We all know that life is filled with obstacles that are often daunting. But nothing compares to the feelings you get when in danger. This can manifest in various ways, such as discovering a fatal illness, being aware of a potential accident, or making a mortifying mistake in public. These situations often make us feel paralyzed with worry before our brains can decide what to do next.
My most significant “uh oh” moment was when I finished taking a vital exam at school. That’s when I noticed that my calculator was not set in degree mode.
It had been in radian mode the entire time I was writing. It soon dawned on me that every answer I had calculated and written down during the test was wrong. Story Credit: Reddit/ GagUserEver
I panicked when the oral surgeon exclaimed, “Whoops!” while he still had a scalpel inside my mouth.
It’s not something anyone would want to hear with such a daunting object that close to them. I soon discovered why, as he had accidentally cut my gums on the opposite side of my mouth. I was okay, but it still made for an unpleasant experience. Story Credit: Reddit/ Needlegaladviceasap9
I was expressing how displeased I was with my mother to my wife when I realized that I had sent the text message to my mother instead. I did not doubt that she wouldn’t let this mistake be forgotten, knowing full well that she would remind me of this embarrassing moment for as long as she could. I felt like a terrible person. I couldn’t shake the regret I was feeling afterward. Story Credit: Reddit/ 3xTheSchwarm
2017 was the year that I underwent a biopsy of a thyroid nodule. The medical team told me they would email me if the results came back as non-cancerous. I received a call from the clinic six days later, and my stomach sank as soon as I saw the caller ID. But the call was to tell me that the results were benign. I will officially be cancer-free for two years this coming Saturday.
My family and I are greatly relieved. Story Credit: Reddit/ MadamNerd
Admitting something like this is quite embarrassing, but my most significant “uh oh” moment was when I had left for vacation without clearing the food away that I had left on the kitchen counter. We returned five weeks later to find the entire table infested with worms.
I admit it was my mistake. However, I made up for it with all the cleaning I had to do. Story Credit: Reddit/ BoneCraftSrbYT
I am a pre-kindergarten teacher and work with children around three years old. The most significant “uh oh” moment in my schooling career was when I realized I had seven children following me when I normally have eight. I panicked, thinking the worst. I would be in serious trouble.
However, the confusion was only temporary, and I remembered carrying the eighth in my arms. The mornings can be hectic despite how fun it is to teach young children. Story Credit: Reddit/ Lockshala
I left my wallet in the back of an airplane seat. I had only been working my new job in the corporate office for a week. Everything was in my wallet - my new company credit card, driver’s license, personal credit card, and $100 cash. The airline took a month to return it to me, which meant I had to explain to my new boss that I had lost the company card within the first week of my new job. What made the situation worse was that the card had a limit of $30,000.
Despite how challenging the experience was, everything worked out in the end. Story Credit: Reddit/ eyebrowshampoo
I brought my son to the medical clinic because we had discovered a lump under his arm. When we arrived, the doctor quickly examined it and immediately recommended we go to the emergency room. He also assured me that we would not be charged for the visit. Later, we were informed that my son had stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
We are relieved that he made a full recovery. We were shocked by the situation’s urgency and the gravity of the diagnosis. However, we were grateful for the prompt attention and care we received. Story Credit: Reddit/ gumball_wizard
My “uh oh” moment happened when I noticed my barber was having a seizure while cutting my hair. He cut my ear with his scissors multiple times in the process. I am relieved to know he is now in good health, but he had to give up hairstyling.
He was cautious to avoid similar incidents from happening again. The experience was shocking and traumatic for both of us. Story Credit: Reddit/ RaziPrince04
I was taking a shower and the shower control broke off as I was adjusting the temperature. Not just the handle, but the entire mechanism that controlled it. Hot water came gushing out of the wall, and there was no shut-off valve for it. The only way to stop the water was to turn off the main valve for the whole house.
Story Credit: Reddit/ Back2Bach
I kept feeling leg pain and foot numbness, but all the orthopedists and podiatrists I saw said it was from having flat feet, so I tried not to worry. So one day, I was coming home from getting lunch and I was wearing those big, platform, orthopedic flip flops. I stick my key in the door and all of a sudden realize that something is very, very wrong. My left leg feels like it’s missing. Like, data deleted, no longer there, nothing.
I toppled over and cracked my ankle because of the flip flops. Thankfully, the feeling in my leg came back just in time for me to feel the hideous crack and almost vomit all over my doorstep from the pain and shock. It was utterly terrifying, but not as scary as when the doctors finally figured out what was wrong. It turns out that I had a huge tumor blocking my spinal canal. Story Credit: Reddit/ beepborpimajorp
I’m an archer. My biggest “uh oh” moment was when I once shot myself in the hand by mistake. I was tilting my bow too far to the left.
