A friend sent a text to me on Monday asking if I would be free for a cup of coffee or lunch in a couple of hours. This friend and I hadn’t seen each other since February of 2020, and she lives in D.C.
I’m not even sure if she has ever been to West Virginia but I am thinking no. I was super excited and couldn’t wait to see her.
When friends travel here, I always pick a local place to eat because I feel we have some fantastic local eateries and because food, to me, is a great way to get a feel for an area’s culture. She arrived early and called me, asking if there was another place I would want to meet; the place was packed, which made her nervous, and chaotic with an irate customer causing a scene. I named a coffee shop around the corner and we spent a lovely couple of hours catching up.
When I left the coffee shop, I headed to Walmart to meet my family. I had no intention of going into the store but knew they would need my car to haul things. My oldest became very upset with me because I wouldn’t go in. She had witnessed a man yelling at store employees, throwing items out of his buggy down, one being a jar of olives that shattered, and informing a female that she could do pretty gross stuff to a part of his anatomy.
My kid was terrified.
Skip ahead to yesterday … I am in my car, alone, leaving the parking lot of a local business. For whatever reason, a man walking up the sidewalk caught my attention as he was waving at a passing car. For some reason, I hit the lock button on my door because he was giving me the willies. I’m sitting there, watching the traffic when he steps in front of my car. There was something about the way he closed off distance between my car and his body that had all of my senses hypervigilant. He had to turn sideways to not hit my mirror, stuck his face right up to the window and began slowly speaking some kind of insult or curse word or something. I was on a call for work so the audio drowned him out, but whatever it was coming out of his mouth was pure venom.
I sat there, staring at his mouth, trying to understand what he was saying. I couldn’t bring myself to look into his eyes. I was expecting him to hit my window, but he didn’t. And then The Universe opened up both lanes of traffic so I could exit. I turned to look at him. He was walking through the parking lot as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And he didn’t look back at me.
It was one of the weirdest scenes I’d ever been in. I was scared and couldn’t do anything except watch his mouth move, and I’m not afraid of things. I have thought and thought about what I possibly could have done to make him feel as if he needed to behave that way. And every time I come up with nothing.
I’ve written about my daughters being afraid and uncomfortable because of the way they’re stared at by men in a store, but my fearfulness is so extraordinary that this incident really shook me. I haven’t told anyone until now, as a matter of fact. First of all, it was bizarre and it seems kind of anticlimactic, right?
I mean, I don’t even know what he said to me, but I am fixated on the fact that my spirit told me to lock the door immediately when I saw him.
Maybe it’s the fact that in less than 24 hours, I have three accounts of men acting up wildly and aggressively in public that made me want to write about it. Or maybe it’s because I don’t spend much time in public anymore, so I’m simply not seeing as many people, making three incidents appear bigger.
Or maybe I’m worried and heartbroken because this seems to be who we’ve become.
This type of behavior hasn’t been accepted until recently, and I’ve never had so many things happen in 24 hours. What is it that’s happened? And what do we do about it? How do we, as a community, a state, and as a nation reverse the anger and hatred that has been allowed to show itself? I keep wondering what would have happened if someone would have intervened.
This seething anger is dangerous. We have to create spaces where it’s not acceptable. We have to make America safe again, and I have no idea how.
Onward with discernment.
Amy Jo
