My 'Gift of Fear' moment

Many moons ago (or 10 years to be exact), Oprah had Gavin de Becker on her show. He was talking about his book The Gift of Fear. It sounded rather interesting so I purchased it the next time I was at a bookstore. It was a good read about acts of violence and how people react to it or specifically, how we fail to listen to our instinct and not react at all or too late.

Last week, I caught a rerun of her show with him on it, celebrating the 10th anniversary of its release. This time I viewed it with added interest.

Back in mid-May, I was walking Hooch on our usual route. There is a side street that he loves to go down. I know this because as we get to the mid-block pedestrian crosswalk to head down it, he will stop and look back at me. Sometimes I'll tell him to go straight and we will go down there next time. Other times, we cross and walk down it. It's a nice, quiet street with a lot of the city's 19th century homes on it that are still kept up nicely. We usually walk about halfway and then cut over to the other street to the north via an alley. It's not what you may picture as a typical alley. It's about a car and a half wide and it runs between two houses so you can see into their backyard and there are a couple of driveways off of it.

On this particular evening, it was about 7 p.m. so it was still light out but the sun was starting to drop and with the adult trees on this street, it was starting to look like dusk in this area. As we start walking down the street, I noticed that there weren't many people out on this lovely evening. No kids were out playing. No one was cutting their grass. This typically quiet street felt oddly quiet.

As Hooch and I are walking, I notice a guy off in the distance walking towards us on the sidewalk. As I normally do out of consideration for the non-dog fans, Hooch and I cross over and continue to walk down the other side of the street. I don't really pay this guy much mind as Hooch and I stop at every tree or pile of yard waste so he can leave his scent but I just happened to look up and he was still walking our way and this time, he was crossing the street towards us. I normally tighten up when anyone approaches me but much more so with him. As he was shuffling across the street, he asked if I could help him. I remember glancing at Hooch who was busy investigating a tree at the time and since I don't trust people easily, I try to watch him in certain circumstances because I think dogs are good judges of character whereas I look at everyone I don't know warily.

So this guy is asking me if I could help him and keeps coming towards me. Not only is he now about 7 feet from me but he is now blocking the way we were going to go (which I realized even then) and I'll never forget his eyes. They were big, bright blue and unblinking. He was just staring right at me. Him asking for help from me was another red flag. This guy had just walked from a rather populated section of town that has restaurants with outdoor seating which would have been filled on this lovely night. Also, he had to have passed about 20 houses before I had spotted him and in those few minutes when I had, I didn't see him make one stop at a house. All of this registered in just those few seconds and I told him that I couldn't help him because we were in a hurry. Hooch was still sniffing the same tree and was the only thing between me and this guy and as I said that, Hooch and I turned and started to walk the way we came. My intuition told me that I needed to get off this oddly quiet street and somewhere where there were people. A fairly busy road was not too far away as was a gas station that was always busy.

Not long after I turned, I heard him shuffling behind me and I just started running as fast as I could. Every part of my being was saying to get out of there and to get near people. Thankfully, Hooch must've sensed something because he kept up with me and didn't try to catch a quick sniff of anything and even more thankfully, I had my cell phone with me. Once I got to the corner of the busier street, I was able to stop running and attempt to stop crying which I guess I didn't do to well at before calling Big A on the cell phone. He was home but didn't get to the phone in time before it went to the answering machine. My frantic voice on the answering machine must've conveyed my fear because it made him toss the 25 lb. cat off him to get to the phone a bit quicker than normal. He came and picked me and Hooch up from the gas station and I told him the story.

I haven't been down that street since that happened. At the crosswalk, Hooch would always look back and I would say in a chirpy voice that we were going straight. Maybe later we would go back down there. Later was yesterday. Since he loves going that way, I decided I would do it since it's his birthday (and the cell phone was firmly in my pocket again). As we headed down the street, I tried not to reflect on that day and just stay in the present and notice the flowers, etc. As it was with every other time we've walked down there but that one time, it was uneventful although even writing this makes me remember his eyes and my fear.

de Becker mentioned on the most recent Oprah show about we always analyze everything after the fact. I did that over the next day or so. What was it EXACTLY about this guy? I've never been able to come up with any conclusions other than all the things I realized while it was happening. Even more interesting, he said that humans are the only species that does not react instinctively to fear. Every other animal, when it senses fear, runs. They don't worry about if they are being impolite by doing so.

While the book was informative and eye-opening, I hope I never have another 'Gift of Fear' moment.