I Think I Have Nine Lives...Now I'm on my Third

I wrote about my first death a few months ago.

On January 3rd, 2011, I lost another life {on account of being scared to death, of course}.

I won't bore you with too many details: the story unfolded like this while we were at Heathrow waiting to board our return flight from our fabulous London vacation.

• We were sitting right next to the gate door where you walk down that accordion hallway thingy {I'm sure there is a technical name for that thingy} to get to the plane.

• There happened to be windows in the gate door where you could see the crew and all passing along the accordion hallway thingy.

• My husband glanced up at the windows and said, "Wow, did you just see that?"

• I glanced up at the windows and saw five large men in security vests ushering one man in handcuffs down the accordion hallway thingy toward our plane. 

• When they were out of sight the handcuffed man started yelling at the top of his lungs the phrase that most suicide bombers yell right before they pull the trigger. "God is Great! Mohammad is his prophet!" AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS.

That was my exact moment of death. I knew I was a goner along with the other 300 or so passangers in the gate area with me. 

BUT

Nothing happened.

• We heard the man continuing to yell as he was put on the airplane.

• Some pilot-ish/official looking guys arrived and looked around at the still passengers {who should have all been boarded on the plane by then}. They rapped on the gate door.

• My husband leaned toward them and quietly explained what had been going on. He suggested that if the screaming man stayed on the plane, they were going to have a lot of anxious passengers to deal with...including us.

• The pilot-ish guys were let in. About five minutes later, the five men with the handcuffed, screaming man {who was still screaming} {AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS} was lead off the plane.

•  The gate attendant showed up all smiles and started boarding the plane.

That was an uneventful way to end life #2.

By the 9th, I am predicting I'm going to look like this:

What I find the most amusing is that although I live in the very volatile Middle East, both my near death experiences in the last 8 years have happened in Europe.

Cheers!