There were five times that Stuart Givens knew that he'd "dodged a bullet" while serving as a paratrooper in the military during WWII. Any one of these would have meant that "The Givens Family" would not have lived just across the lot from my family in Bowling Green, Ohio. Any one of these would have meant that Bennet, Willard, and Martha Givens would never have existed; and that Florence would not have been one of my mom's dear friends; or that Stuart Givens would not have been one of my favorite teachers in college. And who would have made the coffee at church every morning for 50 years or so?:)

1. Flying into combat in Operation Varsity, Stuart's glider was plugged with machine gun bullets. Several of them went through the bench just next to him.
2. In combat in Varsity, Stuart was pinned down by artillary fire in a forest. When he got the chance, he chose to move to a different spot, then turned around to see the spot where he'd been hunkered down blown to smithereens by a shell.
3. Stuart was riding in the back of a jeep down a road, legs dangling off the back. Just as they passed a certain point in the road, the vehicle following behind them, passing the same point, hit a mine and blew up.
4. Stuart was in an unoccupied house during combat with some other troops. He went to a window, stared out for a moment, then turned away -- just as a bullet blew out the window where he'd been standing.
5. Finally -- and I think that this one amused him a little -- after the occupation of Berlin had begun he and several others were hanging out in an open area when an American tank accidentally let fly a shell that went just barely over their heads.

Five moments, in space and time, where the smallest change of either space or time would have resulted in the premature end of a life that did, indeed, finally end -- but ended well, in 2004....