Survive

I had to call 911 once as a teen! My folks left really early in the morning, my dad left last. I had to walk him to the door and put the deadbolt and the chain lock on once I closed the door, that was the rule. Before I left for school, I had to make sure all the lights were out and set the furnace for 68. This particular morning about twenty minutes after dad left, someone pounded on the door! We lived in a three floor townhouse, I was up in my room, I started down the stairs but the pounding changed to someone trying the knob and pushing on the door. I was frozen in fear, I think I was 14 or 15. I ran back to my room and called the police, when I think back I don’t remember if it was 911 or an actual number, I can’t remember if it was a cordless phone, I know I had a phone in my room. I remember scream whispering to the police and hiding in my closet. The person was trying to break the door open, and a dispatcher stayed on the phone with me explaining how someone was on the way and they would stay on the phone until they arrived. The noise stopped for 10 minutes or so, but I was too terrified to be calm. The pounding started again and it took the dispatcher another 10 minutes to reassure me it was their officer at the door. She did stay on the phone until I went to the door and gave the phone to the police.

I lock doors and deadbolts here in my little town too, everything is locked. Some of my friends think that is odd, City folk, yup we are odd! We used to live in a little three floor apartment building until I was eight. At night, we had a chain lock, but we weren’t allowed to have a deadbolt. Instead my parents put butter knives in front of the door and into the space between the wall and the trim. I also know that if you go to sleep with that in place and someone comes in, butter knives only bend so far and when the door finally open they fling towards the person coming in! Pretty good security system! Dad and mom came to the city right from the farm, dad worked the farm until he set off to get a job in the big city. Farm boys got muscles and callouses, those country boys fight, especially with eight siblings. We woke up to screams in the middle of the night, outside a woman was being drug up the road by a man. My mom called the cops, but my dad ran out to help. The man produced a knife as my father ran up. My father’s hands, were baseball mitts, no joke! Like a newborn at five pounds could fit in one! Dad just grabbed the knife, by the blade and then held the man until the police came.

Dad wasn’t 6’5 or a MMA fighter, besides working on a vehicle, I don’t have many angry dad stories, well maybe, but that’s another story. After that event when I was a teen, he sat at the end of the road for an hour every morning for a month. Probably good, the person didn’t try again. He started teaching me to box when I was three, I have a scar in the center of my forehead from a speaker I smoked my head off of after punching at him and he stepped out of the way. I can through a punch, turns out I’m a southpaw. Boxing and fighting are very different things. It doesn’t matter where you grow up, it is always good to have some skills to protect yourself or someone else if you have to. I do believe something else surfaces when you are protecting someone, something that you don’t need training for. Love for others, love for life, love of freedom. Survival, things kick in, everything you need is in you!