The arrow slipped off and I let go of the string anyway. Luckily, I was very young at the time, so I was only trusted with using training arrows. I did get a cool scar from the experience, though! Story Credit: Reddit/ Antillyyy
My wife was out of state at a funeral one weekend, leaving me at home alone with our one year old daughter. I walked out of the kitchen on Sunday morning to find a terrible sight. Our baby was drinking a bottle of infant Tylenol. I have no idea how she got to it, or how she managed to get the “child proof” cap off of it. For reference, a child-size dose is only supposed to be three milliliters. Cue me having an enormous “uh oh” moment before calling poison control with an E.R.
nurse on hold (while also frantically trying to put my shoes on). Story Credit: Reddit/ rawbface
I thought I had sprained my ankle. However, two days later, it swelled to about three times its normal size and started to turn black. As it turned out after I finally got it checked out, I had actually broken my foot in six different places. The only appropriate word I can use to describe the whole experience with is “ouch!” Story Credit: Reddit/ always_carry_towel
I was running laps around the football (soccer) field, and looked down for a brief second. The blur of my moving feet looked kinda cool, and so I stayed looking down watching it for a few moments. In retrospect, that was not a good idea. As I moved my head to look up, I caught a split second glimpse of the goal post before running into it face first.
That was when I had my “uh oh” moment. I immediately went to the hospital and had to live with a black eye for the next few months. Story Credit: Reddit/ GreedyGoose1
While I was driving home at night one evening, I’d had some food for lunch that didn’t agree with my stomach, and I started to feel a sudden onset of the rumbles really really badly. So, I pulled over at a McDonald’s, tried to get in to use the toilet, and saw that the door was locked even though the sign on the outer door said that the dining area was open until 10. I looked at my clock and it was about 9:55. I immediately realized that there was no way I could get to any other toilet in time, and I had my “uh oh” moment right then and there.
Story Credit: Reddit/ ElToberino
I was once driving south on 95 through Virginia. A car was doing over 100 and I followed it, but from really far behind. A cop car was hiding in the median in the trees. He came flying out and almost sideswiped me. We caught each other face to face for a second.
That was my “uh oh” moment. I thought he would definitely pull me over afterwards, but thankfully he just went after the first guy. But it was so close to us clipping each other at high speed! Story Credit: Reddit/ meta_uprising
My biggest “uh oh” moment was when my husband was driving me to the hospital to give birth. It was such a mindblowing moment. That’s when I realizing that it was the last moment we would ever have with just me and my husband. It just suddenly hit me and sunk in that the next time I would go home I would have a real live baby with me.
Story Credits: Reddit/ foxlei
I had my biggest ever “uh oh” moment when my bloodwork came back. My doctor stared at it for a long while, then said something I’ll never forget. He put his arm around me and whispered, “I’ll pray for you.” I had never heard him say or do anything remotely like that before. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.
I guess it would be kind of ironic in a story about my doctor being unnecessarily ominous if I disappeared and neglected to mention that I was okay now. I’m just chronically ill and on lots of medicine, but nothing close to as bad as what he thought I had that day. Thankfully, here I still am several years later and I’m not dead! It turned out that I have autoimmune diseases that they mistook for some kind of blood cancer, because everything about my blood was just wrong. Nevertheless, the doctor scared the pants off of me very badly. Story Credit: Reddit/ Upvotespoodles
I was in high school and my boyfriend was once driving me to work in the middle of a snowstorm. It was really slippery out and we were in a tiny car. At one point during the drive, I looked up and suddenly saw a full size truck with a trailer behind it coming directly towards us. It made a left turn in front of us and there was clearly no way that we would be able to stop in time. I said “uh oh” and fainted just before our windshield got turned into a spiderweb.
Glass landed all over my head and body. I woke up briefly in the ambulance once, and then woke up again for good in the hospital. I had a constant headache for almost a month from that point on. It was absolutely terrible to go through. Story Credit: Reddit/ eirttik23
When I was little, I thought it would be a great idea to bite down on two Jolly Ranchers. This idea promptly got my teeth stuck together and I could not open my mouth no matter how hard I tried. As you can imagine, this meant that I couldn’t ask anyone for help. Realizing this was definitely my “uh oh” moment, and I was trying not to lose my mind. Then, I took some deep breaths and slowly licked the candies until my teeth finally came apart.
Story Credit: Reddit/ laurence-lea
When I was in the Army, my “uh oh” moment came while we were doing our “specialist” training. Mine was tank driving. We all got into one of our old Cold War era training tanks and took turns taking “knife edge” training. Knife edge training is basically learning to balance the tank on a knife point on top of a hill. Anyway, Trooper Monkey (not his real name) took his turn to drive the tank after all 7 of us had passed the test and he was the last one left to take it. We all sat in the back of the tank listening in while Monkey full powered up the hill. As he got to the top, he let go of the left stick and the weight of the tank suddenly shifted to the left and clipped a stone or rock on the hill.
