We dodged the bullet more times than we could remember. As teen-agers, as young men, as adults. Me and my high school buddy and college roommate, now my brother-in-law. (The Valley can be complicated and incestuous when it comes to family.) We couldn't recall all the stories. Of course, his wife and his sister – now my wife – didn't want their impressionable children to hear those stories.

There had been so many opportunities to bite the bullet. Riding box cars out to Del Rio to fish golf balls out of water hazards. Driving through 4-way stops in the country with our headlights off. Paying a bum to buy us Sloe Gin. Good and bad drugs. Good and bad sex. Vietnam. Driving drunk. Getting into fights. Partying with bikers we'd met at a strip club. Scoring drugs from junkies while waiting in line at Winterland.

We were lucky. Someone was watching out for us. There but fortune and all that, looking back.
The son of an old friend wasn't so fortunate. He was eighteen. Making some serious noise with a local punk band. Something his father had aspired to but never achieved. He was left to die alone in an orchard after overdosing on heroin. He couldn't dodge the bullet.

He found all the silvers
of the earth's pure form
but the silver found the bullet
and the bullet found him.
Stephan Marlow, "Lorca"