How brave are you? AKA: What was the most daring thing you've ever done?

[jpcher]

I just watched this video:

http://themavesite.com/wp/videos/devinsupertramp-worlds-most-insane-rope-swing-ever#respond

and thought No! Way! Uh.Uh. Never! would I ever try anything like that.


Then I started thinking about the most daring thing I've ever done . . . Sad to say, I got pretty much nuthin'

I think that the most daring thing that I've ever done was when I went on an around-the-country-month-long motorcycle trip with a man that I met only 3 months before the trip. I kept thinking, what? Am I stupid? I just met the guy! He might turn out to be a wacko or something! (He became my LDH. It was an awesome trip!)

I'm a pretty sedate person, happily living in my own environment.


Bungee jumping? Or parachuting? Or what these people are doing in the video? Yeah, I think it looks like awesome fun, but I just don't have the guts to do it.



What about you? How brave are you?

[JenJay]

Moving from my tiny town with a population of 1800 to the suburbs of LA a few months after graduating high school. That's where now-DH was stationed. I had no job, no apartment, no furniture, etc. Our families threw us a going away/wedding reception and the cash we received in gifts paid for our uhaul rental and gas to get down there. Definitely the bravest leap of faith this girl ever took!

Other than that I'm not much of a risk taker!

[katycoo]

I'm in both of these photos (somewhere ):

[MorgnsGrl]

I'm in both of these photos (somewhere ):

That's so cool! I saw the documentary about Spencer Tunick's work and think he's really creative and interesting!

[otterwoman]

I was a photo major in college. I shot nudes. One week my models were sick, so I was my own model. I then had to show the photos to my entire class.

[katycoo]

I'm in both of these photos (somewhere ):

That's so cool! I saw the documentary about Spencer Tunick's work and think he's really creative and interesting!

It was a LOT of fun to be part of - but definitely a strange experience!

[Softly Spoken]

I take an advanced acting class and this quarter our instructor is having us all do sexual scenes. No nudity but intense language, and "suggested adult situations." I get to strip down to my cami and roll around with this guy in bed. Weird and funny and awkward in rehearsal...when we have to do it in front of strangers it will be scary as heck!

I guess this is what you get when your instructor asks you what you want to get out of the class this time around and I say "I want to push my boundaries."

The most daring thing was signing up for the class in the first place (my first monologue ever was of a girl losing her mind in an asylum), and each quarter I get to be a little braver.

[CrochetFanatic]

I'm not much of a risk taker, especially when it comes to heights.  Though when I was about four, I used to get the tire swing going as high as I could before hanging upside-down and letting my hair brush the ground.  My mother finally caught me in the act, punished me in a way that I thought was severe at the time but was probably mild in retrospect, and made my father take down the swing.  Now, looking back, I cringe at how easily I could have broken my neck!

[Outdoor Girl]

I'm losing my nerve a bit as I get older but I currently do a somewhat 'extreme' sport and used to do another.

I downhill ski and up until last year, I regularly skied the black and double black runs at my local ski hill.  I don't do moguls or glades.  Now, I'm in Ontario so this isn't like doing black runs out west at the big resorts but for a 40+ year old woman who has only been skiing regularly since 2005 and is about 80 lbs overweight, I think I'm doing pretty good.   

I used to whitewater kayak.  For those of you who've been rafting on the Ottawa River, I've kayaked that, except for the very first rapid - my skills weren't up to skirting Phil's Hole or taking the raft route down the tongue of the Hole.

Because of the above two sports, I've had a few people think that I must want to try parachuting.  Not a chance!  The only way I'm parachuting is if the plane is going down.  Sure, whitewater kayaking is dangerous but at least I can control my own fate, to some extent.  With the parachuting, I have to depend on the fact that someone else has packed the 'chute correctly and even with the controls on the 'chute, I don't think I would have as much control as I have with my paddle in the 'yak.

