That was fucked up

This weekend, after a game and in the parking lot, a teammate of mine threatened to break my legs if I didn't get in my car and leave in that moment. Apparently what set him off was I flipped him off after a goal was scored and he commented on my play. A seemingly ordinary event (in hockey anyway) led to one of the few times I've feared for my safety.


Focus: When have you ever had to fear for your safety? Did you get mugged? Did you get in a car accident?

Alt focus: When have you ever threatened someones safety? Was it justified or were you overreacting?

 

Whenever I'm around dangerous minorities. Duh.

But on focus, I think the most frequent times I ever felt threatened and worried were during bar fights in college. Fights in HS at football games or common areas were great spectator sports and gave you a good jolt of energy. In college they were terrifying. Especially when townies and other non-college students started coming to bars near campus. They were there to hit on college girls...and start shit with college guys. I saw too many times where a fight broke out for one reason or another, and people just started swinging at anybody around. I saw two different kids get knocked glassy-eyed unconscious for fights they had no part in and weren't even associated with, they just happened to be standing within a 10 foot radius of combatants who saw the red mist. I had no desire to watch fights anymore for fear that an angry townie might swing at me for looking like a college student.

More recently, I was riding the train home sometime after midnight after hanging out with a friend. A group of guys in their late teens, early 20s get on and are clearly riled up. Mean mugging, one ripped down a train map on the wall, and they were clearly looking to make people uncomfortable or worse. I was sitting, minding my own business, looking at my phone when one stood above me and kind of kicked at my shoe. I didn't respond and it happened again. Right at that point, we pulled into a new station and a pair of security officers boarded. Not a fat rent-a-cop, but a Securitas officer, with sidearm, and better yet, a K-9 unit with him. The dog got agitated and the dudes simmered down a bit. They got off at the next stop. Like Juice, I don't know their intentions, could have just been trying to piss people off for fun. But train muggings/phone robberies happen on the EL far too often, and that was around the time that the "Knockout Game" was pretty popular. Needless to say I hadnt been happier to see law enforcement in a long time.

 

I hate when fights break out in the bar when I work, things go bad so fast and a lot of times I have to break them up, someday I know I am going to take one in the face.
The most recent one was Superbowl Sunday when I kicked a roid head from New York out and he came back into the bar and wanted to fight me, I was behind the bar with an ax handle in one hand and the phone in the other explaining his options to him when he pushed one of the people in the bar and a brawl broke out, luckily the cops were there in 30 seconds.
There are to many things in a bar that can cut or stab you and it is really the only thing that scares me about working in a bar.

 

I had a gun, not so much pulled, but shown to me at school. Couple of dipshits saw me laugh at their idiotic behaivor one afternoon and gave me a dirty look. I didn't think twice about it until the next morning when these two dumbasses get on either side of my car and start taunting me to come out. Being a teenager and an idiot I was just about to when one lifted up their shirt to show my the pistol. After a few minutes they left and I went into class. Word got around the school and I was yanked out by the resource officer before school ended and sent home early. This was a good thing as I had weightlifing last period and some teammates of mine that were in legit gangs were calling in people to be around when school let out. Went to school the next day and watched their car get swarmed and torn apart by my cities version of SWAT.

The one time I was really scared for my life isn't as good a story though. I managed to get my car to do a backflip up a hill with no seatbelt. I was going about 50 when I had the "oh shit" moment and slammed the brakes so I'm not sure how fast I was going when I hit the hill. To this day I have no clue how I walked away from that. Still have vivid dreams about it happening all over again and it's been a decade.

 

Focus: I was as close as I've ever been to being in a bad car accident while deer hunting last November.

Spoiler

It was about 4 am, frosty, and pitch black as I was rocketing down the highway to the property I was going to hunt. I was on a stretch of I-35 south of Duluth, MN that has a stretch of big rolling hills. I passed a slow truck as I crested a hill, and while I was in the left lane going maybe 65 (with my brights off since I just passed the truck), I noticed there was something at the bottom of the hill next to the road. Then I realized it was a couple of people on the shoulder and they were waving at me. No lights... I saw the reflections off a vest. "That's weird," I thought.

That's when I looked ahead and saw the pair of cars that had just wrecked and were in the left lane, maybe 100 yards away right ahead of me and closing fast. I touched the brakes and discovered the roads were slicker than I thought (obviously) and there was no slowing down. I swerved to the right and missed one of the wrecked cars by less than a foot, it seemed, and then had to correct to the left hard to not go into the ditch. Of course I was headed back to the median rail at that point and can't believe I didn't lose control as I corrected. Was skidding over the debris strewed across the road all the while and was paranoid over a tire rupture too. All of this happened within a few seconds. Would have stopped but I saw flashing lights headed for the scene behind me after I went past the wreck and was past them before I knew it, and I felt numb in disbelief as I sat in the woods for the rest of the day. It was fucked up. Had I been on my phone or something, I'd have wrecked with them no doubt.

