re: What's the most pressure filled situation that you have ever been in?

quote:

---

I saw a shark snorkeling in key west

---

I had no idea sharks can snorkel!

Prob arming explosives for the first time. Not that there was any risk but just the nerves.

Decided not to pull out of your mom…you’re welcome

I went to Jamaica with a friend and in the hopes of finding an authentic reggae club off the beaten path, we happened to this place called ‘Reggae Bar’.

There no reggae to be heard. What we did get offered were underage prostitutes and every drug under the sun. They didn’t take too kindly to our refusals and we had to pay off some rather unseemly gentleman to leave us alone (one of which had dreadlocks older than me).

We thought we were in the clear, but once our money came out, a large group of degenerates were making their way up the stairs.

I gave my buddy the look (he was ex-Navy) and we hopped out the window and down the fire escape to the ground and high-tailed it out of there.

Heart didn’t stop racing for a couple hours after that.

Edit: never did hear any reggae

Moving half way across the country after I graduated for a Job and still having to pass boards before I could start working. Had exactly enough money left from student loans to last about 2-3 weeks past my start date.

Failing would have meant another $350 fee and 45 day waiting period. Would have been royally fricked if I didn’t pass those tests

I was probably 20 years old and was at a work party at coworker's house with about a dozen or more of us. We were all drinking and dancing. One of the ladies there had a husband who had recently gotten out of prison. One of my buddies was dancing with the lady. We were all friends from work. The husband drives up, and was pretty drunk and walks in while his wife was dancing. He pulls out a very large knife and says he is going to kill my friend. Everyone got out of his way, except me. My friend was trapped in the corner and I was the only one between him and this drunk angry ex felon. Everyone was pleading with him and he was really angry and crying like his wife had cheated on him. I told him man you don't want to go back to jail. It's not worth it. He said I am going to kill him, get out of my way. I said no one is getting killed. He started moving forward, and I yelled at him that he was going to have to go through me. I thought to myself, there's a really good chance I am about to die. I was a football player and wrestler in high school, but man that was a big knife and the man was bigger than me. My adrenaline was through the roof, but I remained focused on a likely dangerous fight and kept trying to reassure the guy that this was an innocent dance. No one else was closing in on the guy to help. They were all scared and just pleading with the guy. He finally just dropped to the ground and started crying. I knelt down and put my arm on him and just kept telling him that it was all innocent and his wife was not cheating on him and we are all just coworkers and friends. He put his knife up and calmed down and finally left with his wife. Within a month they were divorced.

I saved two kids lives back in the late 1970's. One was at a swimming pool, where I had to perform CPR. The other kid got hit crossing a busy street and I had to administer emergency first aid on some wounds and prevent her for going into shock. The second one was scary A.F. The first one came around pretty quickly.

Directing a live 10 o’clock newscast, we had just started a new system of rolling our own videos with an extra computer next to the director’s board. That was stressful enough because previously all I had to do was say “roll A” or “roll B” and another guy would start the video and I would take it.

Right before we went live the graphics computer went down, the person running that was responsible for all the titles and graphics for the whole newscast. On the fly I had to take the entire graphics package and put it on my computer so I could run it all myself.

So I was not only calling and punching the show which some stations use two people for, I was also running all the videos and graphics. Basically I had to do the jobs of four people at once and it was 60 seconds before we went live.

The control room was completely silent because everyone was aware of how much I needed to focus to pull all that off. In the middle of the A block the engineer got the graphics computer running again but I kept going because I was in such a groove.

Pulled off the A block seamlessly and no joke, everybody in the control room clapped when we finally went to commercial. Most focused I’ve ever been and you wouldn’t have noticed at home how stressful it was. Felt very accomplished in that moment.

quote:

---

Depressions is no joke. Glad it didn't get you.

---

Thanks, man.

Immediately before first ever time to do jury selection/voir dire.