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On Halloween evening in 2015 I finished my shift at 8:00pm, and drove to a gas station that I visit on a near daily basis. As a matter of personal security, I've always tended to frequent the same retail establishments on a regular basis, to one, become very familiar with the business and the customers who are there usually there, which then alerts me when someone unfamiliar is there. Two, it also builds a rapport between myself and the employees of the business, which can make the difference between life and death in certain circumstances.
On that night in 2015 I had, as usual, approached the station and scanned the lot to look for anything unusual. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but I still drove around the rear of the station, and back towards the front door, where I parked as close as I could. When I entered the station, I was the only customer there, and as I was just finishing a transaction, the young man behind the counter told me, "Watch out, he has a gun and was in here earlier". I backed away from the door, and behind the metal racks of chips and snacks, as a young man holding a semiautomatic pistol entered, aimed his gun at me and said, "Give me your wallet". I responded by telling him, "That's crazy, the security camera is looking right at you". He lowered the pistol momentarily, looked up at the camera, and pointed it at me again saying, "I don't care, give it to me". Because I carry paper currency separate from my other belongings, I reached into my pocket and tossed all of it across the top of the metal racks, where it spread out and fluttered at his feet. He reflexively bent over to quickly pick up the money, which provided me an opportunity to attack him by forcefully shouldering the metal racks into him while he was bent over and couldn't see me. His response was to immediately run for his life out the door, which I locked behind him. He was subsequently tried and convicted for that armed robbery, plus several others.
The main points I'd like to make are: 1.) A relaxed and confident demeanor in the face of immediate danger, will always take the aggressor off balance because that response was not something that they had anticipated. 2.) Offering the aggressor something else of importance to give their attention to, breaks their thought pattern. 3.) Once their thought pattern has been disrupted, an opening to either attack or flee may present itself.
In closing, I'd like to state that I do not hate, or hold any ill feelings towards the person who robbed me. For me, the generation and maintenance of negative emotions towards another person is detrimental to my own personal development, as well as my emotional and intellectual well being. When that pistol was pointed at me, one might ask if I was afraid for my life, and my answer would most certainly be Yes, but, the key to overcoming fear is to acknowledge it quickly, and allow your intellect, experience, and will to survive to emerge quickly and overwhelmingly. Evil, and it's exercise upon us by others cannot prevail, in the face of that which is right. Peace.