As far as fights are concerned, I found myself in the middle of some fights at parties as a bystander and a couple of police foot chases in college (being in the wrong place at the wrong time) but thankfully nothing happened.

The one event that really sticks in my mind along those lines was when me and some buddies were very close to getting our asses handed to us in Brazil during a study abroad.

Spoiler

Our group spent a long weekend at a gorgeous beach town near São Paulo (Guarujua) and I befriended one of the hotel employees where we stayed who was a friendly hippie type. Benefits to learning Portuguese: on our last day there he ended up giving me some weed as a little parting gift, which we promptly rolled into a huge joint and planned on enjoying later that night on the beach. The night arrived and we went behind a shack that was facing the ocean across the road from our hotel to enjoy it.

Perfect, right?

While we were getting baked behind the shack, watching the waves roll in, this random guy quietly strolls up to the vicinity of the shack but just hangs out by himself. We didn't think much of it at first but about the time we were done, one of my friends on the trip (who grew up in North Minneapolis and was the one really street smart guy of our group) noticed him sneaking glances and then pulling out a phone and making a call. This is when we figured it out and booked it back across the road- and literally as we got to the hotel we saw a small car roll up and half a dozen guys jump out and surround the shack like it was a fucking gang clown car- presumptively looking for us gringos (you can imagine our paranoia for the rest of the night).

Of course if shit did hit the fan, I highly doubt the police would have been very friendly to us since the former President was staying in town that weekend and they were constantly on patrol.

Fun times in Brazil.

tl;dr, don't be an idiot in South America

 

I don't think that I have ever been in a dangerous situation where I felt threatened as it was happening. However, I have a story along these lines from last October.

I moved into a new place, with a female roommate. The second night that I was there, it was a Sunday evening and I was sitting in my bedroom doing school work. I heard the door open and her dog, a pitbull boxer mix, went running at the door barking. I went out to see what was going on, and my roommate was standing there, hammered drunk and looking shook up. Here is what happened:

She had gone out to the bars with a guy who lives on the floor below us. At the time they were kind of in an on again/off again relationship. They were on their way home and he was driving, and they got into an argument. She got out of the car when it was stopped at a light and ran into a cab that was nearby. The cab driver started driving in the wrong direction. She was drunk but realized what was going on and that the cab driver was really sketchy. She called him on it, and he turned around and headed for our place. She had to get the money from the apartment to pay him, so he followed her up the stairs and to our door. As soon as she opened the door, the dog went charging at him. He ran off without getting paid.

Thank heavens that the dog was there. I'm 6'4'' 215 lbs but have never been in a fight in my life, so if I went out there and had to tangle with him I can't say for sure how it would have turned out. And I still live with her, but luckily, nothing like that has happened since.

 

I've had a bunch of these situations. I've narrowed them down to these three:

1. Some brief context for this first one: This happened in high school, and I had been taking Drivers' Ed at the time. We had just been learning about road rage and had watched this video that mentioned a story of a woman getting so mad at being tailgated that she killed the person with a crossbow. So this was what was floating around my head at the time.

I was driving home from the movies with my boyfriend, and the car behind us was tailgating really badly. My boyfriend was getting really annoyed, so he did the thing where he slowed down even more to piss them off. We figured it would be just for that one stretch of road, but the car was following us around the next couple of turns. We thought it could just be coincidence until they turned down my road too. We pulled into my driveway and waited to make sure they passed, but sure enough a few moments later it turns into the driveway too. I start going into panic mode, logically assuming I was about to be murdered with a crossbow. Three people come flying out of the car, yelling things we can't understand, and running up on both sides. He was a drummer, and had a hand drum in the space between our seats. So, when I saw one of them coming up to my door, I grabbed the drum in one hand ready to start swinging, and open the door as hard as I can so it hits them in the face. Their head snaps back and as I come bursting out of the car I hear them say "Arrgggh! [Audrey]!" I pause with the drum raised above my head and realize that it was my friend, blood running down her face. Her and two other acquaintances had just been fucking around, and I hadn't recognized the acquaintance's car. I had seriously thought I was going to die but ended up maiming a friend instead. Whoops.

