The locals call these guys turkey buzzards, which buzz around big as wild turkeys. I just call them vultures. I’ve seen as many as seventy in a “kettle” (as if swirling in a kettle up in the sky) above an active landfill that handles household garbage. But in the midst of the back forest ridges near the hermitage on any day off I might see just a few on the road, like bandits. They’ve been here at the exact same spot on the gravel one-lane hermitage mountain road near the waterfall for the seven or eight years I’ve been driving this road, never with road kill, just owning the place. They’ll move just off the road for a vehicle that dares approach them. I’ve wondered what they would do if I were walking alone on the road and acted with timidity, skittish, hesitant, backing up a step, and then another. What I don’t have to wonder about is that acting with confidence is 99% of any success in dealing with any would-be adverse encounter, and can pretty much control any outcome. Bravely walk up to these monsters and they’ll run away.
Dealing with the dark side is one thing. Quite another is dealing with human beings who are not perceptive to mind tricks, but are instead wasted on drugs, especially the drug of, say, counterintel, and it is a drug, with all the same effects, unless… And, by the way, we’re all lost to mind games on every level of our lives, unless… unless we have a constant which cuts through all mind games, that which is more powerful than mind games, more powerful than anything we hold dear in this world, including life here. That Constant is the Cross. Love, like Wisdom, cuts through idiocy. The world spins about while the Cross remains a constant.
Don’t be lost to a palimpsestic faith. Truth is Love is God, ever ancient, ever new, always the same, always full of Life. Our thinking that we can edit Truth, edit Love, edit Life is where all our shattered ways bring darkness. In our stupidity, we think that spreadsheeting analysis of stats based on fallen human nature takes account of all reality and is the key to unlocking mysteries. Pffft. Soooo NOT. When it comes to Truth who is Love who is Life, so that we walk with Truth, with Love, with Life, then it’s no longer an iffy confidence manipulating success 99% of the time, then there is success 100% of the time, with success not being measured in this world, but by being drawn into eternal life.
There’s no greater joy before the angels of heaven than when…
[[[UPDATE: I did a bit of investigation and found out that the guy who accosted me twice was the guy I thought he was. He’s one of the most dangerous people in Western North Carolina and has a standing arrest order on like half of all state owned properties in this entire region. The Jedi mind trick worked even with him. Good to know.]]]
You never think it will happen to you, until it does.
There are retired operators of whatever background who offer classroom shakedowns for pay, that is, for students of situational awareness and deescalation, very useful exercises. But I don’t get the part about paying for this. Guardian angels will provide all the incidents you could ever want and more. Yesterday, for example, I had two would-be incidents, would-be except for my guardian angel and the Jedi mind tricks I employed. It’s especially important to learn the Jedi thing here in Andrews since I’m now guessing that for the unforeseeable future we will have no actually local police for a number of reasons. And the local riffraff know it. Such is small town drama.
Our town politicians will be upset with the first fifteen seconds of the above video, but this is what Andrews is fast becoming with what amounts to little law enforcement. It’s true that the county deputies come into town to look for the riffraff they are after to effect their arrest warrants, and they are a most welcome sight. Wherever you see them, however, you also know that the riffraff they are after are very close by. That’s a good heads-up.
Yesterday, for instance, I was returning from a Communion Call, driving past the DMV, and there was deputy […] in full uniform but in his unmarked black dodge charger pulling in behind me from the direction of our little church. This reminded me to come back and get my soon-to-be-required-by-everyone-in-North-Carolina Gold Star Federal ID card issued in my case as a North Carolina biometric driver licence. The picture, taken by a special multi-lens camera looking ever so much like a Star Wars droid, has 12 measurement points which are inimitable, so that not even plastic surgeons at Liberty Crossing Campus at McLean can mimic what is measured, such as center of pupil to center of pupil. Foiling one won’t foil the others. My very first thought, however, was “Who’s the deputy after?” But before going to the DMV, I needed to fill up at our local BP gas station. He stayed on my bumper until I pulled into the BP and then disappeared somewhere.
