It must be something in the water…

Or the air…

My own mortality has hit me squarely between the eyes recently. Nothing like a couple of weeks in the hospital to change your outlook on life—not to mention taking a couple of needed tons off the old body while you’re at it.

Don’t get me wrong when I say this—I’ve spent much of my life consciously or unconsciously challenging death and, were it not for a fine frog hair here or a quite undeserved piece of luck there, I admit that I should have been destined to taking the eternal dirt nap some thirty years ago.

I survived my crazy kamikaze driving days having a wreck every four to six months to become one of the safest drivers in Georgia, not having an accident in the past 20 years and not being involved in one that was my fault in 25 years.

I survived walking into a restaurant robbery in progress with three college friends in January 1979, had a 12 gauge shotgun pumped in my back and the barrel of a cheep revolver broken off the frame on the back of my hard head, and lived to recount the story. It (the story) has been worn quite thin through the years—thus the reason I never mentioned the event before here on the blog.

I’ve done a number of other things that would be considered impossible when our country was formed and things that have killed much greater men than I. Things like piloting a light airplane all by my lonesome, scuba diving with hundreds of sharks and to depths over 120 feet, and captaining a 23’ boat on all day trips out of sight of land in the Gulf of Mexico—only to return home to live another day.

I’ve also done the hardest things I think that a human being is ever asked to do—bury a parent. My father died on Cinco de Mayo in 1996, and I’ve never celebrated Cinco de Mayo again.

I also don’t spend much time writing about it, but check out this amazing posting over at my Cuban blog idol Val’s Babalu Blog.

Tell me that doesn’t grab you right here (pointing to my chest) …