Should have been dead

Everyone knows someone who should have been dead.
I have a friend who seems to have spent his life just missing the mark. He'll probably live forever. Death just keeps missing him. He was 14 or so, at a friend’s house (parents out of town) and on the phone with his girlfriend. His friend kept pointing the shotgun at him and he kept just moving it away. Finally he was fed up and told him to quit. You know what comes next. It's the anti drug campaign that was originally the anti-stupid campaign run under the title Small town boredom kills. The friend says “Its not even loaded.”And pulls the trigger blowing a hole through the wall next to his head.

My family is full of close calls. But I’ll just hit the majors.
Growing up my dad didn't want to belong to a gang, but belong to no gang and get beaten up. belong to the wrong gang get beaten up It was the 40’s and a rough neighborhood in Chicago. So he went to the local chemical plant and began to build bombs. He taught himself. He was good. Everyone left him alone. Life was good. All the little girls wanted to walk home with him. At 15 he blew himself up building a bomb in the kitchen. He blew up the entire house. It gets really gruesome after that. But obviously he survived.
When my precocious sister was 3 or 4 she climbed the apple tree, without anyone’s knowledge, although grandmother was supposed to be looking after her. She slipped on a branch and hung herself by the collar of her shirt. Mother was in the house and knew something was wrong. No. It was more than that, she knew what was wrong, though there is no line of sight from the house to the tree. Our mothers instinct was the only thing that saved her.
It was the only thing that saved me too. When I was being born my mother was pushing one way and the doctor was pushing the other. The Doctor was convinced it wasn't time. My mother (literally) fought him off telling him it WAS time and so I was born drowning.
Come to think of it, my mother saved her brothers life too. When he was in a coma, and everyone had given up she refused to. She fought with the family about them pulling the plug. She spoke to him every day. They had never been that close, yet she was more devoted than his wife and kids. Patting him and reading to him and talking non-stop. We all say he woke up because he couldn’t get away from her any other way.
My mother was a farmer. That’s really all I need to say. Farmers are the only people I know who think nothing of a person missing an appendage. Their life is nothing but daily dangers and a life full of close calls. But they don’t even see it that way. Her father (my grandfather) told me a great story once. He had taken the truck to go out with his friends on night. His dad was strict but trusted him to get home by curfew. So they were out hoot’en an a holler’en (I surmise they had even less to do in the middle of nowhere back then) and he missed curfew. So he is driving home on the old dirt and gravle roads as fast as he can, just a slippin and a sliding all over the place when he sees a glow in the distance. He realizes it’s a fire, and speeds up even more and ends up careening through a field. he said he reckoned he’d hear about the field but the volunteer firemen were, at best, 45 min away He gets there, jumps out and runs into the burning building. He saved people, pets, and a good bit of the house by hauling water up and furniture out, by the time the truck got there. It was about 4 in the morning when, singed, dirty, and tired he got home. His dad was up waiting to start the day. “You missed curfew” so my grandfather explains where he’d been and what he’d been doing. “If you hadn’t missed curfew you wouldn’t have been there. Joe told me that fire started after midnight. Now get cleaned up and I’ll see you by that stump were pulling today.”
It was a true story. He told me that story as a curfew warning/joke. But I just couldn’t get over the nonchalance of all of that.

I guess when danger is a lifestyle the only close call is the one that doesn’t miss.