Sunday, October 02, 2005

The Grim Reaper Once Again Stalks Celine


... but misses.

Sometimes I think I should change my blog’s name to:
“The Life And Times Of Celine”
Tales of good fortune and beating the devil.


A few days ago Celine went to the hospital to visit a friend who was about to give birth to triplets. Afterwards she went into a sort-of indoor flea market that’s attached to the Pelengke to look around.
Celine moved from booth to booth. Walking around, Celine passed two security guards who were talking and laughing with each other, ignoring their duties.
Celine noticed that one of the guards kept lifting the gun and holster and pushing it back down again, he would then slap his palm on the gun butt in a way that would make the gun and holster rotate, raising the barrel so that it was on a horizontal plane with the floor. In other words it looked like it was being pointed straight out, but upside down and ‘aimed’ behind the guard.
It made Celine very nervous to see the guard repeatedly doing it, as if it were a nervous tic. But, she continued walking to a booth about 2-meters from the guards, stopped and was looking at something a seller was offering to her.
Suddenly a loud shot rang out. It was obvious that it was from the firing of a gun.
Celine whirled around to see what was going on. She saw the two guards standing stiffly, scared and wide-eyed.
One of the guards began looking around, while the other stood still, stunned and shocked.
A small boy of about eight or nine years of age, who was standing right next to Celine, reached out and grabbed at Celine’s blouse. When Celine looked down at him, she saw the boy look around for a moment then slump to the floor. Blood poured from a wound in his side just above his hip.
The boy’s mother screamed and rushed to her son. The one guard whose gun hadn’t fired used his cell-phone to call for an ambulance.
The police arrived, hand-cuffed both guards and took them away to the police station for questioning.
Celine rushed from the store, hopped into a tricycle and came home. She was terribly frightened. She told me the bullet that hit the boy missed her by no more than 8-inches!
I held her and kissed her and let her lay in my arms for a long while until she was finally able to calm down.
I don’t know what’s going on; why so many near-death experiences are happening to Celine. I’m sure glad they’re all misses, though.
Maybe it’s just the way things are here in the Philippines. Maybe it’s just coincidence. If it’s coincidence, there sure have been a lot of them lately.
Rik