Yeah, I believe in angels. I haven’t always. And sometimes I wish I didn’t believe. It would be easier not to.

It all started in third grade. My teacher read to the class from a book. A mass-market paperback. A book about angels. They were stories of impossible rescues, and unlikely redemptions. Then, she told a story of her own.

She was a little girl. She fell through a second-story window. She was bruised and battered. The paramedics said she would die. But a man came to her. A man only she could see. He said she would be in the hospital for a while, but she would be all right, if she could just hold on. She eventually grew up to teach third grade.

Yes, my teacher was as crazy as a sprayed roach. But I believed her story. And I still do.

There is another friend I have. He talks about being in the hospital after an accident. The doctors said he was going to die, too. He was in his bed in a coma.

A nurse came into his room. She was a towering woman. Motherly. White hair. Glowing skin. She leaned over his bed, held him tightly, and sang to him. She sang, “God is going to deliver you.”

When he woke up, nobody believed him. It was a hallucination, they said. He asked medical staffers who the woman was. They said no employees fit her description.

A guy from Alaska wrote to me and said that his son suffered brain stem damage after a hunting accident. The kid was going to die. No doubt about it.

When his son was unconscious, a strange woman found him, there in the woods. She kissed his face and said he would not die, for he still had important things to do on Earth.

Today, that kid is 46 years old and he works as a volunteer with a charity aiding local Alaskan natives.

I once met a woman who told me she was going to visit her son’s remains at a military base, after a horrific accident.

It was late one night the woman and her husband went pay their respects, there was a guard at the main gate checking IDs. The guard WAS her son.

The guard came to the lady’s window and the woman was already crying.

She said, “You can’t be alive, how are you even here?”

The guard said, “Mom, I want you to know that I’m okay where I live now. Don’t worry about me. I’m going to give you signs from time to time, to let you know I’m okay.”

In a flash of light, the guard gate disappeared, and so did the son. In place of the son was another guard, saying, “Ma’am, are you okay?”

The guard waved her on. The woman was driving through the weaving roads on base. She stopped when she saw something lying in the middle of the road.

She threw the car in Park. She trotted in front of her high beams, and found a hockey stick lying in the center of the road. Her son was an avid hockey player.

Since I began this column, I have received angel stories from every state in the Union. And nearly every country. Supernatural stories from Canada, China, Russia, Haiti, and Guam. Stories of near-death experiences, unlikely rescues, heroic feats, and impossible salvations. You might even have an angel story of your own. And, I’m sorry, I just don’t think you’re all liars.

So, please. Be nice to anybody you meet today.

Because they might not be just “anybody.”