You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Fight or Flight.
It’s the primordial moment when caveman either stayed to fight the beast, or turned tail and ran for his life.
Either way, it is the moment when the human spirit is fueled with high-octane energy to do something; either fight or run.
I felt that primordial jolt today. It was wild, sweeping over me like sweat across a runner’s brow.
I felt my hands trembling and the blood racing behind my pupils.
My hair was on fire, my toe nails curling in my loafers.
It was that moment when hot water was running wide open through my life faucet.
I was human steam, ready to do something, ready to act, to move to implode, to explode.
Fight or Flight?
Which would it be?
It all happened in the beat of a humming bird’s wing.
I was on a story.
Cliff Notes Version. A woman’s son is beat up by four teens. She posts it to facebook. She is crying and saying she publicized it to raise awareness against bullying. Her Ex-Husband says she instigated it to draw attention to herself. He has called the station and asked us not to show the video.
I am sitting in the car. I am staring at my phone. Out of the corner of my eye I see a shadow racing across the narrow parking lot.
I see the man point at me. I hear him say to my photographer, I want to talk to him. His face is red and his eyebrows furled.
He is angry.
Suddenly, so am I.
Who the hell is this guy? I think to myself.
Is this the guy I just got off the phone with? I listened to him and acknowledged his point of view and said thank you and hung up.
Suddenly he is raging bull pointing at me.
I get out of my car and step not one but two steps too close.
I don’t feel like flight, so I guess I’m contemplating fight.
He’s not a big man. He is not carrying a weapon. But he seems impulsive, irrational.
He looks like a better dressed Charles Manson.
Who hangs up and then drives to a park to confront a news guy?
My photographer lifts the camera up on his shoulder, rolling on whatever might happen next.
I will watch the tape later. I am stern, my jaw clenched, but I am cool and don’t tip my cards.
Inside I am the blast furnace of the Queen Mary. I am Mt Vesuvius about to lay down some liquid magma.
Perhaps he senses my lack of fear. Perhaps he inhales the intoxicating aroma of my angst.
Maybe he sees me shaking and thinks I have the palsy.
All I know is he seems to be quieting down, taking a step backward.
I hold my ground
I calmly ask him questions. He is defensive. He assesses blame everywhere.
I take it all in.
I’m shaking. I am pulsing with adrenaline. This must be what it’s like to put Jet Fuel in a Hybrid.
I don’t think he is going to strike me, but he is angry, and he might.
He wants me to kill the story. I don’t have this power. He says I do.
It’s at a tipping point.
I am ready. I could run. But chances are I’m going to let him pop me in the jaw and then I’m going to bust a groove on his ass.
“Why are you so agitated?” he asks me.
I want to tell him that I was born this way. I hold my tongue.
“The way you came at me was pretty aggressive,” I respond.
And so it goes.
It’s another day where fighting is just part of the job description.
It all ends well. I shake his hand. I get in the car and look to my photog.
His version is different from mine, but the same.
Wow!
That could’ve gone bad a hundred ways from Sunday.
Nothing happened.
Fight or Flight.
News gathering at the speed of primordial ooze.
Life’s Crazy™