It was Sunday
August 25th 2013 and Arlene and I were driving back on
Route 52 coming from St. Stephen , SC. We had just come from the canal on the Santee
river which empties into lake
Moultrie . It’s one of our favorite walks although you
have to be careful the dogs don’t go in the water without supervision…there’s
many an alligator just waiting for a snarky border Collie and Wily Lab to just
come passing by to make them brunch.
I was in a conversation with Arlene about New
Mexico and whether her Aunt and Uncle’s stores they
have there were doing well. I was
passing a large pickup truck, correctly I might add which was going a bit
slower than my pace. The speed limit on
52 in that rural part of Berkeley
county is 60mph…but everyone does an average of 70+. I must have been doing about 70 passing the
truck very slowly. Upcoming from the
rear was a person in a white car taling me.
You know the type…no matter how fast you go they are easily going to
outdo you by 10mph minimum. Sometimes I
will marvel at people sitting in a stiff position with a sort of a disconnected
stare on their faces as they race past me at what appears to me crazy
speeds. I should talk…I used to be one
of them.
Apparently I was not passing the truck fast enough for
the person in the white car so I sped up to pass the truck. I learned (mostly from riding with my friend
T.M. on motorcycles to just let people by.
He would always let cars by no matter what if they got too
close. Thereby letting go of pride and the need to be "right"). It’s a great practice on a
motorcycle and a great spiritual principle no matter what you drive….just let go. So I sped up quite a bit and finally passed
the truck, in making that pass I got up to appr. 80mph.
Now this is where it gets interesting. Usually the person races past you in the left
lane and life is back to normal. But
sometimes you get someone that feels it is your responsibility to make their
world go the way they want and think they need it to go. So he does it…he slows down to confront
me. My window is open…it was a picture
perfect day and one of those rare days the temperature was cool enough to keep
the windows down in my wifes 2003 Rav 4.
The interaction went something like this:
“Hey motherfucker, don’t you know what the fucking left lane
is for?! It’s for passing motherfucker!” I retort:
“Yup, did you see the giant piece of metal right behind me I PASSED,
they call that a TRUCK!”
This is when he got really irate, it was as if I switched
some “My dad made me feel like a fool and not good enough and
what you just said is the exact way he did it" look. He flipped out:
“Fuck you!
I’ll kick your ass!”
In which I
retorded: "We’re done!”
And I turned and faced forward realizing to
fuel this was not going to be a good thing.
He started yelling again in a car moving at 75 MPH right next to me. Why the hell was he so damn angry? WTF? I'm glad I don't feel that way much anymore.
…I
glanced over and he reached down and pulled out a handgun and pointed it at my
head...
I swerved intuitively (A huge
thanks goes out to Steven Jucks here. My
father in law who being a retired Police officer taught me that when your car swerves
like that out of control always steer INTO the slide and not away from it. I am not sure why but I remembered it
flawlessly. I hit the brakes as a second
thought and he passed on. But that was
when I made the instantaneous decision to go after him. It was not debated…I just knew it was the
right thing to do.
Arlene being terrified was screaming “Stay away from
him! Don’t get close!” I said to her…”This is just the right thing!”
And off I went, at first to just get his license plate but
then turning into much more of an insight for me. We were doing speeds of up to and over 100 mph, much
of the time in 25mph zones. I don’t know
Goose Creek at all, we were driving
at breakneck speeds through ;little neighborhoods with people out mowing lawns
and kids playing. By this time I was on
the phone with 911 calling in every street we passed while he drove up on those
same lawns people were mowing. I had
gotten his license plate but the 911 operator wanted me to keep going and let
me know the major part of the Goose Creek
police dept was converging on the area trying to block him off. But at one point I glanced up and saw the 25mph
sign and looked down at my speedometer.
I was doing 107mph…whoa. I said
it to her: “He’s doing almost 110mph in
a 25mph zone!” She said slow DOWN
sir! I did and eventually lost him, only
guessing as to where he went at the end of that road and the next.
From there much happened and is still happening. But the takeway for me is huge. Here is a man who was engaging in fear (He had
a gun ready to grab in the seat next to him).
He pointed it at me to scare me.
And I was the one chasing HIM!?
Reap and sew
Judged, be judged
Measure it shall be measured unto you
Reap sparingly, sew sparingly
Reap abundantly. Sew abundantly
Living by sword, dying by sword
Speck in eye, log in eye
These teachings all came to mind plus many others afterwards.
I went home after the “ordeal” and took a nap. Yup, I realized that every second after the
reaction to swerve I felt no fear whatsoever.
I was calm (I want to see if I can obtain the 911 call but just found out I would need a subpoena) and he was contrastingly
crazy in his actions and words. In the
world, you would have thought the one with the gun would have been the “powerful”
one. But here I was chasing him in my
small Rav 4 on many deserted roads where he “could” have stopped and shot me or
even scared me away. But he ran…and oh
did he run. He lived in fear and his
plan reaped what he lived in. Karma
means “action,” you play in shit…you
smell and look like shit. You become
shit. I became more that just the man who was in the now or the guy whose mind wandered. I was the observer watching it all occur. This was huge for me, I saw the 3rd person we only become aware of in crisis situations and usually we are so traumatized we are not aware of that entity.
I am not saying this to toot my horn, for in fact I feel it is within all of us to find out with proof there is NOTHING to truly fear. Yes we experience fear, but that is always a concept of future...but we do not HAVE to experience fear at all. Since the truth is, there really is nothing to be afraid of "out there."
Arlene’s words before I took a nap were…”You’re going to
take a nap. He probably won’t sleep for a
month.”
And I slept like a baby.
I actually forgot the incident until the sherrif called me 2 days
later. Wow, what Love can do.