8 Tiny Things That Stopped Suicides

7/27/2019 8 Tiny Things That Stopped Suicides

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8 Tiny Things That Stopped SuicidesBy:Christina H

August 23, 2011 316,484 views

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There are stories every day about some rescuer heroically stopping a suicide attempt -- breaking

down a door, scooping someone off a ledge or cutting a noose down with a ninja star. But

sometimes there's no strapping fireman or hero cop or friendly ninja, just one little silly thing

between life and death.

Something like ...

#8.A Kiss

The 16-year-old Chinese boy inthis storywas having a pretty shitty time. His mother was dead

and he was convinced his stepmother hated him, probably because she stole all his dad's money

and left the two of them homeless and scrambling to stay alive.

So he decided to jump off a bridge. The police came, and hundreds of onlookers gathered to

watch the show and not try to help at all. Then Liu Wenxiu, a 19-year-old waitress passing by,

saw what was going on.

She was a quick thinker and got past the cops by making up a story on the spot about how she

was his girlfriend and this suicide was over her. She didn't try to talk the boy out of it, but just

listened to his story and then showed him her scarred right wrist, which got his attention. Then

she told him her story about her equally shitty home life, and her own suicide attempts. "He had

to be saved," she said later, "because I've been there before and I knew exactly how it was."
http://www.cracked.com/members/Mortal+Wombat/http://www.cracked.com/members/Mortal+Wombat/http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-06/24/content_12767124.htmhttp://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-06/24/content_12767124.htmhttp://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-06/24/content_12767124.htmhttp://www.cracked.com/blog/8-tiny-things-that-stopped-suicides/http://www.cracked.com/blog/8-tiny-things-that-stopped-suicides/http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-06/24/content_12767124.htmhttp://www.cracked.com/members/Mortal+Wombat/


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FromWhat's On Xiamen

"Look at me," she told him. "I've been there and I'm now here." Then, knowing every 16-year-old

boy's kryptonite, she gave him a hug and kissed him.


In this state, he was more than willing to let the cops take away the knife he was wielding and

haul him to safety.


Later, they exchanged phone numbers and she promised to call him and check on how he was

doing. Though they probably didn't hook up due to their age difference, he may have realized

that killing himself would have taken away his future, which very possibly might contain sex. Ohyeah, and probably he also realized how he wasn't alone and other people knew what it was like.

But also sex.

Now if your take-away from this story is that you can threaten suicide in the hopes of getting a

girl to kiss you, that's clearly one possibility. But for every Liu Wenxiu, there's one ofthese

impatient assholesthat will actually help push you off the bridge.
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FromMSNBC.comDon't worry, he survived.

Are you a gambling man?

#7.A Sarah McLachlan Song

So DMC, or Darrell McDaniels, of Run DMC, was at the top of his game in 1997, on tour in

Europe, whenhe fell into an "Is this all there is?" funk. You people who have sold multi-

platinum albums or purchased Greek islands know what I'm talking about. It wasn't just a mild

feeling of something missing either -- he'd actually decided to commit suicide when he got

home.

Getty

You young kids do not even START asking who Run DMC was. Look it up.

As he was being driven home from the airport, Sarah McLachlan's song "Angel" started playing

on the radio. Yes, the song thatmanipulates you into helping abused kittens and puppies.

Anyway, they didn't have that commercial in 1997, so DMC wasn't thinking about how he should

adopt a dog, but how life was worth living after all.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30896807/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/passer-by-pushes-suicide-jumper-china/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30896807/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/passer-by-pushes-suicide-jumper-china/http://music.ign.com/articles/691/691277p2.htmlhttp://music.ign.com/articles/691/691277p2.htmlhttp://music.ign.com/articles/691/691277p2.htmlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gspElv1yvchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gspElv1yvchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gspElv1yvchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gspElv1yvchttp://music.ign.com/articles/691/691277p2.htmlhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30896807/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/passer-by-pushes-suicide-jumper-china/


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Getty

Although the two concepts aren't completely unrelated, as you'll see in entry #1.

He put away his suicide plans and just started listening to a whole lot of Sarah McLachlan. A

while later, he found out he himself was adopted, and finally life made sense for him. His

adoption had put him in the right place at the right time to meet Run and Jam Master Jay and

form Run DMC and resurrect Aerosmith by recording"Walk This Way"with them and all thatbusiness. And the point of this remarkable destiny, DMC decided (other than helping

Aerosmith), was for him to use his street cred to promote adoption and help foster kids.

As part of that mission, he asked Sarah McLachlan to recorda "Cat's In The Cradle" coverwith

him, telling her the whole story of how her music changed his life. Turned out she was also

adopted. Hell, maybe that's why she wants people to adopt cats and dogs.

So instead of killing himself, now DMC is helping foster kids and listening to a lot of Sarah

McLachlan music.

Anyway, something to think about next time you make fun of a friend for listening to music "for

pussies."

