Tony Woodlief tells stories of narrow escape to his sons:
I told them about the time I refused to go to the childcare home where my mother left me when she worked third shift. That night it burned down, and children died in the darkness there. I told them about the doctor finding cancer when I was a teenager, and how they cut it out of me.
"You’ve cheated death a lot," Caleb said.
"Not as much as many," I said.
But we all cheat death every day, don’t we? We cheat it by crafting beauty, or loving someone, or making new life; sometimes we cheat it just by leaving the gun in the drawer, the liquor in the cabinet, the hateful word in our bellies.
The Dish 