Part of having an awesome life experience is having a realistic view of death. Death can come anytime, I’ve learned that in my own life a few different times now. Perhaps many of you have felt the sting of the death of a family member or friend. Here are some common but often overlooked things that will kill you before you know it.

1. Coconuts. As I was driving along a road full of coconut trees I remembered a little known or talked about fact. More people die as a result of coconuts dropping on their head than die from shark attacks every year. So, this is #1 in my list to kick things off. I believe it’s true as I’ve seen them hit the ground from 40 feet up a tree. I don’t really remember looking at coconut trees much in Florida or Hawaii, but the ones here in Thailand have monster coconuts that must almost weigh as much as a bowling ball. One clunk from 10 feet or so and that would be it.

2. Choking on a morsel of food. I was eating those long squiggly noodles the other day, instant noodles I’ll call them so I don’t use a brand name. I realized about mid-way through that I wasn’t chewing them at all, just kind of feeling them in my mouth and swallowing the fork-full. I had a brief thought about choking to death on noodles. You can choke to death on a teaspoon full of water, so why not soft noodles?

The problem with choking to death is that often times there’s nothing you can do. It gets caught in your windpipe and you can’t even cough. If someone doesn’t notice something is wrong with you it’s possible you die right there after you pass out. In this case, if you ever notice you are choking and can’t do anything – bang the table and point to your throat. Hopefully someone gets the idea and bear hugs you from reverse with the Heimlich maneuver. Or, you can jam the back of a chair into your diaphragm to try to expel the air. Don’t be shy about it – you might only get one or two chances, throw yourself on the chair.

3. Lightening. I lived in Tampa for 10 years. Tampa is lightening capital of the WORLD. There are more strikes per square mile there each year than anywhere in the world. Not sure why that is – but I believe it’s right on the money. In 10 years I saw lightening hit within 100 yards of me about 6 times, once within 20 feet of me. When I counseled people with traumatic brain injuries I worked with a man that was hit by lightening twice. He was 6’7″! When it rained he’d hide in the restroom at his mobile home. Twice I had to sit with him there and talk him through it.

4. Heart attack while swimming. There are more of these in Thailand than I can believe. It’s very often that tourists are found floating face down in the water, dead after having a heart attack from exerting themselves while swimming. Swimming is a VERY strenuous exercise, one of the best things you can do to improve your health, but also one of the worst if you’re not ready for it. Even swimming 30 yards will elevate an unfit heart to dangerous levels. Swimming is nothing to mess with!

5. Asthma. You might only have it a little bit. I do. I developed it at around 21 years of age while in New York City. My brother has it in a bad way, so I was prepared for it. Mine wasn’t consistent. I’d have a bad day a month or maybe 2-3 days a month. The rest of the month – no problems. Then when I moved to Hawaii – asthma was gone. Then when I moved to Tampa – it returned. In Tampa I almost died from an allergic reaction to Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup if you can believe that. I was home alone and had finished up some pancakes when things went horribly wrong. I called 911 and they got there just as I was passing out from not being able to breathe. Take asthma seriously, even if you have it a little bit.

6. Shock. Some people are more susceptible to this than others. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about it. Anything shocking, but usually something very traumatic – a car accident, a traumatic injury, exposure to cold or heat for an extended period of time. Shock shuts down your body, and eventually your mind goes with it. This is a real concern in the case of heat exhaustion.

7. A fall down some steps. Even a small fall from a standing position straight on your head, you know, in case you hadn’t time to put your arms out to catch some of the force, is enough to do it. Most days I climb 1,237 steps to the top of a hill here at a local Buddhist temple. The view is incredible and it’s a lot more fun to climb the stairs as exercise, meeting people from around the world than it is to run around an asphalt oval at the sports park. The steps are very uneven in steepness, surface, and they are more like a concrete ladder than steps a lot of times. I’ve slipped twice on the steps in 275 times of climbing them. I haven’t seen a tourist fall down a flight of them. I hope I never do, but the odds are… well, I hope I don’t see it. Once someone starts falling, it might be 30 or more steps before they were able to stop. IF they were able to stop. You have steps in your home?

