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Near Death Experiences
March 10, 2005 at 11:33 am AST by Rodney MacLeod

I have had a few near death experiences. Well maybe they are not all that close, but I like to think I have cheated death a couple of times.

One of my most memorable was a failed attempt at cliff jumping. There is a place called Sea Cow Head on PEI where many people go to cliff jump. I have a cousin that lived down the road from this cliff and took me a little ways down from the main cliff to a place I believe they called The Bee Hive. The tide was out, but there was still a fair amount of water at the base of the cliff, but you did have to jump out a few feet, because there were rocks right at the foot of the cliff. My cousin had made a few jumps while I sized up the situation. After a number walks up to the edge and back I finally decided to go for it. There was not much room to run, so I took my four or five steps sprinting, but changed my mind. This is where I learned about inertia. I body in motion tends to stay in motion. Although I had stopped moving my feet at the edge of the cliff my body kept moving forward. I went over the edge and fell on a ledge about five feet below. I then rolled off of that ledge and finished the rest of the 20 foot fall into the water narrowly missing the rocks below. I walked away without a scratch.

Greenwich beach is the site of my next death defying act. Frank, Dennis, Ben, Dwayne and I all went up to Greenwich beach for the first time one blustery day. I do not know what time of the year it was, but the beach was empty and there was no lifeguard. The waves were rolling in and breaking into a white froth. Dwayne, Frank and I thought it would be great to go out in the water for a bit. We had planned on just going out to our waist and jump around. As we were out there longer and longer we did not realise that we kept going out deeper and deeper. We were out over our waists now, and waves would crash over our heads. When the water surged it would come up to our necks. We wisely decided to go to shore. The three of us started swimming with little progress. Almost as fast as we could swim the rip tide was pulling us out. Dwayne and Frank managed to out swim it and make it back to safe water up to their knees, but I was now over my head. I was actually closer to shore, but had swam over a hole that the undertow, or riptide had created and I could no longer stop to take a break from swimming. I knew the way to escape a riptide was not to swim against it, but I was not about to give up yet. I pushed further with one more burst of energy and swam past the whole to put my feet down on sand waist deep in water. From here it was a easy wade to sure with the waves having less impact on my escape.

When I was two years old a tumour was discovered in my left eye. I underwent surgery that would lead me to receive the nickname Glasseyerod. Unfortunately due to my young age I have no recollection of this event and have no story, but if any of you know my parents they maybe able to tell you the details of it.

Other near death experiences would include:

• Crossing streets without looking both ways


• Falling down stairs


• Pulling out in front of a tractor trailer on a trip to Moncton


• Losing control of a car on icy roads


• Sticking the end of an adapter that was plugged into a wall in my mouth because I needed a free hand


• Having a crumbling cliff almost fall on top of me (twice… in the same day)


• Having the vent I was crawling through 20 feet above a concrete floor buckle under me


• Jumping into semi-frozen swimming pool in the spring (I thought I was

going under the ice, but it turns out in was not that deep).