First incident
Just as I had paid-at-the-pump with a debit card and had placed the hose-pump into the gas-tank receiver of Sassy the Subaru, a riffraff looking guy, about 6′.6″ tall (even I had to look up), coming out of nowhere, tried to make his way to me around that pump station. With all my situational awareness, blah blah blah, I hadn’t seen him. Don’t be upset with me for that riffraff description. I’m riffraff myself and know riffraff the second I see riffraff. Birds of a feather and all that. Anyway, he was so intent in getting right in my face that he couldn’t see the window-squeegee-combo-trash-buckets in front of him, and, running into them, was getting frustrated. With that, I knew that all was not right, that the guy was perhaps a bit drugged up, and so I started to back away. But, I gotta hand it to the guy for being clever. He was using the “I-really-want-to-speak-with-you-but-I’m-not-going-to-speak-to-you-until-I’m-an-inch-from-your-face-and-I’m-keeping-eye-contact-so-as-to-make-you-feel-obliged-to-let-me-do-that” trick. Not able to get closer in just that three seconds, he stated that he wanted my money. Twice.
I said to him with joyful alacrity and an abundance of confidence, now using his own eye-contact trick against himself, that, “It’s really NOT smart to shake down people for money at gas station pumps.” Glare-glare-glare. My glaring worked. With that, he stepped back, but only to go around the pump station for a sneak-attack. Just as he was coming around the other side, even as I was taking the pump-hose out of the side of the car to hook up in the pump station once again – a pretty vulnerable position – I saw him consider the joyful alacrity with which I had said “NOT smart.” He stopped and reckoned for another second, then turned and walked away. Hah. Thank you guardian angel. I noted he was walking in the direction of town (where the DMV is).
Second incident
After spending quite a bit of time with the most wonderful church secretary in the world, I made my way to the DMV for that biometric Gold Star driver licence, where I had seen deputy […] looking for someone. I pulled into the DMV parking lot. With all my situational awareness, blah blah blah, I hadn’t seen the same riffraff guy (this being exactly one mile away). As I got out of the car and before I could even lock the car, he was right on top of me, an inch away, the trick of practiced pickpockets. Again, very clever. The entrance of the building is kind of in a side alley blocked from view of the inside of the building and from most everyone on the street. That’s where he had me. People going into the DMV to do document work are just as likely to already have their wallets and documents in hand while getting out of the car and going into the building. That was the case with me. Stupid me. His question this time was not about money but about whether or not I was there to try to get a driver licence (I had driven up) and that’s what he was trying to do for a really long time. He was eyeing the wallet and documents an inch away. Bolting for the door would be useless. Time for a Jedi mind trick, again. I fully turned to him and said with rather stern but joyful alacrity and confidence: “Yes, a driver’s licence… THAT’s what I’m trying to do.” Glare, glare, glare. My glaring, as a challenge, combined with the joyful but rather to the point confidence had him back off and disappear. Thanks, guardian angel.
Long time readers know that I carry. Not that I had any firearm on me. I did not. They are not allowed in the DMV, of course. Criminals also know that the safest place for them to commit crime is in gun-free-zone, or, hey, in a parking lot of a building that is a gun-free-zone, because, although the parking lot is not a gun-free-zone, no one in that parking lot will have such a tool with them.
Mind you, I’m 6’2″, 250 pounds (still), wear a 5-11 tactical shirt with collar (because I’m more elephant than donkey), and this guy still thought I was an easy target. Twice. Druggies, I’m thinking, are having a tough time if they are being kicked off the welfare system as their excuses are found to be invalid by real doctors.
Oh, it’s him
Oh, wait a minute. I think I recognize him. He’s the guy who, at a certain garage getting my tires changed out, towered over me, an inch away from me, as I sat low to the floor on a couple of stacked tires, waiting for my tires to be changed. I was there, again with my Roman Collar on, a Catholic priest, obviously, with him saying to me (a white boy and a foreigner – born outside the county – and from a state of Northern Aggression, Minnesota), he saying to me that: “We don’t like N*****s around here,” trying to be as threatening as he could be, you know, just an inch away from me, and me being as white as white can be. I just shrugged my shoulders and asked a question about the tires, diffusing the situation. I remember having asked about him later. Apparently, the guy really is clever. If I remember correctly, he was in fact trained up to analyse the criminal mind. And then he became a criminal.
Mind you, I try to be practiced as well with situational awareness, but this guy, trying not to be seen until he was on top of me, was better than me, druggy or not. A good lesson. I bet he’s the one the deputy was after.
So, look at that. Being practiced in Jedi mind tricks and depending on one’s guardian angel is the way to go, even with someone like this.
That’s an eye-opener for me – two experiences like this in one day – and I thought I would share that with you. It’s not just a good lesson. It’s an important lesson.
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 