8. An angry boyfriend, husband, or friend. Really, crimes of passion among people who know each other are very common. You may never know when you’re scraping like a cheese-grater on a person’s last good nerve. Or, just as bad, you might know and not take it seriously enough. Each of us hides a lot from the general public. People with a lot of problems hide a hell of a lot. There are plenty of psychotic and generally mentally ill persons in the USA, I know, I counseled many of them. Sometimes I talked them out of killing others. Really, it’s common.

9. Allergies. Yeah, those things that the nurse tested you for when you were 8 years old by pricking your back with a tiny amount of 120 substances that typically cause allergic reactions. Unfortunately they didn’t prick me with A. J. pancake syrup or jellyfish toxin.

I was snorkeling in Maui as I did most every weekend for two years and this one time I got a nasty sting on the inside of my left thigh. It left a road-map of chemical burn on my skin that stayed for over a year. After it stung I noticed that, while the pain was incredible what was more disconcerting was the way I was almost passing out. Apparently I was allergic to the toxin in the jellyfish. Who would’ve guessed? I’d been stung by Portuguese Man O’ War in Hawaii countless times while bodyboarding and never had any reaction other than the usual pain. Allergies are so deadly because you probably won’t have any idea you’re allergic to something when the reaction to it overtakes you. Otherwise you’d have avoided whatever it was, right?

Oh, I almost forgot. Here in Thailand’s northeast the thing to do is to eat fried scorpions. The big ones are about 7 inches from head to tail. I wanted to do some video of me eating a variety of bugs and things, like the Thais’ do here. I chose a big scorpion to eat last. All the bugs went down easily and even the scorpion went down fine. I finished filming and went running at a park. Well, before I knew it I was hallucinating, panting, salivating and having a lot of trouble breathing. I walked calmly back to the motorcycle and drove back to the room where my girlfriend took me to the emergency room. They kept me overnight and all turned out well. But, who’d have guessed that I was allergic to even the cooked venom in the scorpion? Not me!

Video – me eating fried scorpion that almost killed me >

Video – me in hospital as a result of eating fried scorpion >

That’s what I came up with. I didn’t want to go over the usual killers like electricity, auto accidents, spiders, snakes and things because most people are very aware of those and take great care to avoid them. Who thinks about dying as they walk down a flight of stairs? While snorkeling on vacation? After eating pancakes with maple syrup?

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Best of Life!

Vern
I don’t know even one thing in Hawaii that if you ate it, it would kill you. ;)

One of those awesome experiences in life, totally awe-inspiring and shocking to the core of your being is coming close to being struck by lightening.

I had one of those experiences yesterday. In fact, it was the COOLEST experience of my entire 41 year life! I’ll tell you why in a moment… Almost getting struck, or getting struck and being OK must be the ULTIMATE experience as it turns your entire body into pure adrenalin. You are wondering if you’re dead…

When I lived in Hawaii there was not much lightening. Usually storms did NOT have any lightening. In Florida – and especially the Tampa area, it is the lightening capital of the WORLD. There are more strikes per square mile than anywhere in the world. I regularly saw lightening strike so close to me that there was very little gap between the hit and the thunder clap (< 1 sec). I counseled a man in Florida (for a traumatic brain injury center), that had been hit by lightening 2 times. He was 6′ 7″ and over 280 lbs of muscle. He cowered in the bathroom when a thunderstorm came during our session.

The closest I came to being hit in Florida was while I was in Miami and attending the university. I was carrying my laundry basket toward the laundry room 10 meters away from my room in a pouring rain. It was so hard I couldn’t see more than 10 meters in front of me. I was half-way there when a bolt of lightening struck the laundry room (a clothes dryer, actually) and the earth shook with the noise. I was dropped to my feet in an instant, on my knees. I say “I was dropped” because there is no way in the world I could have a reaction that fast because it was as if I dropped at the exact time the lightening struck. No gap. I layed there in the rain puddle afraid to move an inch for a couple minutes, not believing lightening never strikes the same spot twice. I washed my clothes the next day!

