The Times I almost died

There have been two times in my life that I have almost died. I am sure there are tons more where I narrowly escaped horrible injury and pain , but I can only think of two instances where I was inches/minutes away from certain death.

The first was in 2000 when I was flying to the States all on my own. I had just flown from Berlin to Frankfurt and I had some time to kill there. I met my Bishop in the airport and he let me go into the red carpet lounge with him and we ate the free fruit and cookies they had there. My plane arrived and I went to go check in and everything, but when I got to the counter, they handed me a bunch of extra papers and took my passport for more screening. I was intrigued because this had never happened before, so I asked why I had to fill out so many forms. The guy behind the counter told me that one of the passengers just in front of me had been pulled out and arrested because he was carrying a bomb. A bomb! Luckily they found it and pulled him out. I still think about it. I wish I could have seen him get arrested or have been sitting next to him on the plane before it took off or something. Then it would be cooler. But I still was pretty close to being pulverized.

The second story is all my fault. I was a counselor at Scout Camp the year I turned 18. I taught archery at the far end of the camp property, and very few supervisors walked by there because it was about a mile away from anything else other than the rifle range (even though we only had BB guns). Classes had finished one day and I was unstringing bows and putting them away. I often had extra time before lunch so I would go and shoot for about a half hour, and that day, I decided to shoot for a while after I cleaned up all the other equpiment. I shot and then got bored and decided to do trick shots. This, of course, was where I started making bad choices. I shot at angles and with my left hand and with my eyes closed, but then I started wondering how high I could shoot. I was using the heaviest bow we had a camp which I think had a 35 pound draw, which isn't really powerful but it was a recurve. I walked out into the range and shot straight up and watched it for a few seconds, and then I realized that I needed to get out of the way, so i ran under the canvas tent that was set up for the classes and waited. It was then that I heard whistling and saw my supervisor walking up the path towards me. I panicked and realized I needed to look natural, so I put down the bow and thought that if I walked out the the targets, it would look like I wasn't doign anything stupid. Right when I take a step out from under the tarp though, I heard a quiet fwisssh and a splat and I looked down while I kept walking. The arrow had buried itself by my left foot in the mud after missing my shoulder by 7 inches. If I was half a step over, it would have gone right through my heart into my intestines. That would have been ugly and unfortunate. I was shaken up for about 10 minutes but I don't know that I really learned a lesson. I mean, I did in as much as I know logically that I shouldn't do things like that, but I don't think you really change or learn a lesson until something has been taken from you.

Which really stinks for me.