As much as some people hate to do this, sometimes ‘listening’ to someone else can save their life. These people share the time someone refused to listen to their advice and it ended badly for them. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Brand New Motorcycle
“There was a young lady, who worked as a barista at our local Starbucks coffee shop. She had a boyfriend who had just bought a brand-new motorcycle. I asked her about it.
Her: ‘It’s a Japanese sport bike.’
Me: ‘How old is he? How long has he been riding motorcycles?’
Her: ‘He’s 19 and a new rider. He wants to take me out for a ride this weekend. I’m so looking forward to it.”
Me: I’ve ridden motorcycles for over 40 years, and I advise you to please not ride on the bike with him.’
She seemed like a really smart girl and was open to listening. I let her know that modern sports bikes and young beginning riders are a bad and dangerous combination. My advice to her was to support her boyfriend and encourage him to take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider course but to not ride with him until he had spent a couple of years learning how to safely control a powerful, lightweight sportbike by himself.
Two weeks later, I saw her again at Starbucks.
I asked, ‘How are you doing?’
She appeared very sad and distressed. She said her boyfriend did go riding that weekend with several other friends, but that she told him she wouldn’t go riding with him, as I had advised.
Unfortunately, he crashed and died. In this situation, my warning to this smart young girl resulted in her avoiding a tragic disaster. Something very bad happened, but not to her”.”
The Steep Hill
“Way back in the summer of 2001, my best friend and I were hanging out at another friend’s house. Her house was on the state line between Connecticut and New York. Literally could walk to NY by walking to the end of the block.
We just finished eating Dominos and watched ‘The Beach’ and the Japanese version of ‘Shall We Dance.’
Two movies were too long to be sitting in a house on a beautiful summer day, so we ventured outside. I was a skater back then and devoted my last 3 summers to skating every day until the sun went down. My other friends picked it up as a hobby and had much less experience than I did.
Anyways we walked to the end of our friend’s driveway which was at the top of a hill, seeing how steep it was. I decided to go down on my board coffin style as it was way to narrow to carve and simply too steep. I made it down a quart of the hill until I lost control and slammed into a mailbox. I walked away with no injury but didn’t dare try again.
My best friend grabbed the board out of my hands and claimed, ‘I’ll do it standing up!’
I stepped in front of him and told him, ‘No! It’s way too intense!’
He then snapped the board back into his hands and agreed.
As soon as I stepped away from him, he dropped the board and went down the hill. This behavior was unlike him. As our other friend and I stood there watching, said, ‘He is gonna fall bad.’
Well, I was right he ended up getting the wobbles as he didn’t even attempt to carve and was bombing the hill. When he fell he landed directly on his temple. I ran down while my friend grabbed her dad. When I got to him he was out cold and bleeding out the ear.
Now us being up at the state line and the severity of the situation an ambulance was gonna take to long, so we jumped in our friend’s father’s car and drove him to the hospital. Long story short he cracked his skull and from just seeing him recently he told me that the doctors claimed if he didn’t bleed out his ear he would probably suffer brain damage.”
“It’s Been Smoking Like That Forever”
“I had gotten a job at Dairy Queen and I couldn’t keep from noticing how blackened, crusted, and smoking the ventilation duct was in the ceiling over top of the grills. I began to observe this more closely as time went on, and I brought this to the attention of the manager. Then I mentioned it to the supervisor and co-workers.
All of them said the same things, ‘Oh it’s okay. It’s looked like that and has been smoking like that forever.’
I warned that if not cleaned and maintained, I believed it was going to catch fire.
It was just a part-time job and after a couple of months I moved on to a better full-time job, but not without a final warning about the grill ventilation and that one day it was going to catch on fire.
About two to three weeks after I quit my job and I was at my new job, I heard terrible news. I went to Dairy Queen to look for myself, and sure enough, the place had burned down to the ground. No one got hurt.
The cause of the fire?
You guessed it.”
“My Ex Wasn’t The Angel Everyone Thought She Was”
“When I separated from my first wife, she moved in with her best friend and her husband. I cautioned her best friend that it would cause problems, as my ex wasn’t the angel everyone thought she was. The friend and her husband merely rolled their eyes.
A couple of months later, the friend and her hubby were fighting about when my ex was leaving to get a place of her own. The hubby wanted her gone. He reached out to me over some beers and I repeated what I had told them before. He agreed with me.
Fast forward to the six month mark of our separation. Her friend got called into work. She made it a mile down the road when she realized she forgot her lunch, so she went back to get it. As she walked past the living room window, she saw it. Her husband and my ex were having sex.