2. The other two were a bit more serious. The next happened when I was in Paris. A guy had glommed onto me in the Metro, and I was already super weary of the men's total relentlessness with this over there because this was near the end of my trip, so I was just trying to ignore him. He got off at the same stop as me - again, I just thought this was coincidence - and was following me up the steps, blathering on at me all the while. When he went to follow me down the street, I finally whirled around and yelled something at him in French to try and get him to go away, and he brushed me off looking pissed, but did at least start walking in the other direction. I was waiting to cross the street, totally exhausted after a bad day, when I notice something coming at me out of my peripheral vision, and right as I turn I see it's the guy charging at me. He's yelling something too fast for me to understand and he grabs my arm. I go to push him off with the other arm but he grabs that one too. I start fighting against him, and start yelling in English - hoping that would at least alert everyone around us that this wasn't just some "lovers' quarrel" or whatever excuse people make for not getting involved with these kinds of things - but no one did anything. Thankfully, all of a sudden he stopped yelling in my face, let me go, and ran off in the other direction.

3. Another traveling story, this time from my summer spent in Costa Rica and Panama. It was right at the end of the trip. I had just had a 13 hour overnight bus trip from Panama City back to the main city of Costa Rica. The day before, I had discovered I'd used an ATM with a skimmer on it, so nearly my entire bank account was drained and I had around $40 to get me through the last 3 days of my trip and the day or two back home until I could get things settled with my bank. So, as wonderful as the summer had been, I was pretty much done and ready to be home. I needed to take a taxi to my Couchsurfer's house, which was kind of on the outskirts of the city. Usually, it would've been in the $8-10 range. There's a group of taxis waiting by the bus station, and one of the drivers hops out and waves me over to his, so I go over there and he helps me put my bag in the backseat.

As soon as we start driving, I realize why he had been so eager to take me. He kept staring at me and giggling and the only thing I was understanding was "Que linndddaa! Que liiiinnndda!" (How pretty! How pretty!) I kept telling him I didn't speak Spanish and was just trying to ignore him and grit my teeth through it until I could get to the house. But, even though I couldn't fully understand what he was saying, it quickly became clear that he was not quite all there and I started to get a little more nervous than the usual "inappropriate taxi driver" situation. Then, even with my basic understanding of the city, I realized he was going in the totally wrong direction and either had no idea where he was going or was taking me somewhere else.

(Rest spoilered for length.)

Spoiler

I interrupted him and told him we were not going the right way and repeated again where I was going, and it was like a switch went off and he got all annoyed and was grumbling at me as he changed course. He was quiet as we backtracked and started heading in the right direction. Then, he pulled over on a totally random street and started asking me about money. I kept saying that I would pay him when we got there, and he kept saying I needed to pay him now. We argued about that for a bit, then he started saying it was going to be $50. That's when I realized that what I thought had been the meter was actually just the clock in military time (I know, but remember I was exhausted physically and mentally and emotionally at the time) and despite heeding the warning never to get into a cab with "a broken meter" for my entire trip because the drivers are crooks, I had accidentally walked right into one without ever knowing it.

So, I start freaking out and saying that not only did I have that much money (literally), but that was more than the same cab ride would cost in New York City. We were yelling back and forth and he started threatening me and saying if I couldn't pay him I would have to think of something else etc etc. I kept thinking of just bailing, but my bag was in the back with no way for me to bring it with me and there were many reasons I couldn't just leave it - my passport being one of them. I told him I'd give him $20 (still an insane amount of money for a cabride there and would leave me with $10) but he kept saying it wasn't enough and was starting to get this really crazy look in his eyes. It was this quiet side street, but I saw a guy walking on the sidewalk, and yelled out the window for him to come over, saying I needed help. I tried explaining my situation to him, and when he started arguing with the driver, I managed to get out and grab my stuff from the back. I threw some money at him through the window and started running.

I had absolutely no idea where I was, how to get where I was going, or any way to get in touch with my Couchsurfer. The area was almost all residential, and I wandered around for a half an hour until I came across a hotel, which thankfully let me use their phone. Eventually, I was able to get in touch with her and she came to get me. Greatest ending to a trip ever.

 

When I worked for my asshole uncle's weatherproofing company I got blown up REAL good. Seriously: I was told to go finish a about 40 miles away with a sandblaster and some tar. WhatI did not realize is to get the job started quicker (and without telling me) my cousin set up his homemade tar pil heater in the back of the truck. It was basically a open-flame hotplate fired by a barbecue-sized propane tank. Didn't bother to tell me AT ALL this open-flame piece of shit was running the back of the truck with two Geri cans filled with gas. So I get to the site an hour later, hop out, put my sandblasting gear on and jump back into the truck. By now the gear has shifted around from the ride and to my GREAT surprise I look down to see an open flame licking a melted geri can of gas.

Murphy's Law. Boom.

