[Itse]

I drive a cab for a living, so I've propably had more than a couple close calls, being that I sometimes have to drive very tired and in pretty extreme weather, but no serious accidents yet. Then again, I drive a Mercedez and I always wear my seatbelt, so I'd have to crash pretty bad or get really unlucky to actually get killed. Anyway, nothing car-related comes to mind, I guess I'm just used to that stuff.

I do remember one time when I was about 20 I was walking through the center of Helsinki talking with a friend about something (I seem to remember it was either blues or existencial crisis), and suddenly he just grabs me hard by the shoulder to stop me. Had he not done that, I would've walked straight under a tram. Weird feeling, didn't even have time to get scared.

Another very memorable incident was when I was about 15-17, and coming home from school. A huge snowstorm had started while I was at school, and so it was no surprise the bus was pretty late (15-20 minutes by the time I got on and propably almost half an hour when I got off). Getting off the bus the wind was blowing snow around so hard I remember checking that at times I couldn't literally see my hand two feet away from my face and there were no sounds whatsoever (except propably for the wind). But at times I could see fine, it wasn't a long walk, I was dressed well enough, and I knew every inch of the way so I wasn't worried. Then I remember the snow suddenly blowing even harder than usual, everything going totally white and there was this weird muffled sound a little like rumpling paper.

The road home went about a hundred meters alongside a long four-story building, and as the wind eased for a second, I saw that all hundred meters of that road was covered with the top of that building next to it.

I had already heard earlier that the same storm had blown some ceilings off somewhere, so I wasn't actually that surprised, propably just looked at it like "well that's something I've never seen before", and just started walking right past the debris. Then I remember someone running from somewhere and screaming that I should get out of there, and that more stuff could still fall from the roof. I didn't really get scared then either, and it took me a few minutes to realize that if that bus had been a minute or two less late, I would've been right under that roof when it hit the road, and it very propably could've killed me. Weirdest feeling ever, really, as it was all very surreal, with all the silence and snow, and basicly no people anywhere (no surprise in that weather), and then I just got home and told my parents that "you know what? The roof just came off that building right next to us, it's right on that road I walk home every day", and I guess I was so casual about it that they never really thought about it twice. (The top of our building got blown off too in that storm actually. But it was really no biggie, since with the way the roof was built you really couldn't tell something was wrong except from the fact that the wind sounded different.)