My ex was kicked out that day, and she and her husband struggled to heal the marriage. They miraculously worked it out, but the trust had been banged up pretty badly. They literally ended up being roommates until the day her friend died of cancer. Not spouses, not lovers, but roommates.
Not a good way to have a marriage.”
House Party
“In 2016 near the beginning of my semi-rebellious teenage years, I attended a house party. I was the designated driver that night while my friends got drunk.
It was a wild night. Some random guy went up to my very intoxicated friend and me and said to my friend, ‘I’ll give you 2 bottles of vodka, a blunt, and some shrooms if you let me have your friend for the night.’
My friend pushed me towards the guy offering me up! I declined. I wasn’t having a very fun time at the party, so I asked one of my friends if she’d come to my car with me.
We were sitting in my car when I saw a cop stroll by. My stepdad at the time was a cop and told me sometimes cops scope out parties, wait a bit, and then bust the party. So I texted my friend who was still down there how I saw a cop, and next thing you know, a swarm of people started running up the hill.
Once they saw there was no cop, they all went back down to the party but I insisted we leave. We went to my house for a little bit and my friends begged me to go back to the party since nothing had happened yet. I fell into the trap and told them we could only stay an hour because I had to be home by midnight.
About an hour or two later, my very intoxicated friend decided he wanted to stay at the party. Three people carried him up the hill and into my truck. I start driving off, only about 3 mph when my friend jumped out of the car! At that point, I was fed up and left him there.
A few hours later, the party was busted and made it on the news the next day. My friend’s dad (the owner of the house) was thrown in jail on federal charges.
Many people got in trouble and one guy was so drunk, he broke into somebody’s house and slept on their couch.”
The Mushroom Incident
“At the family dinner table years ago, a dear family friend gave us mushrooms she’d picked in her yard.
I said, ‘I don’t want to eat them. They might be poisonous.’
Both my father and mother scolded me severely. They said, ‘X is a dear friend. It would be very impolite to refuse to eat them. You are paranoid — she is not trying to poison us. If you don’t eat them, we will punish you severely.’
When I argued against it, they replied, ‘STOP THE BACK TALK!’
Then they started to eat them, and said, ‘They are delicious!’
I, however, picked at them.
Fast-forward two hours, my parents are in the hospital, narrowly escaped death (with the help of a stomach pump). I was in my twenties then.
The ambulance doctor said, ‘You’re younger and didn’t eat as many thank goodness. You don’t need to go to the hospital — just vomit into the bathtub for a few more hours.’
The next day, the doctor asked my mother, ‘Who gave you those poisonous mushrooms?’
My mother didn’t want to ‘tattle.’
Doctor: ‘If you don’t tell, we’ll get the police to make you tell. Your friend may unwittingly give others the poisonous mushrooms, or decide to eat some herself.’
So my mother told before anyone else, so far as I ever knew, got poisoned.”
The $20 Vaccine
“I’m a vet tech so my job is a lot of not telling people I told you so, but, ‘Spay your dog otherwise they’ll get pyometra. Keep the cone on or they’ll lick the sutures open. Don’t feed your dog McDonald’s or they’ll get pancreatitis.’
The most recent one was for a client with a little Yorkie, who I’ll call ‘Max’. He came in for the core dog vaccines of Da2pp and Rabies, however, my area has had a rash of Leptospirosis cases, a spirochete that lives in the urine and feces, particularly of wild animals like raccoons and skunks. It causes acute kidney failure within two weeks of picking it up. Three diagnoses and three deaths in one month make me offer it to everyone getting vaccines.
I offered the client the lepto and explained why. He was a great owner and loved Max with all his heart as did his family, but he said he’d have to ask his mum, and come back and get it later.
I said, ‘Fine, no worries.’
I knew Max was a well-loved little dog.
Two months later, Max came in for lethargy and what do you know, Leptospirosis. The owner looked like he’d been punched in the guts. I’d never seen so much regret. He apologized to me for some reason as if he could take it back.
The entire family was in the clinic weeping and begging, ‘What we can do for him? Do they do kidney transplants in dogs? What if we pay you 25k? Make Max better, please, whatever it takes!’
The good news was that with three weeks of fluid therapy and he came pretty good but wow, a 6k bill vs a $20 vaccine.”
“There Should Always Be More Than 1 Person Observing Swimming Lessons”
“The first year I started teaching for this one particular school, I was given Extra-Curricular swimming.
