I've been asked so many times to repeat this, I figured I'd write it down this time.

In Februar of 1991, while I was at the base camp in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm, I was sitting on a toilet. It wasn't an ordinary toilet by any stretch of the imagination. It was a chicken coop with four or five wooden toilet seats lined up in a row. Each seat had a can under it. I want to say they were five-gallon cans, but I really don't remember how big they were. So you see, I really was sitting on a can.

I digress.

I was sitting on the toilet, reading an American newspaper that was at least three weeks old (mail took that long to get to us at the time) when Saddam Insane fired a scud missile at us. It landed close enough to our camp that the whole compound shook like we were experiencing an earthquake. I knew what the sound was and I remember saying to myself, "Lord, don't let me die on the shitter." Everything that remained within me vacated the premises. It scared the shit out of me, literally.

It's said (by whom I'll never know) that your life flashes before you when you die. I knew I wasn't going to die that day because I didn't see anything flash at all. Anyway…

Since that day, I've never faced anything that scared me like that. I feel almost bulletproof and don't scare easily at all. Not AT all.