137 - One of those times when someone tried to run me over...
Robbery, stress and... what was it again?
Drilling concrete on a summer day is never a great way to spend your time. In my early twenties, I was working demolishing and repairing concrete sections of a council estate by Tower Bridge in London.
Absolutely back breaking work, not just the drilling but the shovelling, bagging and removal of debris.
One particular day, morning shift was finished, we locked the tools in a maintenance cupboard at the bottom of the communal stairs and drifted off to lunch.
Cafes were a long walk out of the estate so I'd opted for a packed lunch and a patch of shade that I could find to sit in round the side of a building and get some much needed rest.
The residents of the council flats came and went. Over the course of the many months we'd worked there, I'd gotten to know a few of them and would nod and say hi as they passed.
Tired, I'd nodded off sitting there and woke realising it was time to go back to work. If you've ever dosed off outside on a hot day, you'll know that you wake up out of it and you can't focus your eyes for ages. Fuzzy headed, I poured out my thermos cup, got my stuff together and walked back on tired legs to the maintenance cupboard to wait for the foreman with the keys to get the tools back out.
Just as I got there, there was a car waiting just in front of the stairs where the cupboard was, engine running. Tools were being loaded into the car by two large guys while another sat behind the wheel eyeballing me.
Our eyes met.
He's not smiling.
The slow recognition of the situation became apparent to me as I was stood a couple of paces away directly in front of the car about to shout something pointless like ...”Hey!”
The driver floored the pedal and the car went at me. Engine noise, tires.
Strangely, cars seem faster when you’re in front of them…
I'd thrown myself backward, falling and managed to evade it by inches as it took off past me and out into the estate with our tools in the back.
I ran to see the direction of the car through the small roads surrounding the four blocks that comprised the estate.
The other guys on the crew got to me. Discussions that ensued about following the car into the estate were decided against as the tools were already probably in a flat and any snooping about, even if we found the car – a silver estate, would likely end in a beating for anyone asking for their stuff back.
The police arrived, a man and a woman. The woman asked me for a description of the guys.
“Three white guys, big, 20's.”
“Car? “
“Silver estate.”
“Make? “
“Err.. “
“Come on you must know at least the make!”
“Err.. “
“Registration? “
“Err.. “
I was blank. The effect of the adrenaline had worn off and I was realising to my embarrassment in front of the expectant group how much of the details I'd missed.
The police officer was pissed off with me as I wasn't helping her arrest sheet any time soon. She turned to her notebook, eye rolling and head shaking and took a few more details before leaving.
The other guys were ok about it - “Probably just as well you didn't get there earlier. Sounds like a rob to order – they'd have probably kicked your head in”.
And that was it. Tools gone – no one cared too much about that as our boss was a dickhead and , luckily, a dickhead with insurance.
But no tools meant no work and no pay until new ones got hired. We never found them, though a few locals would murmur stuff to us over the following days of them having been sold locally.
So what is the point of this mundane tale of “street taxation”? What can we learn in the context of studying self defence?
Things have an uncanny knack of only happening to you when you are least switched on or prepared. Almost as if the universe sees that your having a “personal moment” and chooses exactly then to jack with you.
If you get through it, you can try and see the joke in it.
“Cool breeze” experts will waffle on about “situational awareness” and chide those perceived to have lacked it but life doesn't book appointments and that's a key take away that you can be caught out by things, especially if you're tired etc.
Shit, as they say...happens.
There can be a gap – called “cognitive lag” - between you seeing an event and the processing that goes on in the brain to enable you to recognise it. The brain is literally furiously flipping a rolodex looking for a similar entry in the memory to say “this is what's happening – do x, y, z..!”
It used to be thought that asking questions as soon as possible following an event will give the most accurate recollected facts.
However, I found an interesting article by Dr Bill Lewinski of the Force Science institute in the US that states:
“A robust body of literature and the clinical experience of psychological and criminal justice professionals informs us that survivors of traumatic events can have difficulty recounting many of the elements of the incident.
Survivors of traumatic events aren’t just witnessing the event; they are experiencing it, and this experience can significantly affect brain function and memory.
Confronting someone you believe is trying to kill you can be a significant emotional event. During these events, survivors may not consciously choose what to pay attention to. Instead, they tend to focus on the elements of the incident that were most important to their survival rather than the elements that may be important for investigation and prosecution. “
Lewinski goes on to state that new thinking in this field sees the value in allowing subjects to sleep (when the brain consolidates memory) and allows a distance from the stress of an event which can colour the recollection.
This information is well worth taking on board. If you ever experience a high stress event where you life is threatened and you need to give a statement to police, you may be unable to remember key facts as your brain was preoccupied with surviving rather than observing less important observational information.
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