I was just reading a post about the real estate agent that was killed in Canada a few days ago while on duty. I have my Bachelor of Science in Law Enforcement so, this is an area of extreme interest to me. There is a book that was written about 10 years ago by a man named Gavin DeBecker called "The Gift of Fear". This is an excellent book for women and how we as a society condition women to not listen to their intuition about dangerous situations. The plain truth is that sometimes being nice can get you killed. I am not speaking of course, to the tragic story at the beginning of this post as I do not know all of the circumstances. I know from personal experience.
I was walking on University Ave. in St. Paul one evening a few years ago. I had just parked my car and I was meeting my husband and daughter at a local place called Porky's for hamburgers. There was a big car show that day and parking was hard to find so, I found a spot a few blocks away. The sun had just set and I noticed that many of the street lights were out where I had parked and there were a bunch of people just hanging out in front of the building.As I began walking to my destination, I heard someone a few blocks behind me making a weird noise. I stopped and noticed that there was a man behind me that wasn't there a second ago. When I turned he looked down and away (like he didn't noticed me). Red flag #1
My internal alarm for trouble went up. I picked up the pace and walked faster when I heard the sound of heaving breathing coming up from behind me. Red Flag #2. I panicked...should I stop and turn around or keep heading forward? I challenged my fear stopped and looked at him and realized that he was sprinting up on me and was covering the distance between us quickly (he showed no sign of slowing down).Before I knew what I was doing I remembered "The Gift of Fear", I shouted "What the hell do you think your doing?". He stopped for a minute, stunned. Then I took off running down the street towards the resteraunt like I was back on the track team in High School.
I ran as fast as I could until I got near the crowd. I stopped and looked back at him one last time. He was bent over, winded (and more than a little suprised at how it turned out). I found my husband who was standing there the whole time with my daughter. He could see this man running up the street after a woman but, until I got across the street into the light, he had no idea that it was me being chased.
Bottom line, if someone is freaking you out the worst thing you can do is be polite and assume that your probably "overreacting". If you feel that your life is in danger, please overreact. You can always applogize latter if you feel like it.
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