#6.A Firing Pin

Now I don't know a lot about guns, and gun parts, but I gather that the "firing pin" is a part of

the gun that makes the gun fire. This is important, because whenJoe Sanders, a soldier worn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0Fl2MnV5Yhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0Fl2MnV5Yhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0Fl2MnV5Yhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU19xA8h3FQhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU19xA8h3FQhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU19xA8h3FQhttp://www.army.mil/article/39171/http://www.army.mil/article/39171/http://www.army.mil/article/39171/http://www.army.mil/article/39171/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU19xA8h3FQhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0Fl2MnV5Y


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down from the stress of fighting in Iraq and the recent news that his wife was leaving him, put

his M-4 carbine to his chin and pulled the trigger, thefiring pin was missing.

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

I couldn't pick it out. Also I'm pretty sure this is the wrong gun.

His roommate, Albert Godding, walked in and found Sanders panicking, asking where his firing

pin was. Godding asked him exactly how he happened to discover it was missing, at which pointSanders put two and two together and broke down. Godding had heard his roommate talk about

killing himself earlier that day and quietly removed the pin.

I'm not sure what Godding's plan was for if Sanders didn't try to kill himself before he went back

on patrol or whatever, but the point is that instead of dying, Sanders went to see the army

counselor, got a lot better and is engaged again.

Apparently it's a big problem for a lot of soldiers to ask for help, since as manly men, they

should just be able to rip a truck in half whenever they're down, and feel better. That's probably

why Godding felt like he had to do the pin trick, since just asking his friend to open up about his

feelings probably wouldn't have worked.

Getty

"What's wrong, buddy? I just want us to share about feelings. That's your favorite thing, right?"

But not everybody knows where a firing pin on a gun is, so I think it's a good idea for manly men

to try to ask for help. At the very least, it will save your family from breaking your gun when they

are trying to find the firing pin.

#5.

A Massive Pile of Garbage
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/12/army-suicides-grow-but-this-soldier-was-saved/http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/12/army-suicides-grow-but-this-soldier-was-saved/http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/12/army-suicides-grow-but-this-soldier-was-saved/http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/12/army-suicides-grow-but-this-soldier-was-saved/


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Apparently, last winter there was a huge snowstorm in New York, leaving conditions so shitty

that nobody could pick up garbage. Bags of garbage started to pile up on the curbs and all the

Febreze in the world couldn't do a thing about it. Serves them right for living in a place where it

snows, is what I say. Sensible people prefer to take the risk of half their state falling into the

ocean.

ByUSGS,via Wikimedia Commons

Wheeeeeee!

Anyway, hard-luck story Vangelis Kapatos, dealing with a nervous breakdown and facing

eviction,jumped from his ninth story apartment and happened to land right in one of those

massive piles of garbage, saving his life. Keep in mind this was still a nine-story fall. He was

taken to the hospital in critical condition -- but still, he was alive.

It's nice to know that after hearing the story, the city's papers were able to find just the tone

needed for such a bleak, tragic story of human suffering.
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CapitalNewYork.com

All class.

licked his ear.

He opened his eyes and found Cheyenne, the puppy he had adopted a few months ago, staring at

him with her head cocked to one side. Now I can tell you that it is very hard to go through with

the action of killing yourself when a puppy is looking at you.

Getty

I'm not suggesting you test it out, but I mean, that feels about right, doesn't it?

"Who's going to take care of me?" Sharpe imagined the dog saying to him, even though she was

probably saying, "I'm hungry." Or possibly, "Is it not OK to lick your ear? Is that one of those

'boundaries' we talked about?" But Imaginary Cheyenne Voice had a good point, and Sharpe put

the gun away.

Later, he found out he could talk to the dog about everything that had happened to him, without

lashing out or feeling defensive or worrying about being judged. He could talk about the

survivor's guilt he felt without being told he shouldn't feel that way. The dog might lick her

genitals occasionally, but she'd never blurt out some kind of well-meaning but infuriating cliche.
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See, this doesn't happen.

Not only did Cheyenne save Sharpe's life, but Sharpe is saving other lives by startingP2V, a

program to hook up pound dogs with traumatized vets, so someone else can have their face

licked when they're putting a gun barrel in their mouth.

FromP2V

Or preferably, before that point.

The moral here is not to go around giving puppies to depressed people, becausesurprise gift

puppies are always a bad idea. The point is that a person is driven to suicide by a whole bunch of

different things, which build a wall around them, piece by piece, until the last piece falls into

place and the wall is sealed so that there's no way out. Sometimes we look at all the problems

that build up someone's wall of hopelessness and think there's no way any of the insignificant

things we could do would be able to take it all down. But to break the illusion of there being no

way out, you don't need to take down the whole wall, you just need to make one crack in it. One

puppy lick, one phone call from Laila Ali, one corny song, one Internet stranger, one old

Australian guy asking if you want to come in for a cup of tea.
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Getty

Just one ray of light.

And one crack in that wall might be all it takes to turn things around and begin the long, tough

job of tearing the whole thing down.

Documents

8 Tiny Things That Stopped Suicides