Fight or Flight

"frogberg" (frogberg) 10/02/2013 at 16:54 • Filed to: Reader's stories

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The story about the bikers vs. SUV driver reminded me of an incident with my own family from back in 2009. Keep in mind, as a father of two, I definitely sympathize more with the SUV driver than I do the bikers.

The night of October 17, my wife and I took our girls (who were four and one-and-a-half at the time) to watch Georgia Tech beat Virginia Tech. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! We joined her parents and had a great time watching a great and historic game. After the game, fans rushed the field, the band played and everyone partied.

We left the stadium, made our way to the car and eventually pulled onto Fowler St. just north of the parking garage. We were stuck in a line of traffic with a long line of cars in front of us when people started beating on the car. We were initially more surprised than annoyed, but quickly became confused then annoyed when people started telling us to move. Apparently they'd taken the north goal post down, gotten it out of the stadium and were trying to come through with it. I pulled the car a little closer to the car in front of us and, miraculously when the crowd, no, actually is was a mob carrying the goal post, made it by our car.

Once the goal post was gone, I let my guard down because I thought the danger to my family had past. Put people quickly restarted banging on the car, slapping it from back to front as they made their way past. The beating got harder and louder. I finally had had enough, rolled the window down and screamed to the sea of people something to the effect of, " Stop fucking hitting my car, assholes!!! " I heard one mob member say, "What's he going to do, kill us all?" That was the trigger. Valves opened, adrenaline flowed I was in Fight or Flight mode with nowhere to fly and I thought, "I don't need to kill everyone, just you."

Luckily my screaming working and the beating stopped. The mob thinned out and eventually the flow of people stopped. This was not an angry group of people, but I've seen and read of folks doing some sinister things in the name of celebration and was worried about the safety of my wife and daughters. Having no release for my adrenaline, it took me a while to calm down.

It scares me to think of what those folks could have done and what I would have done to prevent it. But, ultimately we made it home safely and no one got hurt.

PatBateman > frogberg 10/02/2013 at 17:00

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Mob mentality is horrible.

ttyymmnn > frogberg 10/02/2013 at 17:02

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I was on a windy road in rural PA (near Somerset) a few years ago, driving my dad's Caravan with my wife and three young kids on board. Suddenly, a pickup truck came hurtling around a blind corner at high speed, in my lane. I had to swerve to avoid him, and blew my horn. The guys then turned around and started following me, very closely. I kept to the speed limit, got to the end of the road by our old family farm, and turned for town. I guess, since I didn't rise to their baiting, they got bored and turned around. But it was damned scary. We were far away from help, they were probably drunk, and very likely armed.

L'enfer, c'est les autres.

pdthedeuce > frogberg 10/02/2013 at 17:02

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mob mentality is a very real and very scary thing.