if we don't get some shelter

These two experiences occurred in my life, and after the second one, I connected them in my mind & thinking and wondering about them made me think about what it means about the society we live in.

I don’t think anything that scares me or inconveniences me is necessarily indicative of some Important Societal Impact; however, on the other hand, I also don’t think there is anything special about me that would cause certain kinds of incidents to appear in my life experience, and I don’t think there’s anything unusual or “special” about the town or state where I live, that would cause weird stuff to happen here, but not in other places. I figure we’re no different than any other place, and if it can happen here, then there’s a trend emerging.

(I was trying to write about this last week, and I couldn’t get into it. Often I purposely, or reflexively, forget negative things, to concentrate on the positive.)

I instituted the habit (policy) of locking my car door behind me, the minute I get in, to drive someplace, in – approx. spring of 2006. Before that, I never locked that door, just driving around town. I would just get in and drive. But one day I left a building, and as I was setting some things on the hood of my car, getting out my keys, unlocking the door, and organizing myself as far as where I wanted to put things, a man who worked there, exited the door and headed toward his vehicle.

He looked (glared) at me, and made a big show of walking very fast and hard, to show me that he was angry. That was something he did, sometimes. (Is it possible that it’s a form of “Dance”? – ‘walking angry’? I don’t know.) One other day, in that same small parking area, he had flipped me the finger. This guy was pushing 60, and I wondered why he didn’t behave in a more civilized fashion, and I wondered why his boss didn’t ask him to knock it off.

Like – “Take all of the time and mental energy you’re currently expending in trying to pick fights with your co-workers, and funnel it into your sales work, & customer service. You’re on commission, for Christ’s sake! You can’t afford to waste time like that!”

However, that didn’t happen. I think, the day he gave me “the finger” I just thought, “What an idiot.” But that other day when he did the walking-very-angry Dance-Walk thing, it was a little creepy – scary – because that behavior was escalating, and I was intimidated by it, and was, in turn, impatient with myself for being intimidated.

That’s the day I pressed the little square on the inside of my driver’s side door, and listened to the mechanism “pop” the lock into place. I knew that my other three doors were locked, and as I drove away, I thought to myself, “Well that’s one simple thing I can do to make myself feel a little safer. Not that I imagine this doofus is actually going to charge over to my car and try to harm me physically, but I do feel scared – maybe I am a ‘woos’ (sp?) – anyway, so what, I’ll just lock my car door, every time I get in. I can make that a habit!” I said, encouragingly to myself, in my mind. “I can do that every time I get in the car, even at home in the garage, just automatically lock that darn door, & at least I’ve done something to let myself feel a little safer – a little less vulnerable to unreasonable attitudes and angry behavior coming from – whomever.

Hey,” I went on, getting warmed up, “it’s an easy thing to do, it doesn’t cost me any money – I’m doing it! I vote yes, majority rules (I rule!), my car-door-locking procedure is cheerfully and firmly – schnapped INTO PLACE!”
--------------------------------

So after that, I always locked the car door after getting in.
And approximately a year after the bizarre-angry-salesman incident precipitated the Door-locking Policy, this occurred: I arrived home with two grocery bags, one with perishable items in it. I wanted to hurry and put away only what had to be put away – the freezer and refrig. Stuff, because had to run to something downtown. For some reason, can’t remember, I didn’t put my car in the garage as would usually do – was something blocking garage door? I really can’t remember, but there was some reason why I stuck my car temporarily on a cement slab area, off to the side, just a little north of my garage and drive.

I hurried into my house with the bags, “threw” the cold items into fridge and freezer, and hurried back out to get into the car and drive downtown. As I came around the corner of my garage, I saw there was a bus there, on the cement slab, a little distance from my car, and the bus driver was just getting out. When he saw me go to my car and unlock it, he shouted rudely that I wasn’t supposed to park there.

I didn’t know if that was true or not, but I took what he said at face value – (I could see what he wanted – for me to move my car – and I was on my way to do that anyway), so, in the spirit of expedite and cooperate, I just automatically said, “Uh – yeah, OK! I’m moving the car right now. I’m sorry about that!”
And I got into my car, and as I automatically, by force of habit and my Famous Established Procedure from a year earlier, locked the driver’s side door, (“pop!”) I could see the rather surprising sight of the bus driver charging angrily toward me, his hand reaching forward, and he grabbed the door handle on the outside of the car, but of course that had no effect since the door was already locked.

By about 7 seconds.

There was a sort of mania of anger about the man’s face, and his hand tugged, and dragged at the car door handle for a moment.

I’ll never know precisely what that guy thought he was going to do if he could have got my car door open, and I don’t like to speculate.
It still makes me feel shaken-up, to think of it.

I drove to the police station, because I thought a person ought to report something like that. (What if the guy hurt somebody?) But when I spoke with a police officer who was available, and who, frankly, seemed to take barely perfunctory note of what I was telling him and didn’t seem sincere or sympathetic at all, I suddenly lost any feeling of wanting to “report” it – my overwhelming emphasis became, I didn’t want any formal “report” or “charge” or whatever they call it, because I didn’t want my name on it. The door-handle-attacking-bus-driver would find out my name, and he already knew where I lived, and I was – I guess you could say, kind of terrified.

I could only think of self-protection, and I couldn’t imagine that anyone anywhere would protect me or help me, except for myself.

------------------------------

Later, I put those two incidents side by side in my mind, and thought about them, and quickly realized that if the first guy, from the year before, hadn’t been so obnoxious and silly back then, I would never have started locking my car door, in which case the bus driver might have dragged me out of my car and beaten me to death. (Which was certainly not written on my calendar for that week - !)

That bus driver moment was even more frightening, to me, than the time I was in an armed robbery in Boston. I happened to be in a drug store on a Saturday morning, the year after I’d graduated from B.U., when two guys robbed the place, at gunpoint. (“Where-za percodan, man, where-za percodan?!”)Granted, that was scary. But those two guys (only one had a gun) didn’t do anything to me. And they didn’t hurt the drug store owner or his assistant. Really, when I think about it, they weren’t even rude. They weren’t contemptuous, or sarcastic, or angry. They were reasonable. I mean, they were breaking the law, but – fact remains, they were Not unreasonable.

They just did their “work” and got out. [Which was what I used to always think that angry-rude-salesman (the Walking Angry guy) ought to do. (Just finish your work and GO HOME!! Leave your co-workers alone! Don’t steal phone numbers off of their desks! Don’t leave snotty, anonymous notes on their desks, suggesting they “get a job on the internet”…)]

-------------------------

The Angry-bullying-walking-pestering-salesman,
and the Frenzied-bus-driver
were,
to me,
more frightening
than the armed robbers because –
because –
I could see
That the armed robbers wanted to get
Drugs,
But those other guys, even though they didn’t have guns,
Wanted to harm me.
Or – somebody and I happened to be there.
There was no material motive – money, or drugs.
They were just
Angry. (Crazy?)
---------------------------------

And that’s why those incidents make me think that there’s something different going on in our society – because, how could I live for as many years as I have and never have things like that happen to me, and suddenly I have two of those “Crazy-Angry-Incidents” occurring within a 12-month period?

I’m worried that people are feeling insecure because they fear they can’t make enough money to live, health insurance, security of their families, whatever, and because the politicians rant but don’t listen to us, there may be a lot of people who feel powerless, and closer to hopeless than they used to feel, and it’s making a new American landscape that is not as sunny as the one that many of us grew up with. And the insecure feelings people have, because of economics, etc., are going to come out in various different ways.

People won’t all express it the same way, but – keep your driver’s side door locked.

-30-