest ever thing which was driving through central Paris at 5pm on a Friday. It felt like being in the middle of a computer game with cars coming straight at us from all directions as we tried to cross "les places". I am convinced that's when my hair started to go grey! Nightmare!

f77ms what do you mean "couldn't ungrip my hands" - had you frozen in fear or actually frozen as in being cold? I just don't understand that

I had a driving scare too, f77ms. I came through under a bridge on a motorway, in the fast lane, to find a lorry had skidded round and was facing me up against the middle barrier. I said to my passenger 'okay, let's get round this' and did.....only then, a few seconds later, my hands froze up and I had to stop at the side.
Scary.
My passenger fed me sugary cherryade for shock!
After sitting there about 15mins, my hands worked again, and we went on.
Haven't been in the fast lane much since.

Driving test

Job interview

Not very interesting I'm afraid

The scariest time for me was coming home from work to find our home had been burgled and indeed ransacked. They had not only emptied all the cupboards, drawers etc, but tipped furniture over too. I cannot even begin to describe it !!
I was not scared about finding the burglars still in situ, I was terrified for our 2 beloved cats. I was crying as I clambered over the chaos calling for our 'girls'.
They did not appear at first, but eventually I found them hiding as best they could under the upturned furniture. They had not suffered any physical harm, but they were very traumatised and shaking dreadfully. It took a vet and hours of reassurance to calm them down as we tried to get things back to some semblance of normality.
I would never in a million years wish anyone any harm, but that afternoon, I did.
I just hope that what goes around really does come around.

Knowing I was leaving England for good. Selling up the contents of my home, packing trunks and suitcases for me and DD1 and leaving for Germany by boat and train. I was so glad to see DH waiting at Munich station.

grannyknot I think I was frozen in fear . Lorries whizzing past me on both sides and I couldn`t get into the slow lane because the terror had made me forget which one it was ! 3 little children and a 6 month old in the back and H had nodded off .

f77ms Sorry you found the Autobahn so terrifying. You were driving a right hand drive car and actually were sitting on the wrong side to judge the traffic. It is a common feeling for us when we drive on the right in the UK in our left hand drive car. But anything that happens on a motorway is scary.

Sorry I mean when we drive on the left in the UK.

Kind of a toss up... Probably driving through a forest in 2007 during Hurricane Kyrill.
Removing my own stitches after an apendectomy, placing each of them neatly on the bathroom sink, then hearing a highpitched whining. And waking up on the bathroom floor. I guess that comes in second.