[PastryGoddess]

Jumping out of a plane strapped to someone else
Bungee jumping
Cave diving in Mexico

I will never do any of these things again

[Amara]

Going on a one-person caving tour when I already had a sense that being underground was NOT for me. I was the only one to sign up that day for the three-hour tour of crawling through an underground cavern in California's gold country (though they had tour groups that took the "stand-up" one). I had to wear overalls and heavy-duty shoes.

Now you may say no big deal. And that would be true if I did not have a genuine phobia about being trapped underground. I own books about deep caving and cave diving and deep wreck driving--I must like to scare myself--and I can feel myself panic as I read them so imagine what I felt when about halfway through the trip we had to crawl and scrawl and crunch ourselves and our day packs, pushed ahead of us, to get beneath and around some rocks to the next place where I could at least kneel.

Even writing this out makes my heart rate skyrocket and my breath to become very rapid. In other words, I am re-feeling the same panic I felt at the time. I had to, literally, fight back nausea and the urge to start screaming while I forced myself if not into a state of calm at least one of non-hysteria where I wouldn't claw the instructor to death.

Last year, when my employer tried to move me into another department that was underground--the offices were under the theatre and the entire downstairs was composed of giant cement blocks--it didn't come as any surprise to me that I quickly relived that awful experience.

Does anyone else remember that one episode of the original Mission Impossible where Barbara Bain's character was captured by what were strongly implied to be the East Germans? They discovered that her fear was the same as mine and used it to try and get her to talk. It's the only episode I do remember, and it still makes me shiver to see (in my mind) her crawling through that air duct. (And there were other incidents between that one and the tour where I had hints that I did have this phobia so I admit to being surprised at myself that I signed up for the tour so blithely.)

[ladyknight1]

Physically daring? Whitewater rafting, rollercoasters

Other: Moving halfway across country by myself, going back to school with classmates less than half my age

[Piratelvr1121]

When I was about 13, I went to King's Dominion with a camp and up till that point I'd been terrified of rides that went upside down.  There was a pirate ship that not only swung back and forth but went upside down and I finally said "Oh what the heck!" and went on it.  Going on a roller coaster that went upside down was another thing but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I still don't like the super duper looper in Hershey Park.  Unlike other rollercoasters with loops, it only has a lap belt and something that goes over your knees instead of a harness like most have.  I feel like I'm going to fall out when it goes in a loop.

I haven't gone skydiving or bungee jumping but I get quite a thrill from ziplining and parasailing. I don't know if that's really brave though since I'm not afraid of heights. 

I felt more brave when I finally stood up to my father and refused to let him bully me.  Mind you I was shaking like a leaf once he left (and called dh saying I was crazy) But it felt good to be finally at the point where I could stand firm and refuse to give into his bullying and manipulative tactics.

[doodlemor]

The "brave" thing that I did was also probably pretty dumb, at least by today's standards of safety in schools.

A little boy came up to my desk first thing in the morning and put a **hand grenade** in the middle of the papers, and told me that his uncle had brought it home from the South Pacific.

I picked it up very quickly, and swooped out the door and down the stairs to the principal's office.  The staff there told me that the principal was not in that day.  I told the secretaries that XXX had bought a grenade to school that day, and I was leaving the grenade on the principal's desk, because I couldn't have it in the classroom.  They gave me rather startled looks as I went back to my classroom as quickly as possible - teachers can not leave children unattended. 

I found out later that day that the school's 2nd in command person had just called the child's mother to come and get the thing, and she did.

In later years I would probably have handled this much differently.  I do think that the police should have been called to get the thing and do whatever police do with stuff like that.

[amandolin]

Among other things, I've managed to jump out of a perfectly good airplane 300 times and land safely each time, drive across the US alone with no plan of action other than be home in three weeks, even though I'd never been away from the east coast of the US,  and travel to volunteer in a foreign country for a few weeks during summer break--all of the above despite being almost painfully introverted and not daring at all. Thankfully I don't think too much before doing.