Recently I recalled the causes, which could have or should have killed me. The following experiences, along with my years of early-life sufferings, which would have driven many people insane, have given me great insight, which cannot be learned any other way. However, I am not only very sane, I am also full of zest for life. And I am still running. Literally and in many other ways.
Therefore I am absolutely convinced that God has protected, guided and blessed me. And my spirit is soaring.
The following is the list of could have, should have died experiences, which I have been able to recall, in a more or less chronological order:
Heat stroke as a baby:
Because we lived with someone who suffered advanced tuberculosis, my mother wanted me to have a lot of fresh air and sunshine. She often parked me on the sill of a window, four stories up and opening to a slate Mansard roof. Once a little too long. I was cooked. She would write me years later, that I was a beet-red baby, and a doctor had saved my life.
Middle ear infection as a baby:
This rotted out the hammer, anvil, stirrup, eardrum in my right middle ear. Along with a chunk of my skull bone. My behind-the-ear-body-piercing makes me cool, and I should get a copyright to this method of piercing, so copycats won't copy.
After my eight-day high-fever-brain-frying experience, little Nazi bureaucrats finally gave my mother permission to let me into a hospital. A surgeon informed her that I was almost dead.
Years of ear infection:
Caused by continuous neglect of this whats-left-of-it-ear infection, and by my frequent swimming in dirty water. For years, I had a little artesian spring of stinky pus running out of my ear. I needed two surgeries to remove this wild meat, proud flesh. But you may still call me Meathead.
Multiple fire bombings:
It was not a good idea to live near airplane, dynamite and aluminum factories during a war. I still remember being in at least two different bomb shelters and huddling in a basement with other people.
Diphtheria:
A painful bacterial infection that causes fever and difficult breathing. In severe cases it can cause death by asphyxiation in three or four days. It kills one of every ten patients.
I still have documentation that my little brother and I spent twenty-six days in a hospital. But this was a good place to be, because thats when our apartment went up in flames during a bombing raid.
Whooping cough:
Some babies cough so hard that they turn blue in the face and vomit. Or die.
Machine-gunning from airplane:
While my mother, little brother and I were walking towards a steel bridge in a neighboring village of the city of Regensburg, where a Messerschmidt airplane factories was located, bullets from above were zinging off its steel trusses.
Ammunition train blowing up:
I watched this fiery event, and I think without adults in my presence, on the opposite riverbank about two or three hundred feet away from me.
Tuberculosis:
I lived in two different residences with infected people. One of them had pus oozing out of a sore on her cheek. Shed often wipe it with her twiggy fingers and smear herself around door knobs and other convenient places. Like I from my little artesian spring.
Food poisonings & E. coli charged environment:
During several years of nation-wide starvation, and years thereafter, I frequently had to eat moldy and semi-rotten food from waste piles and other delicatessen sources. Once fresh pigs guts, which our mother forced my little brother and I to scavenge from a fresh manure pile.
Falling out of a tree past a barbwire fence:
One side of my hand-made shorts ripped from top to bottom, but the barbs never touched me. I landed flat on my back and was barely hurt.
Hammering bullets from cartridges:
I must have been between seven and ten years old, when I found some live ammo from WW II. While I was hammering the bullets to remove them, my mother stopped me from making a great discovery.
Throwing a hand grenade:
Same age as above. My brother and I found this German wood-handled grenade and tossed it back and forth on a brick-paved road. Why I don't know, and I don't think we knew what it was.
Breaking through ice:
When I was a about ten years, my mother told me something like, that if I am afraid I would never get anywhere in this world. Some time thereafter, I, together with a friend, took my heavy all-steel sled, (except for wood slats of seat) unto a frozen canal. The ice began crackling ominously. My friend went ashore, while I quoted him my mothers wisdom. Down I went, while holding onto the pull rope of my sled. I managed to struggle to the canal bank. My friend pulled me home on my sled. By the time we arrived there, my teeth were chattering, and my freezing clothes were beginning to crunch.
Electrocutions:
As a youngster I touched both wires of an innocent 220 Volt circuit and there was no ground wire.
I was in the basement of an old house, which I was remodeling. As I was pushing an iron water pipe through the floor joists above, it touched a bare electrical circuit, blessing me with a shower of sparks.
I shut off the 120 Volt circuit breaker in an old barn, so I could connect the breaker box with a #6 bare ground wire to a grounding rod outside. Zap. I traced the faulty wiring back to an old crossover splice upstream from the breaker.
Home-made bombs, rockets, etc., with homemade black powder, and other, poisonous, ingredients:
When we were about fourteen and sixteen years old, my brother and I played with such just for fun. One of our bombs chipped the cement stucco on a church. And no one ever screamed, or whispered, no-no, dont do this. We gained no fame with mug shots in post offices and newspapers. But doing such nowadays would guarantee us to become very, very famous.
