Bonus Days

I was just wondering if anybody else here is on "Bonus Days" -- days after an experience where you should have died, but didn't. I've been a member of the Bonus Days population since 1979.

Anybody else?

If I should have died then I would have - therefore no such thing as bonus days.

There have been a few things I have done on purpose that could quite likely have killed me - like falling off a 50ft cliff on my mountain bike. But it didn't kill me, therefore it was obviously not my time.

All IMHO ofc.

Interesting question... this is the first time I have heard of the 'Bonus Days' concept.

There are several times that I very easily could have been killed, mostly in motorcycle accidents. This explains why I no longer own or ride motorcycles, even though riding them was one of my favorite activities.

I think the key is defining just how close one has to come to being killed in order to qualify. There's potentially everything from "... I really thought my wife was going to kill me, for sure, when she found out I bought another flashlight..." to the story about the WWII pilot who was separated from his plane when it was shot down, and survived the fall to the ground with no parachute - seriously injured but surviving what should have been 'certain death' somehow because of how he landed and what he landed on... don't know if it was true or not, but the story was certainly spread far and wide in print. I read about it as a boy in the 1960s.

So I think the entire question revolves around exactly what constitutes "should have died."

KD5XB said:

I was just wondering if anybody else here is on "Bonus Days" -- days after an experience where you should have died, but didn't.

Click to expand...

I will never say I "should" have died but I do now awake grateful for every single new day that I greet after an experience where I nearly died.

Not sure if this qualifies but I hit a pothole at 37 mph on my bike in the mid 1980s, and amazingly ended up with only road rash.

I think if you dig deep enough everyone is living on "bonus days", either because of some event which didn't kill them, or perhaps their ancestors. My maternal grandmother survived the 1908 Messina Eathquake ( one sister also survived ), for example, and my paternal grandmother survived the 1918 influenza ( everyone else except one of her brothers, and her father, died ). So in a manner of speaking, all of my days, and all of my parent's days, are bonus days.

You fell off a 50 foot cliff on a mountain bike - on purpose?

amigafan2003 said:

There have been a few things I have done on purpose that could quite likely have killed me - like falling off a 50ft cliff on my mountain bike. But it didn't kill me, therefore it was obviously not my time.

All IMHO ofc.

Click to expand...

Here's where I first learned of the term -- and the experience is somewhat similar to what I did.

I think I have been on "bonus days" since Jan 9, although technically I have been dead, I flatlined after a heart attack. It took 3 hits with a defibrillator to get my heart going again and I was rushed to hospital for a stint. I should be good for a while now.
So 10 days and counting here.

Between dialysis and a failed kidney transplant (9.5Yrs) I've been hanging around for an extra 19 Yrs.
Norm

Are there 'bonus days' for 'bonus days'? I'm looking back at my Skydiving chute malfunction in 96', the various white water rafting hydrolic traps, and getting caught in the killer rip-tide off Lake Michigan in 2004' (still not sure how I got out of that one).

...And then there's the countless forgetting to unplug the AC side of the power supply while testing a new circuit. Now, my cats just look at me funny when I pick myself up off the far side of the floor; 'opposable thumb was supposed to make you smart, eh'.

Glad to hear so many of you made it through medical emergencies.

Malfunction? I had THREE reserve rides in 80 jumps. It was probably a good thing that I moved to a place 200+ miles from a DZ!

My Bonus Days initiation had me below 500 feet at terminal with a hard pull on the reserve!

On bonus days here, too, several times over.

Maniac showed up on my doorstep with a gun and said he was going to kill me and all the people I lived with, then did his best to make good on his promise.

Waking up in the back of an ambulance to find out that I'd passed out on the couch in hypoglycemic shock, and the only reason I woke up at all, ever, was that my wife couldn't wake me and used a Glucagon pack on me.

Motorcycle crash that put me in the hospital for a week, limping and in pain for the rest of my life.

Suffice it to say that I treasure every day I wake up on the breathing side of dirt, and a million times more every time I think of my wife.