I’d taught swimming before, so this was fine, but I soon realized that I needed another pair of eyes. Because I’m a male teacher and most of the students were grade 4 girls. Also because one of the students (Davin) could not swim at all (special needs) and was only comfortable in the kiddy pool, whereas the rest of the students swam in the larger pool.
For weeks and weeks before I got some help, I said, ‘I need another teacher to help me!’
Eventually, thankfully, I did (a female teacher). Not two weeks later, one of my grade 4 boys, playing as boys do, pushed Davin into the big pool. Into the deep end. Davin cannot swim. So Davin started to panic and thrash around. Thankfully, I saw this, swam quickly over (I was in the pool), and lifted him from under the water. There were lots of tears and wailing, but he was safe and well.
The following teachers’ meeting I told the teachers what happened – not for glory or praise for saving the boy, but that it happened so quickly, and that it can happen.
The HOD (head of directors) was away that day, so I later told her of the event and reminded her there should always be more than one person observing swimming lessons. I think I was ignored/humored.
The next year, during a P.E. swimming lesson (taken by the PE teacher), it was grade 3’s turn to swim. About 5 of the students were feeling a bit unwell, so the homeroom teacher stayed with them in the classroom while the swimming lesson took place.
He was timing individuals as they swam. Apparently, a group of girls, after their turn at the timed swimming, were waiting in the shallow end of the pool. There are a few conflicting reports of what happened next, or how it happened, but a girl drowned.
The PE teacher was watching/timing an individual swim, so his eyes were not on those girls. He was on his own. She would probably be alive now if my warning had been understood.”
Fireworks Gone Wrong
“When I was 8–10 years old I was playing with my brother and a cousin. We were running around and such. It was Christmas. In this country, it is a custom that children (of any age) play with fireworks around Christmas, not just sparkly fireworks, but also the kind of fireworks that can blow your hand off. And it’s all allowed by the parents. They are the ones that buy the fireworks.
They are like, ‘Here my babies, take this pack of mini bombs and go and play, but be careful, try not to blow your hands off!’
At the time we weren’t playing with fireworks because we had already run out of them. So we were playing tag instead. But we could hear a lot of fireworks explosions, other children were playing with fireworks outside.
So, we were running around, when suddenly I saw a bright orange light from the corner of my eyes. I looked at it and noticed it was coming from a window on the top floor of the neighbor’s house.
I said, ‘Wow, look at those Christmas lights, they are amazing, look how bright they are.’
Then my brother said, ‘Christmas lights? It looks more like something is burning inside, right?’
So we thought, ‘Oh no,’ and went running to tell my dad.
He was watching TV in the living room.
We said, ‘DAD! DAD! DAD! The neighbor’s house is burning!’
Him: ‘“Burning? Are you joking?’
Us: ‘Yeah! burning! there’s a fire in the window!’
Him: ‘Stop joking! Go and play.’
Us: ‘Why would we joke about that!?’
Him: ‘…’
Us: ‘HEY!’
He kept watching TV and ignored us. For some reason, he didn’t believe us, maybe because our cousin was a bit too mischievous and liked to play jokes on people, or maybe he was too entertained watching TV. But he didn’t believe us.
We were really angry that he didn’t believe us. So we told him, ‘FINE! Keep watching TV, but if that house gets burned to the ground it will be YOUR fault!’ And we went back to play.
After a while, someone knocked on the door, and my father went to see who it was, it was one of the neighbors who lived in that house. He told my father his house was burning and asked him if they could use the water from our subterranean water tank to put out the flames.
For some reason we have a really big subterranean water tank in our house, which looks more like a bunker than a water tank. They knew because they used to play there with my dad and his siblings when they were kids as if it was a pool).
Apparently, they were all on the bottom floor, that’s why nobody had noticed. They called the fire station, but here the fire stations are just a joke, they called just in case.
My father let them in and went to the water tank with them. On the way, he passed by us playing and asked us: ‘Why didn’t you tell me that their house was burning?’
Honestly, at that moment we all three looked at him as if he was the dumbest man in history. ‘WE JUST TOLD YOU!’
Then they proceeded to take water from the tank and carry it in buckets to the top floor of the house over and over again until the fire was extinguished. The bottom floor was fine, but the top floor was completely burned. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.
Half an hour after the fire was put out, the firefighters arrived, and everyone proceeded to laugh at them, like always, laugh at them like the joke they are. They took at least one hour to put the fire out, so, since they were called they took almost 2 hours to arrive.”