(continued)
Therefore I am absolutely convinced that God has protected, guided and blessed me. And my spirit is soaring.
The following is the list of could have, should have died experiences, which I have been able to recall, in a more or less chronological order:
Heat stroke as a baby:
Because we lived with someone who suffered advanced tuberculosis, my mother wanted me to have a lot of fresh air and sunshine. She often parked me on the sill of a window, four stories up and opening to a slate Mansard roof. Once a little too long. I was cooked. She would write me years later, that I was a beet-red baby, and a doctor had saved my life.
Middle ear infection as a baby:
This rotted out the hammer, anvil, stirrup, eardrum in my right middle ear. Along with a chunk of my skull bone. My behind-the-ear-body-piercing makes me cool, and I should get a copyright to this method of piercing, so copycats won't copy.
After my eight-day high-fever-brain-frying experience, little Nazi bureaucrats finally gave my mother permission to let me into a hospital. A surgeon informed her that I was almost dead.
Years of ear infection:
Caused by continuous neglect of this whats-left-of-it-ear infection, and by my frequent swimming in dirty water. For years, I had a little artesian spring of stinky pus running out of my ear. I needed two surgeries to remove this wild meat, proud flesh. But you may still call me Meathead.
Multiple fire bombings:
It was not a good idea to live near airplane, dynamite and aluminum factories during a war. I still remember being in at least two different bomb shelters and huddling in a basement with other people.
Diphtheria:
A painful bacterial infection that causes fever and difficult breathing. In severe cases it can cause death by asphyxiation in three or four days. It kills one of every ten patients.
I still have documentation that my little brother and I spent twenty-six days in a hospital. But this was a good place to be, because thats when our apartment went up in flames during a bombing raid.
Whooping cough:
Some babies cough so hard that they turn blue in the face and vomit. Or die.
Machine-gunning from airplane:
While my mother, little brother and I were walking towards a steel bridge in a neighboring village of the city of Regensburg, where a Messerschmidt airplane factories was located, bullets from above were zinging off its steel trusses.
Ammunition train blowing up:
I watched this fiery event, and I think without adults in my presence, on the opposite riverbank about two or three hundred feet away from me.
Tuberculosis:
I lived in two different residences with infected people. One of them had pus oozing out of a sore on her cheek. Shed often wipe it with her twiggy fingers and smear herself around door knobs and other convenient places. Like I from my little artesian spring.
Food poisonings & E. coli charged environment:
During several years of nation-wide starvation, and years thereafter, I frequently had to eat moldy and semi-rotten food from waste piles and other delicatessen sources. Once fresh pigs guts, which our mother forced my little brother and I to scavenge from a fresh manure pile.
Falling out of a tree past a barbwire fence:
One side of my hand-made shorts ripped from top to bottom, but the barbs never touched me. I landed flat on my back and was barely hurt.
Hammering bullets from cartridges:
I must have been between seven and ten years old, when I found some live ammo from WW II. While I was hammering the bullets to remove them, my mother stopped me from making a great discovery.
Throwing a hand grenade:
Same age as above. My brother and I found this German wood-handled grenade and tossed it back and forth on a brick-paved road. Why I don't know, and I don't think we knew what it was.
Breaking through ice:
When I was a about ten years, my mother told me something like, that if I am afraid I would never get anywhere in this world. Some time thereafter, I, together with a friend, took my heavy all-steel sled, (except for wood slats of seat) unto a frozen canal. The ice began crackling ominously. My friend went ashore, while I quoted him my mothers wisdom. Down I went, while holding onto the pull rope of my sled. I managed to struggle to the canal bank. My friend pulled me home on my sled. By the time we arrived there, my teeth were chattering, and my freezing clothes were beginning to crunch.
Electrocutions:
As a youngster I touched both wires of an innocent 220 Volt circuit and there was no ground wire.
I was in the basement of an old house, which I was remodeling. As I was pushing an iron water pipe through the floor joists above, it touched a bare electrical circuit, blessing me with a shower of sparks.
I shut off the 120 Volt circuit breaker in an old barn, so I could connect the breaker box with a #6 bare ground wire to a grounding rod outside. Zap. I traced the faulty wiring back to an old crossover splice upstream from the breaker.
Home-made bombs, rockets, etc., with homemade black powder, and other, poisonous, ingredients:
When we were about fourteen and sixteen years old, my brother and I played with such just for fun. One of our bombs chipped the cement stucco on a church. And no one ever screamed, or whispered, no-no, dont do this. We gained no fame with mug shots in post offices and newspapers. But doing such nowadays would guarantee us to become very, very famous.
(continued)
