He was wearing a long flowing robe thing, had long kind of crazy hair, dark sunglasses and yes, had brown skin. In this land of Many White People he stood out, to me. And we were in a post office.
He went over to a rack of post boxes and got something out and then went whipping around the corner further into the building.
And I got nervous.
Considering that I live in No Wheresville when it comes to "sensitive sites" of Colorado, why was I nervous? What was I expecting to happen? Why did I react that way when I don't even watch TV news or listen to news radio all that often. I'm not constantly getting spammed with the message "Be Afraid!" and yet, I was worried about this guy, doing something ordinary, in the post office.
Nothing happened. Nothing. We finished up and went home. The post office did not go Boom! later on that day.
It did, however, remind me that there was a book that I had been meaning to read for some time, so I finally picked it up from the library: The Gift of Fear. It's been pretty interesting reading so far and creepy, too. I highly recommend it.
One of his examples was this:
A television news show reports on a man who shot and killed his wife at her work. A restraining order had been served on him the same day as his divorce papers, coincidentally also his birthday. The news story tells of the man's threats, of his being fired from his job, of his putting a gun to his wife's head the week before the killing, of his stalking her. Even with all these facts, the reporter ends with: "Officials concede that no one could have predicted this would happen."
My response to that was Buh-whaaa?! With all of that information, exactly how couldn't they figure out that her life was actually in danger?!
And so another woman becomes a statistic.
So here I am, learning about honing my instincts so that I can learn to process what is actually a threat from false alarms. My false alarm in the post office just reminded me that I need to pay attention to my instincts and get them a little exercise.
One day, it might make all the difference.
3 comments:
One day years ago I was walking our dachshund down the street. In front of us was a man in a leather jacket striding along about a half-block ahead. As he walked, I watched as the fringe on his jacket swung rhythmically. Suddenly he turned around, arms outstretched as if he were holding a handgun with both hands. He looked straight and me, jerked his hands as if firing, and said, "Bang." I read the word on his lips. Then he turned back around and walked on his merry way. I stood frozen, my heart thundering, then tottered home on shaky legs. If he'd actually had the gun he pretended to use, I'd have been dead meat. From this experience I've concluded that paranoia is not only one's first line of defense, it's reasonable to have it now and again. You follow those instincts and don't automatically pooh-pooh them. There are some craaaaazy mothers out there.
I get these all the time, 99% of the time I'm right, and totally saved my neck at least one time, fight or flight, some times it's wiser to fly!
One time in a mall I was shopping and had seen the same man a couple of times in different stores and in the hallways. I got this errie feeling that something would happen if I didn't acknowledge it. So I turned around that very second only to see this man directly behind me, so I turned and looked at him, dead in the face and with that he walked away! So if I was going to be his victim of the day, I wasn't after having had made eye contact.
Creepy guy running around in a post office would've had my hair standing up and I probably would've left with out mailing the parcel.
Um...EEK? To both of your stories.
I'm glad you're both OK. Eye contact does seem to be a big deal breaker for a perp looking for a victim. Also, not walking hunched over and looking like a victim is a big part of it too.
They have profiles, or types that they're looking for - so don't look like a victim and chances are much better that you won't be.
The book talks about things to look out for, I'll probably talk about them in another post. Very good info to know.
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