The tank started to pivot and then roll. My instructor then started yelling “We’re all screwed!” followed by the sound of a “BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG!” We rolled four times down the hill and, luckily, landed the right way. The instructor said that if we had landed upside down then the weight of the vehicle would have collapsed the hull and killed all of us inside. Without a doubt, that was the most terrifying day of my life. Story Credit: Reddit/ Vonclausehitz
My biggest “uh oh” moment was finding a painful lump in my private area. When I made that discovery, I thought that I had cancer for sure. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a tiny and harmless growth that had gotten irritated somehow. I went into the doctor’s office expecting to come out with one less body part. Instead, I came out having gained a new one!
Story Credit: Reddit/ decoy1985
My “uh oh” moment came when I was walking down my staircase holding a knife, then suddenly tripped and fell down the stairs. The next thing I know, I’m lying on my back and the knife isn’t in my hand anymore. I look down my body and it appears as though the knife has stabbed into my private area. I immediately sit up, already crying and panicking, only to realize that the knife is just resting against me and that I haven’t actually castrated myself.
Story Credit: Reddit/ afcur
Last year, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw four men standing at the foot of our bed. They had guns that were pointed right at our heads. As horrible as that already was, the single most terrifying moment of that entire night was yet to come. It was when my seven-year-old son ran into the room because he’d heard the commotion. The intruders started strangling him with a towel in an effort to keep him quiet and he passed out.
When they turned him around, he was completely blue-grey in the face. To call my reaction an “uh oh” moment would be a tremendous understatement. I thought my kid was dead. Luckily, though, when all was said and done, we all survived unharmed. Story Credit: Reddit/ TroublewithReality
I was once biking down a short but steep hill, doing around 30 MPH to keep up with traffic. All of a sudden, the driver about three cars ahead of me stops abruptly at a crosswalk. I lay onto my brakes but feel my wheels start to slip. That was when the “uh oh” moment kicked in. I instantly had that sense of time slowing down to the point where I could make reasoned and considered decisions, even though in reality the whole thing lasted just a split second. Looking ahead, I realized that I could either run into the car ahead of me, attempt to shoot the gap between the cars and the curb but also risk hitting the pedestrian on the crosswalk, or I could go down on the grassy verge. I decided that the last option looked best for everyone, but then realized that there was a tree in my way.
I managed to roll into the fall so that my shoulder and rib cage took the impact. I didn’t even hit my head. I ended up a little battered, especially since I jammed my pinky into the ground, but after sitting around to recover my breath I managed to ride home not too much the worse for wear. I had no broken bones and I only had to take one day off of work, though it was a while before my finger wasn’t sore and stiff. Story Credit: Reddit/ CocktailChemist
My “uh oh” moment came when I was getting prepped for an emergency C-section and heard my daughter’s heartbeat getting slower and slower on the monitor. Someone in the operating room turned the machine off right as they were getting ready to put me to sleep, and I freaked out thinking that her heart had stopped. It was terrifying getting knocked out and not knowing what I would wake up to. Thank God I woke up to a healthy baby girl.
Story Credit: Reddit/ justjenm
Back in the day, my wife and I bought our first house. It was a major fixer-upper. I was trying to fire up the furnace, wriggling through the crawl space under our house. Then, all of a sudden, a small movement just past the furnace caught my eye. It was a huge bobcat. His eyes were fixed on my arm, which was extended towards him at full stretch while working with the pliers. He was about four feet away from my hand, and his back end was making that little wiggle that cats do just before they launch themselves. I instinctively jerked my hand back but, in so doing, I seem to have inadvertently clenched down on the pliers and ripped out the gas valve. A spring or something hit me sharply in the nose. My elbow hit the flashlight, making it go out. I was in total darkness with a bobcat.
The wide open gas pipe blew a cooling jet of natural gas directly into my sweaty face. I was trapped. I was on my belly in total darkness, beside a panicked bobcat, a wide-open gas line, and a live flame. Right around then was when my “uh oh” moment kicked in. You don’t forget moments like that. I started to feel around with my left hand and found the remains of the gas valve. I stuck my finger in it and stopped the leak. When I got the flashlight back, I saw that the bobcat, thank God, had left. With him gone, I fixed the gas valve, lit the furnace, and got out of there. When I I finally crawled out from under the house, and my wife said “Did you know that a gigantic kitty cat ran out from under the house while you were working? I think you scared him off!” Story Credit: Reddit/ garycarroll
The single most shocking moment of my life was when I was pregnant and getting an ultrasound. The ultrasound technician abruptly asked my husband and me a question. “Hypothetically, would either of you start screaming if I told you that you’re having twins?” As soon as I heard that, the only words I could muster up the strength to utter were “uh oh!” Story Credit: Reddit/ camuhkazi In order to protect the privacy of those depicted, some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed and are products of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.