Freaky Dudes

Have you ever had the strong feeling that something just wasn't right, perhaps even dangerous, and then had it verified for you? Over my life I have been learning to listen to those feelings. It's been hard-- so often when you do heed the warning, nothing bad happens so you begin to think you were imagining things or making a big deal out of nothing.

Certainly in my family we have had our fair share of scary run-ins with perverts. My sister Camie seemed to attract the sickos or something, so by the time I was in high school we had all experienced the indecent exposure thing at least once.

By the time I was in college, I had learned to listen to those promptings, those warnings that all is not well. Once, walking home from campus at BYU, I kept seeing the same guy in the same car driving down the street I was walking on, and those little warning bells started to ring. It was the middle of the day and there were other students everywhere, but something still seemed very wrong.

I walked faster hoping to make the trek back to my apartment as quickly as possible. Finally, I reached 9th Ave, which was a busy road, and I started to breathe a little easier. But then, the same guy in the same car pulled into the intersection half a block ahead of me. It was a little residential road; no stoplight and no other traffic. He stopped in the middle of the crosswalk, right in front of where I was supposed to walk, and then proceeded to sit there and stare at me out of the window.

By this time the warning bells were screaming. With my heart pounding frantically, I did a quick about-face and headed back up 9th Ave. A little ways back up the road I ran into another guy, a student walking home. I choked out that some guy was following me in his car and asked if I could walk with him back toward my apartment. The student agreed, while shooting me skeptical looks. He didn't say a word to me on that walk (probably thought I had come up with some incredibly lame pick up line) but I didn't care. As soon as he was walking with me, the freaky guy in the car took off.

Was I imagining things? Impossible to know, but better safe than sorry.

This morning on my bike ride I had one of those moments. It has occurred to me that my bike rides do have a tiny bit of risk involved (besides getting smushed by a car). Three times a week, at the same time of the morning, I ride the same route on my bike. At this time of year it is still pitch dark when I head out also. I've seen enough action/thriller/suspense movies to know that when you are predictable in your habits you do open yourself to psychotic killers intent on abducting you. And even if it had never occurred to me, my ever-vigilant (i.e. paranoid) husband has pointed it out to me.

OK, I wasn't attacked by a psychotic kidnapper this morning. My life isn't a suspense movie. But even in real life bad stuff can happen.

There's a stretch of my regular route that is completely devoid of houses. There is a well-paved road and streetlights, but since the housing crash prevented the majority of the neighborhood from ever being constructed, it is kind of a barren area. I picked this direction specifically because of the lack of houses/people/living creatures, since I don't want to get hit by any cars. But this morning, as I came around the corner of a deserted street, I could see a man standing in the middle of the utterly empty intersection that was coming up. His car was parked off to the side in the shadows.

He was just standing and staring in my direction.

Doing nothing.

In the dark at 5:30am.

My body reacted faster than my brain. I immediately pulled my bike around and headed back the direction that I had come. But then it occurred to me: there were only two other ways out of this housing development. One would take me down a street parallel to where he was still waiting. The other would take me back the direction I had come, which was even farther from any kind of civilization. The parallel street won out because there are some houses on it, and a chance that somebody would be leaving for work. (Or at least someone who might hear me scream for help if it came to that.)

Luckily for me, some guy was pulling out of his garage, no doubt starting his early morning commute. I didn't have the chance to say anything to him, but I pedaled in his wake as fast as my adrenaline-charged legs could go. When we got up to the corner, I could see that the mysterious man and his car were gone, which only frightened me more. Who knew where he was now, and I was still two miles from home.

Since I'm not Superman I couldn't keep up with my guardian car for long. The worst part was that a mile of my ride back to my house was utterly dark, without houses or streetlights or even moonlight. I prayed pretty fervently all the way home, as you might imagine. When I safely made it into my house (with no sign of the freaky dude), I pretty much collapsed from stress.

Was I letting my imagination get the best of me on a dark morning? Am I losing my mind, and the guy was never there in the first place? Maybe. But I always, always trust those warning feelings now.

So Terence and I have agreed on two things: 1- I'm always going to take my cell with me when I ride, and 2- I'm going to ride in the afternoon now, before Terence goes to work. Much better plan, don't you think?