The vehicle I was in on the way from Tampa to Pittsburgh was struck by lightening once. Anyone ever had that happen? The vehicle was a large jetliner that was flying right through the worst turbulence I’d ever experienced on a plane and I’ve had well over 100 flights.

I was sitting at the window seat immediately behind the right wing. My girlfriend at the time was pretty scared, she was no stranger to flying, but this flight was NUTS, passengers were crying and occasionally someone would scream or curse something when we hit bad pockets of turbulence that would have sent us crashing into the ceiling of the plane were it not for the seat belts.

The sound of the lighting striking the plane was as if someone was standing on the wing and hit the metal with a 100 lb sledgehammer – if someone could swing one VERY fast. The entire plane shook or steadied – it did something different from what it was doing, hard to tell. The lights went out and there was this aweful and very loud sound like the groan of a capacitor sucking up the million volts or so into safety coils so we didn’t all die. It was the sound of death for sure.

When the strike hit, the entire plane was quiet as death – because that’s what we thought we were about to experience.

But, within a few seconds everything revved back up – including the engines I think because it seemed like they turned back on. Emergency lights went on and we all were still VERY quiet despite the same turbulence throwing the plane around.

My girlfriend was locked onto my entire left side. If I would have stood up, she’d have been FIRMLY attached. She had a death grip on me. She asked me, “Were we just hit by lightening?” (she hadn’t seen the flash on the wing like I did).

I said, “No, I think the rain is just really heavy.” A BAREFACED lie, but anything to calm her. In fact, not many saw the strike but everyone heard and felt the result.

Well, we lived through it and it was one of the most awesome (scary) experiences I’ve ever had. THE scariest?

But those things were in the past… Yesterday’s experience was something novel, something so extraordinary… and an AWESOME experience, not a negative one…

I was at the top of a mountain and taking photos. The sky was incredible and I had already seen a rainbow in a small rainstorm and took many photos of that. Seeing a rainbow (‘roong’ Thais’ say) is quite a rarity in Thailand!

I had been up at the top for a couple of hours, planning to meditate but on this day it was cooler, the sun wasn’t out full-force and I was plagued by mosquitoes at the spot I wanted to sit. Then the clouds started to change around the 360-degree view and I was happy taking photos. The sky started to grow into one massive storm. There was lightening once every 10 minutes or so. The rain was far away, about 4 miles I’m guessing. The lightening was sometimes as close as 2 miles, but not closer (counted to 10, 1 sec = 1/5 of a mile away).

I was taking photos of the storm (see top pic) when, DURING this photo a strong lightening bolt struck far away, toward the center of the storm and my entire body tingled as if God reached down from the sky and touched me. The hair on my entire body stood up and my skin “tingled” all over…

You know if you put your hand on the glass of an old TV screen and turn it on – you feel that charge and it makes you tingle? It was similar to that, but multiplied by a few factors of 10.

At the same time I felt this incredible sensation I heard the various antennae around me humming (for lack of a better word). I couldn’t move. I was asking myself for about 10 seconds, am I dead now? I was looking at my feet for a body – you know, like I could see it if I was already dead and separate from it! My mouth fell open and I just stood there looking around. One other guy was close to me (10 meters) and was doing the same thing as me… just looking around in an obvious state of shock. He too had felt the awesome power of the lightening bolt miles away.

There was a Buddhist monk and some girls from Denmark that were further away, maybe 30 meters and they didn’t feel it. There were some tourists climbing down the steps that I met up with (because I was getting down QUICK) that said they didn’t feel it either.

Feeling that energy – that charge that made my entire self vibrate, was the most awesome spontaneous experience that I’ve ever had. It was even more incredible than seeing the Northern Lights or bodyboarding a monster wave. I think what made it so cool was because I was totally unprepared for it, and because it really made me wonder in the most profound and truthful way… “Am I dead now?” I was actually considering that question…!

Best of Life!

Vern