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From: arndt@lymph.DEC
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Auto Encounters of the 3rd Kind!
Message-ID: <1626@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Apr-85 20:10:44 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1626
Posted: Thu Apr 11 20:10:44 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Apr-85 03:22:19 EST
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         (Or more of Our Man Ken's Manly Self Defense Stories)

By the way, a close auto encounter of the 1st kind is when your sphincter
actually tears the seat cover . . . a 2nd kind being when it doesn't, only
leaving a pucker mark in the material.
          
But on to my recent close auto encounter of the 3rd kind.

On a recent sunny morning on my way into work I cut in front of a pickup
truck a little too fast.  The driver blew his horn, trying to make me feel
bad, so I waved my open hand by way of a peace offering (see Frank?).  Well,
next thing I know all I can see in my rear view mirror is truck grill and this
retard is blowing his horn from time to time as we drive through town.  At
first I thought, "Do I know this guy?", "Is my car on fire?".  So he keeps it
up and keeps it up following me through town.  I was just about ready to stop
dead in the street and get out and go back and ask him if he needed help when
as the traffic slowed in front of me and a space opened up he drives up over
the curb and passes me on my right going back into the street again in front
of me.  
                                          
Now I can see into the back of the cab.  It turns out to be a couple of Public
School dropouts out for a morning cruise before shooting up for the day.  The
doxie turns around in her seat, or was it his seat - they were sitting close,
regulation MTV style - and makes motions with her mouth which I took to be an
attempt at self expression.  One thing leads to another (isn't that always the
way?) and before I know it were were exchanging first impressions with hand
signals.  (Yes folks, I lost my santification for a moment there.)  Having 
reached the limit of her knowledge of pejoritive hand jive and no doubt 
feeling she didn't come out on top again, she turned to Godzilla and gave
him 'The word' about me.

Well!  Touch me where I live!  He slams on the brakes and stops dead in the
street in front of me and now HE turns around to look at me.  My first thought
was, "I don't believe it, CHARLE MANSON!  How did he get out?"  Now the both
of them are flapping their mouths at me, now and then in sync, so that for all
I know they might have been singing something.  Anyway, he draws his bushy
Neanderthal brows together and gives me THE LOOK.  You know, the macho macho
man look.  By now traffic is backing up behind me and am I glad I ate all my
Wheaties before I left the house.  

What to do?  Herman Kahn (bless you Herman wherever you are now) says that if
you are going to play chicken the way to play it is to show up drunk and throw
the steering wheel out the window.  I looked him right in the eye, (never look
away gang, all the animal trainers will tell you that), and slowly and
PURPOSEFULLY reached down beneath my seat and rearranged the MacDonalds cups
and used tissues and then straightened up with my hand out of sight on my lap.
I let a small Clint Eastwood/G. Gordon Liddy smile play on my lips (I dismissed
the thought of lighting my hand on fire) while I slipped the car into gear and
poised my foot over the gas peddle in case HE started to get out with a gun in
HIS hand . . . "I'm gonna run him ova in my car wif ma car."

Lo a miraculous change in countenance!!!  He just couldn't be sure!  I could
see the .0000002 mg of mem. searching for a match behind his eyes.  Perhaps
it was my bumper sticker, "NOBODY EVER RAPED A .38" or the one next to it that
says, "WHEN I KILL, THE ONLY THING I FEEL IS . . . RECOIL!!".  Whatever, when
I motioned to him to move on he turned around and did so.  Soon he turned off
without ever looking back again.  Needless to say I kept my eye on the rear
view mirror for the next few days and HAD my gun under the seat. (I have a
license to carry, remember)  If I had seen him again I had planned to speak
to him and offer to buy him a beer by way of apology.  After all, I had blown
it as well.  He might have turned out to be an interesting guy - I have some
pretty gruesome looking friends, you know.

But the interesting moral from this story, besides don't let things like this
get STARTED, is that display of an ATTITUDE of unwillingness to be walked 
over can sometimes carry you through.  Remember my comments in a previous
posting about not looking like a 'victim' often forestalls or deters violence.

Well, class dismissed!  You 'Yuppies' can now throw up.

Keep chargin'

Ken Arndt