There was really no boom, just a WHOOOOOOOOSH sound and all remember was seeing pure orange. I woke up in the ravine on the side of the road, the concussion threw me clear out of the back of the truck like a ragdoll. he palms of my gloves were burned away and every part of my skin that was exposed (I was wearing a balaclava over my face to sandblast) was toasted bright pinkish-red like a dog's cock. In a time before cell phones were owned by everyone, I walked smoldering in smoke (picture Tom Hanks at the end of The 'Burbs) to the payphone to tell my uncle I was just blown up by his idiot son and asked or the rest of the day off.

He asked if I was still able to finish the job first, since I was already there. God, I want to buy him a cancer accelerator.


In October 2001 I had my first crash: coming back from a party I made the mistake of trusting the driver and his best friend who convinced me he was alright to drive (I did not know them very well). That driver drove us into a tree at almost 70 mph, killing his best friend and my date who was out with me for the first time that night. They were both only 20 years old. I was the luckiest, I survived with migraine headaches, iritis and hip arthritis which is lucky when you consider there were parts of this car found 100 feet into the woods. The driver was unscathed completely was given 1 year house arrest as his sentence. For all those of you who think you can get through life driving drunk, this CAN happen to you. And its a lot more ugly, soul-shattering and gruesome than you could ever imagine or see play out in a movie. I have relived this moment every hour of every day of my life since then.

In November 2009 my wife, daughter and I were coming back from Frankenmuth after shopping at the "World's largest Christmas store", Bronner's, when just outside our town we were hit head-on by get this: Americans who were driving back to the States. My wife and I were hospitalized for the night, our daughter was giggling as I pulled her out of the smoldering accordion that was now my car because she was in a rear-facing child seat which is about as durable as a hydrogen bomb fallout shelter. I was hurt less that time but developed a permanent limp from the wreck since I was already messed up from the previous wreck.

I was also stabbed once at a concert because I accidentally body-checked somebody in a mosh pit (shame on me), but it was just a pen knife and it actually didn't hurt that much for some reason. And a skinhead tried to slash my face with a razor which I fortunately/unfortunately blocked with the webbing of my fingers. Both times witnessed rushed to my defence and thrashed my attacker. Good times.

 

I'm dumb. I was a fighting, scrapping, throwing down little shit when I was younger and my dumb ass was never scared.
Except the day that ExH2 pulled the shotgun, I've handled most things with a brashness that, in retrospect, was just goddamn stupid.
But that shotgun. I can hear my voice in my head sometimes still. Everyone thinks they know what they'll do if ever faced with the business end of a gun but...I don't know if that's true. Violence and rash movements, particularly at close range with that type of weapon, seemed to be out of the question. So did begging for my own life - because as much of a chickenshit as he was and is, my life wasn't valuable to him.
So I played on his kid's needs...super low, calm voice, like I was talking to a freaked out animal, and never moving. That's all I had.

I got goddamn lucky.

Alt focus: When have you ever threatened someones safety? Was it justified or were you overreacting?[/quote]
I've never made a threat I didn't intend to follow through on...and I was probably overreacting at the time in more than a few cases.

Physical violence isn't my bag anymore - I've learned how much more harshly retribution falls when it's cold, calculated, and remorseless.

 

When I was younger I was threatened and challenged constantly to the point that I should've been concerned for my safety. Because of my size every drunk idiot in a bar wanted to start a fight with me to prove...I don't know what. I learned quickly that my best defense was my mouth. I had a lot of cretin friends that were the same way as the drunk idiots wanting to pick a fight with me...ie...their weekend night wasn't complete unless they got in a fight.

I learned how to use my wits and guile to settle these wannabe tough guys down.

The only time I can think of that I truly should've been freaked out happened here in Vegas about 20 years ago.

I was working as a glazier and had to go to a store in a shady part of town and change out the glass in a display case. As I was walking to my truck with a 16" x 72" piece of laminated 1/4" glass some guy walked up behind me and mumbled something. I just did my usual when weird people walk up to me, I turned around, told him to hit the bricks or something equally dismissive, turned back around and kept going. About 5 steps later I realized what the son of a bitch said.

"Give me your money"

And he had his hand in his jacket pocket either holding a gun or pretending to. I'm guessing the latter because when I turned back around, he was running away.

The fucker was lucky I wasn't excitable because I could've beaten him half to death with that piece of lami.

If he'd actually showed a gun and it clicked with me what the fuck he was mumbling about, I have no idea what I would've done. I like to think I would've beat him with that hunk of glass. (Lami is what they use in car windshields, I could've hit him 4 or 5 times with it before it would've become useless as a weapon.) As it was, I calmed myself down and flagged down a security guard in a golf cart and gave him a description of the guy and had to wait for Metro to show up and file a report.