March 26, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:A chance conversation today reminded
A chance conversation today reminded me of a long family tradition of doing the wrong thing in the middle of a crisis; specifically, when assaulted.
About 18 years ago my grandfather, then 70, was working in his gas station when a man came in and demanded the cash. This man was 35, over 6 feet tall, and weighed considerably more than my grandfather, who weighed in at 6 feet and 150 pounds. Rather than doing the sensible thing and handing over the take, my grandfather leapt over the counter and lunged at him. When the cops arrived, the would-be robber was begging them to pull this crazy old man off him. The local papers wrote him up as a sort of geriatric wonder, which angered my grandfather deeply. My mother was angry too -- because he'd risked his life for the contents of the cash register drawer. She tried to get him to promise that next time, he'd comply quietly.
A few years later, my mother's purse was snatched by someone who was also, coincidentally, younger and larger than she was. Rather than doing the sensible thing, she chased him four blocks, threw him against a wall, retrieved her purse, and held him there for a little while before she realized that, this being New York, no one was going to go for the cops whilst she detained him. She let him go. I furiously lectured her on the relative values of her wallet and her continued good health.
A couple of years after that, I was sauntering down Osage Street in the lovely Philadelphia dusk when two teenagers appeared out of a corner. One of them grabbed my wrist; the other said "Give me your money, [Expletive deleted]". A flash of metal indicated that this one had some sort of a weapon, although I didn't see it too clearly, so for all I know they were holding me up with a roll of Reynolds Wrap.
I should mention that at the time I was dating a fellow who was a black belt in Karate and who had endeavored to teach me same. Unfortunately up to that point, all I had mastered was the scary yell and the fighting stance. Yet such was my rage at the thought of these little twerps trying to get their grubby hands on MY MONEY that rather than doing the sensible thing and giving them the eighty dollars and change that I was carrying, I emitted my best scary yell, yanked my wrist out of the hand of Perp #1, and assumed fighting stance.
The second I had done this I recognized that it was completely insane. What was I going to do if they called my bluff -- say, "ha, ha, glad to see you fellows can take a joke," and hand over my money? I frantically sought ways to get myself out of the now deeper predicament I was in.
I needn't have bothered. The one with the reynolds wrap said, "Oh, [expletive deleted], man, she knows karate!" and the two of them took off down the street. Amusingly, the other one kept looking behind him to see if I was chasing them. I suspect that I may have been their first foray into the dark underworld of crime; hopefully, I was their last. Thank you, Jean Claude Van Damme.
The point is, you can't know what you would do in a real crisis until you're in it. We like to believe that we will do the exact right thing; that we would be the ones hiding Jews in Nazi Germany; fighting against apartheid in South Africa; that in battle we would be heroic, and that in extremes of personal need we would hew to our deepest principles. But if you can't even plan a simple thing like what you're going to do when you get mugged, how sure can you be that you'd take heroic risks when the stakes are higher?
Posted by Jane Galt at March 26, 2002 6:11 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links