Saving people from oncoming trains, dangling from chairlifts or just drowning face down in a pond, it’s all in a day’s work for the heroes next door.
And then there are the people who survive plane crashes, attacks by wild animals, cults, hijackings, tsunamis, serial killers, avalanches and just about anything else you can imagine.
Trawl around the website of the UK Guardian for long enough, and you’ll come across the Experience page in the Lifestyle section. Here, ordinary people are invited to share their unique life experiences, and while it only gets updated once a week, the stories make fascinating reading.
Saving a life or surviving a life-threatening ordeal will obviously be front of mind when it comes to relating a pivotal life experience, but the stories actually run the gamut from a man who chose not to speak for 17 years to a woman who didn’t know she was pregnant until she went into labor.
There’s even the guy who has played Big Bird on Sesame Street for 45 years. And they say there are no more jobs for life!
