Today, I go out to lunch with my mom. We hit our local Fridays, which has an early happy hour with cheap appetetizers and, $3 barefoot chard for her and Sam Adams for me. Knowing we were going to have a couple, I leave the gun at home (legal to drive does not equal legal to carry). So, we return to my mom's house. Shes pulling into her drive (blinker on) and this idiot blows by on her left. She almost hits him and gives a short beep. We pull into the house, and the very manly mini-cooper
backs up. Out gets this bald, muscle bound guy in his thirties wearing scrubs. Me, Im not driving, I didn't honk and figured I could easily deescalate this with a smile and a soft word. While I was a little uneasy with the guys body language, I was not particularly worried by a white guy in scrubs driving a high dollar car in an upper middle class neighborhood. Bzzzt! Wrong answer!
The guy is in my face, like baseball umpire, or DI in my face, before I'd said howdy, and when I simply mentioned my mom had beeped because she almost hit him, no accusation, no profanity, best soothing "cop voice" I have, he shoves me on my ass (laugh it up Eric
). He seemed to semi-come to his senses and offered a hand up, which I declined. He still has the "I'm going to kick your ass" body language (which he could have, because hello, muscle bound, and the attitude might have come from 'roid rage, asshat or not, the guy was built). Any way, he keeps asking "is That my fault? Is it?", while my mom is freaking, and while he was retreating, he definately wanted an answer so he would have an excuse to recomense hosilities, you could see it in his eyes and body lanuage. One word and it would have been game on. I just dialled 911 instead. He made no move to stop me, just kept asking, if it was his fault to us both while I was on the horn with dispatch, giving the address
. He left. Deferring (against my better judgement) to my mom, I told the operator he'd apologized and left (he did offer me a hand up
) and that I was happy with the situation. She explained that she didn't want to put the guy in jail for 90 days for simple battery and then have him get out and come looking for payback. Hard to argue with the logic.
I, on the other hand, was thoroughlly embarrassed. I made three dumb mistakes.
1 I let him get way too close, as in noses touching close. This was the smallest mistake as there was no way to back up without striking first or running, neither of which was an option, but still lesson learned.
2 I watched the guys face, not his arms. I thought he wanted to yell, not fight and so I tried to keep a steady eye contact and deescalat. This means I wasn't watching his hands. A shove I could have blocked or avoided went right through. DUMB mistake.
3 I listened to my mom and didn't have his ass thrown in jail.
The lesson learned from this was also a little scary. At the end of the day I was right in my assesment that I could descalate this. I just didn't realize that something this harmless initially, would end with me having a very sore tail bone and the cops on the phone. However, if I had been carrying......, Once I hit the ground I realized this guy was crazy and my 68 year old mother was the one he was pissed at. When I ignored his hand, he turned away. Instead of just getting up, the hand would have been in the right pocket and there would have been zero warning since he was within shoving distance, and I definately was afraid of the crazy muscle bound guy (he'd probably have kicked my ass when I was 20 and in great shape, now no question). This woke me right the hell up. It was descalated, BUT it could have gone south if he decided to beat one or both of us to death, or if I'd shot his ass. Se la vie.
FQ13 who still isn't sure whether he should be pissed about not carrying today
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