On a cold winter day, many years ago, a French art teacher named Pierre Chevalier got on a train in Lyon to go to Paris. When he started his journey, he did not know that it was the beginning of almost 40 years of accidents and near death experiences.

During the journey, the train fell into an icy river, killing 12 passengers. Chevalier managed to swim back to the river bank. He only had a broken leg.

Two years later, Chevalier was on a plane from Paris to Moscow when a door suddenly opened and he fell out. A few minutes later, the plane crashed; 27 people were killed. Chevalier was so lucky that he landed in a haystack(干草堆).

A few years later, he was hit by a bus, but again had no serious injuries. Then a year after that, he was driving on a mountain road when he saw a truck coming straight at him. He drove the car off the road, jumped out, landed in a tree--and watched his car fall 100 meters down the mountain.

"There are two ways you can look at it," Chevalier said. "I' m either the world' s unluckiest man, or the world' s luckiest." When a reporter asked Chevalier what he thought, he chose the "luckiest" one.

Two years ago, aged 71, Chevalier bought his first lottery ticket(彩票) in 50 years and won more than 2 million. After this, a TV company in America said they wanted him to make an advertisement. At first he accepted, but then he changed his mind. Chevalier said he would not fly to Los Angeles for the filming, because he did not want to push his luck. Who knows? If he had accepted the invitation, maybe he would have had another accident. But Mr. Chevalier is a lucky man. If he had had another accident, he probably would have survived that too!

Walking home from school one day, I saw Dan, a kid from my school, on the other side of the road. I said to myself, “He must be a real nerd.” As he was carrying a lot of books. As I continued walking, I saw a group of kids run into Dan, knocking his books out of his arms and pushing him so he fell over. So, I ran over to help him, and as we were picking up his books, I saw tears in his eyes. As I helped him stand up, I said, “Those kids are stupid.” He looked at me and said “Thanks.” There was a grateful smile on his face.   

We started talking and soon realized that we lived near each other. We talked all the way home. Dan turned out to be a pretty cool kid. We hung out all weekend and the more I got to know Dan, the more I liked him. Dan and I became best friends.     

Over the next four years, he became more popular and all the girls loved him. In our senior year, Dan got the best grades in our school, and had to give a speech for graduation.   

As Dan stated his speech, he looked at me. “Graduation is a time to thank the people who helped you survive those tough years—your parents, your teachers, but mostly your friends. Being a friend is the best gift you can give. I’m going to tell you the story.” I just looked at Dan in amazement as he told the story of the first day we met. He had planned to drop out of school and run away from home that weekend. Dan talked of how he had emptied his locker so his mom wouldn’t have to do it later and was carrying all of his books home. He looked hard at me and gave me a little smile. “Thankfully, I was saved. My friend saved me from making a huge mistake.” Everyone looked at Dan in shock as he told us about his weakest moment.